This is CBS, I on the World.

I'm John Batchel.

Malcolm Online Conference of Presidents is here as my colleague and co-host, and we're very

pleased to welcome the chief investigative reporter of the free press, Jay Solomon.

And he'll take us immediately, because in most recent article, he traveled in the first paragraph to

Alladadayr base in Qatar, often cited whenever I come up against what's wrong with Qatar,

as evidence that the regime in Doha favors the United States.

Otherwise, why would they host the most elaborate and effective

air base in the Middle East? Jay, a very good evening to you. Is there one answer to that

why all those aircraft are there and yet in Doha we have doubts about the regime? Good evening to you.

Good evening to you. I think a big part of it is just money. The

the categories kind of lured the Pentagon to Alludeid by essentially paying for it. So they're

subsidizing our biggest military facility in the Middle East. But I think the big question that I

had in writing this piece is, we're there, but can we really use it?

And at the current time, the most pressing sort of challenge is Iran.

And country officials have basically said, you know, you can't use allodiedic for military operations against the Iranian threat.

So the question I think the article really raises is, why are we still there?

Yeah, they're subsidizing it, but the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over,

and the major kind of threat is Iran.

And if you can't use it, what's the point of having it there?

Malcolm?

Well, and it is a tremendous source of income for Qatar as well. It's not just what they pay. It's what they get. But you highlight

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