U.S. military leaving Kuwaiti air base ~ Associated Press

U.S. military leaving Kuwaiti air base ~ Associated Press

KUWAIT CITY - The United States is leaving an air base in Kuwait it
had used in the war on Iraq, saying its presence there is no longer
needed now that Saddam Hussein has been toppled.

"The mission is accomplished," Ambassador Richard Jones told reporters
Tuesday. He said the last of the U.S. forces at Ahmed Al Jaber air
base were leaving Tuesday, but did not say where they were headed.

At the same news conference, Lt. Gen. Walter E. Buchanan III,
commander of U.S. air forces in the region, said some of the forces
that had been in Kuwait had been moved into Iraq.

U.S. warplanes and helicopters had flown out of Ahmed Al Jaber, 50
miles west of Kuwait City, since the 1991 Gulf war that forced Saddam
to reverse his 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Among other missions, aircraft
from the base helped monitor the zone over southern Iraq from which
the United States had barred Iraqi fighter planes.

The United States also has Camp Doha, an isolated Army base along the
Gulf coast about 12 miles west of Kuwait City, and another air base,
Ali Salem, about 40 miles northwest of Kuwait City. No mention was
made Tuesday of the fate of those installations.

Jones said the closure of Ahmed Al Jaber was not in response to
Kuwaiti opposition to U.S. military presence here or to any perceived
threat t...

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