Steve Cole at StrategyPage reports:
The US Senate has voted 93-0 to prevent any military regulations requiring female soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia or any Moslem country to wear head-to-toe abaya dresses and veils. As the House has already passed a similar measure, this will become part of the next defense budget. The exact language of the directive has yet to be written.
Yes, both houses of Congress are catching up with the warbloggers in giving the finger to the House of Saud. The Senate is leading from the rear on this, but at least they're in front of the White House.
On a related note, my mother in law suggested yesterday that we start arming Saudi women.
Who says that they aren't already armed? I mean, how can you tell?
Bush is only keeping quiet about the Saudis now because he doesn't want to fight them and Iraq at the same time. There are smart tactical reasons to avoid picking a fight with more than one opponent at the same time, even with they're both pipsqueaks. This is Rope-a-Dope 2.
Bases outside of Saudi are being set up not only to replace the Saudi bases they won't let us use, but in prime spaces so that most of Saudi, as well as Iraq, is in flight range of f-16s.. Once increased production of oil from Russia and the new Iraq regime is available to replace Saudi oil, you're gonna see a lot more fingers in a lot more eyes.
One problem there with the Russian Oil mark, it's under a frozen wasteland that can only be drilled for a few weeks a year.
Even if we can figure out a way to get to it all year round it's only a matter of time before OPEC and their liberal toys here in the states start bitching about us destroying the middle east by taking all their money away.
As for the women being armed, I think we might want to educate them before we start handing them guns, you don't think that if we arm them they'll start to be disloyal to their husbands do you?
Surely not.
Good point Laurance, can you imagine anything so brilliantly ironic as having 100,00 Saudi Women simultaniously throw off their body coerings to reveal loaded Klaskanovs?
Joshua,
Not all of Russia's oil reserves are under the tundra. The Caspian Sea region is believed to have vast amounts, and the infrastructure (albeit Soviet era) is already partially built.
Remeber, one of Hitler's main goals in Barbarossa was a southward push to take over the USSR's main oil production centers in the Caspian. If he would have succeeded, the war would have gone quite differently.
Captain Mojo,
Thank you for the update as my brain is fried and I thought I screwed up at least one post somewhere. Insomnia will do that to ya.
Oh well, you win some, I lose a lot. ha.
