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Safe in the middle of the desert
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- I spent several days last week in Saudi Arabia. At one point, I felt I was on the way to the middle of nowhere. But for American troops based in Saudi Arabia, the middle of nowhere may be the safest place. As we drove through the Saudi desert, a half hour from the nearest village, the sprawling Prince Sultan Air Base slowly came into view. Its location is not a secret, nor is the desire of al Qaeda and its supporters to attack a place like this. So what keeps these 5,000 American men and women safe? I did some checking. Security for U.S. military personnel at the Saudi base is incredibly tight. That's in part because of what happened on June 25, 1996. "We moved the [air] wing out here after the Khobar attack," said Brig. Gen. Dale Waters, commander of the 363rd Air Expeditionary Wing, located at the Saudi base. That's when the U.S. military suffered a devastating loss at what was then the main U.S. air base in Saudi Arabia. At the Khobar Towers near Dhahran in the eastern part of the kingdom, 19 American troops were killed and another 500 were wounded -- many while they slept -- when terrorists parked a huge fuel tanker truck near the fence of the apartment complex before running to a waiting car. Six minutes later the truck exploded, destroying the towers and killing the troops in the process. Investigators later determined that security procedures had been lax. It was too easy for outsiders to get close to the U.S. troops. That, of course, was also the case some 13 years earlier -- on October 23, 1983, when a truck bomber drove up to the U.S. Marine Headquarters outside Beirut, Lebanon, and killed 241 U.S. Marines, sailors and soldiers. Waters insists the U.S. military has learned life-saving lessons since then. "The big thing we've done here is with the help of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is, we moved our forces into a more secure location" at the Saudi base. The base, commonly called P-SAB, has grown quickly from a modest tent city to a huge, sprawling and permanent complex with layers and layers of security, he said. Unlike the Khobar Towers, no one can get close to U.S. troops without going through multiple checkpoints and having lots of the right paperwork. To the outside visitor, the security arrangements are impressive. "The base itself is an unbelievable facility," said retired U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Donald Shepperd, who traveled with me to Saudi Arabia. "Out in the middle of nowhere, where it's easy to see people approaching, from the standpoint of security. Security's never easy but it's easier because of where it is." And U.S. troops at the base say they're planning on staying there for quite a while.
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