[cake_crumb]

"They are definitely sticking their necks out for us and need protection."

Agreed. However, at this time, no Jordanian troops are trained to man such weapons. Without troops trained to man those weapons, they'll be no more than expensive peperweights. Rather than increase the risk to the world from Saddam due to the delay necessary to train Jordanian troops, it WOULD be far more practical to have an at least temporary American installation containing American weaponry, manned by American troops to protect Jordan's airspace until the immediate danger is over and the Iraq question solved.

AFTER the immediate problems are solved, further talks on training and necessary equipment should be more than welcome.

[EternalVigilance]

When Jordon says it is worried about defending its airspace, it is not talking about any potential threat from the East. They know damn well that for the Iraqis, ANY plane of theirs that takes off (of the few they have left) is going to end its career one landing short.

They are worried about a certain very capable Air Force located just to their west. They also know that if Hussein uses WMD on that western neighbor, Jordon will very quickly be directly on the newly opened air highway to Bahgdad.

The Hashemite Kingdom of Trans-Jordon (aka Palestine) is a fair-weather friend. If they want advanced weaponry, maybe they can build it from scratch. After all, Arabs are so good at that sort of thing. ;-)

It is highly unlikely that we are going to provide systems which will end up being used against our ally, Israel, in the next round of anti-semetic hatred that spews forth from the Arab nations.