On Mon, Mar 3 2003, Chris Kromm wrote:
> One doesn't have to search too hard to find out why the U.S. supports
> Israel. Senator Jesse Helms, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman from
> 1995 to 2001, put it succinctly in the Middle East Quarterly in 1995:
> "Israel is at least the equivalent of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the
> Middle East. Without Israel promoting its and America's common
> interests, we would be badly off indeed."
The only problem wiht that idea is that that isn't true. Remember Gulf War I? Remember what a big help Israel was? The only way it could help was not to do anything. We couldn't even use its bases. And that's even more telling in the build-up for Gulf War II, when we've really been short of countries with bases -- and still we can't use theirs. Saudi Ar
If they can't do us any good at times like this, what military use are they? None. Saudia Arabia had based and troops in Gulf War I. Bahrain is doing big service now. Israel is militarily useless to us.
It's remarkable how many people repeat that Helms idea as if it were true, though.
Michael