The United Sates and Saudi Arabia reached an agreement last year that will allow thousands of Saudi students to enroll in American universities and now that Islamic country is promoting scholarships to study civil aviation in America.

This is of tremendous concern since 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudi nationals who studied aviation in the U.S. Perhaps when President George W. Bush and King Abdullah agreed to the deal in 2005, the king failed to mention that aviation scholarships would eventually be offered as part of the deal.

The leaders agreed that the new, large-scale academic program would admit 6,000 Saudis to American universities this year after just 1,442 were granted visas to study in the U.S. in 2004. The idea, apparently, is to improve relations between the two nations.

But how can Americans help but question the Saudi Ministry of Education’s recent announcement that it is offering scholarships to Saudi men and women to study civil aviation in the United States? The scholarships are available in majors such as communications, electrical and computer engineering, computer science, systems analysis, air traffic control, flight safety, and other majors related to the airline transport industry.

It doesn’t help that Saudi’s Ministry of Education requires, as part of children’s official curriculum, hateful anti-American textbooks that say Jews and Christians are the enemy and that God will grant victory to Muslims. Sample chapters of these appalling books were obtained from a public broadcast station.

Hopefully the United States Department of State, which issues visas to foreign students, will closely monitor the new class of Saudi aviation graduates. Debbie Schlussel has a better idea, though. She says it’s about time that we restrict aviation training in the U.S. to nationals of non-terrorist-linked nations. She adds that the Saudis should be ashamed of their U.S.-aviation-educated countrymen who murdered nearly 3,000 Americans.