Originally Posted by
SASless
I thought one of the events that triggered Bin Liner's angst with Saudi Arabia was the presence of US Troops on Islamic Holy Ground (Saudi Arabia) which was well before 9/11.
Perhaps so, it is a convenient story, but if memory serves, the French military, formally the GIGN, were called in to help suppress a revolt in Mecca in 1979.
They were admittedly sanitized for the occasion by a short term conversion to Islam, so it avoided the desecration of the Muslim's most sacred place, but it does make it harder to wax indignant about a remote US presence.