Whiskey Pete Backtracks After Qatari Air Base Confusion

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

After announcing on Friday that the Trump administration would be providing an air base in Idaho to Qatar, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth backtracked, issuing a clarification on social media in response to a growing backlash.

“Important clarification,” Hegseth wrote in the post, published to X. “The U.S. military has a long-standing partnership w/ Qatar, including today’s announced cooperation w/ F-15QA aircraft. However, to be clear, Qatar will not have their own base in the United States—nor anything like a base. We control the existing base, like we do with all partners.”

Link to tweet

Earlier in the day, Hegseth—joined by Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-Thani at the Pentagon—announced the building of a Qatari Emiri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho.

“The location will host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase, lethality, interoperability. It’s just another example of our partnership, and I hope you know, your Excellency, that you can count on us,” Hegseth said.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/pentagon-pete-backtracks-qatari-air-053931525.html

[Paper Roses]

1. Can someone tell me why this is necessary? Why park their jets on our soil?

A base or a parking spot, neither is necessary and is only a ploy by trump to keep in favor of his Qatari buddies.
Is there any real reason for this. It is an insult. I guess this deal is to keep his position to build some big resort in Qatar.
This is a danger to all of us. We do not need or want this.
What say you, residents of Idaho?
What next, a base in Chicago, Memphis, San Francisco..anywhere in the US. This move should be against the law. (as if that it matters to this regime!).

[UpInArms]

3. Their jets will not be parked on our soil ... it is a barrack for training pilots

so that they can fly the jets they buy from the USA

We have long had a relationship with Qatar …

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Central_Command

Of all seven American regional unified combatant commands, CENTCOM is among four that are headquartered outside their area of operations (the other three being USAFRICOM, USSOUTHCOM, and USSPACECOM). CENTCOM's main headquarters is located at MacDill Air Force Base, in Tampa, Florida. A forward headquarters was established in 2002 at Camp As Sayliyah in Doha, Qatar, which in 2009 transitioned to a forward headquarters at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

[W_HAMILTON]

5. Exactly, so why not use the bases we already have in Qatar to train them?

I believe Qatar is home to one of the largest military bases we have in the Middle East.

[CivicGrief]

9. Yes, part of the racket of the war profiteers.

[poli-junkie]

2. Laura Loomer put the kibosh on

building a Qatari air base in Idaho. MAGA was absolutely incensed by this

[MineralMan]

4. So Hegseth Was Talking out of His Ass Again?

Typical. Now he has to withdraw the nonsense he said and try to fix his blunder.

We have been training foreign fighter pilots at various Air Force bases for a very long time. If we sell them fighter jets, we help them learn how to fly them. They come here for training and then they return to their country to fly those fighters and train other pilots. It's a program that has been running for a few decades.

Hegseth did not understand that program, in the same way he does not understand much of anything about the military. He's commanding from a position of ignorance and stupidity. So he makes stupid mistakes constantly, and then blusters his way through them, or tries to.

[RainCaster]

7. He would have to sober up first

The drunken couch molester is out of his league. Again.

[returnee]

6. Question-begging at its finest.

The real question is: why should Qatar have any military presence in the U. S.?

[Greg_In_SF]

8. It's for

training on the military equipment we sold them.

[CivicGrief]

10. Who is "we"?

You make it seem so quaint.