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Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
We don't have to invade to carry out tactical operations. See UEA and Pakistan (yes, I know that formally we deny engaging in operations in Pakistan). And, in SA, the threat of taking out al Q operatives by drone (or kidnapping or whatever) is particuarly nasty, since they are well aware we consider some members of the ruling family to be such. And all of that is much easier when we are already nearby.
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The Third Army doesn't usually do covert ops.
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But the coersion of SA was a bit more subtle than that. Invading Iraq permitted us to pull our bases out of SA, allowing the ruling class to realize "oh, shit, we sort of depend on US military support & presence to back us up in the face of popular opposition to our rather unpopular regime" and then bend over backwards to help us enough just to keep us from publicly telling them "fuck off, you're on your own and good luck to you," but not so much as to inflame popular rebellion because they are a US puppet. Compared to either of those, both of which would probably result in a fairly quick dispatching of the house of al Saud, a model democracy in Iraq is a distant threat to their regime survival.
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There is absolutely no chance on earth that the US would tell the Saudis "fuck off you're on your own." If anything, the threat of radical Islam in Saudi Arabia makes it more necessary for the US to support the House of Saud, not less so.
Perhaps the threat of massive instability in Iraq, coupled with the possibility that it will be more hospitable to al Qaeda than it ever was under Hussein, has led the Saudis to worry about al Qaeda within its borders. But motivating the Saudis by creating a risk that al Qaeda elements within Iraq will cooperate with those in Saudi Arabia hardly seems like a victory for US policy.
