Posted on 02/09/2004 10:22:29 AM PST by knighthawk
FRANKFURT, Germany - U.S. military experts are traveling to Poland, Bulgaria and Romania this week to look at potential sites for new American facilities in eastern Europe as part of a worldwide redrawing of the U.S. military's structure, officials said Monday.
Pentagon plans have been in the works since last year to cut the number of U.S. troops in Europe and close some Cold War-era bases in Germany in favor of smaller, more limited operations closer to the Middle East and Asia.
The U.S. teams will scout locations in the three former Soviet bloc countries and report to their superiors, an official at the U.S. military's European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, said on condition of anonymity. He declined to give details.
One team was due Monday in the Romanian capital, Bucharest, for a three-day mission to study the Black Sea area, Defense Ministry spokesman Gelaledin Nezir said.
Unlike the traditional bases in Germany where troops and their families are stationed for years at a time, the new locations would be used by U.S. forces on a short-term basis and consist of more limited facilities, run together with the host nation.
Since Poland joined NATO in 1999, U.S. forces have held several exercises on former Soviet military training areas there. During last year's war with Iraq, the U.S. military used ports in Bulgaria and Romania for U.S. tanker aircraft.
U.S. officials have said that some of the largest installations in Germany — like the Ramstein air base, the U.S. Air Force's European headquarters, and Landstuhl military hospital — will not be affected by the restructuring.
German Defense Minister Peter Struck said after talks with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in Munich on Friday that decisions on which bases will close are expected this year and the closures would be completed by 2010.
About 80,000 U.S. troops are based in Germany.
If people want on or off this list, please let me know.
I mean, without the Soviet Union, what exactly are we supposed to be protecting Europe from, anyhow? Each other?
Saving billions of dollars in PCS costs. But I would much rather be stationed in Deutschland than in Eastern Europe (ugh!).
Unfortunately I think you are right about this. My understanding is that very few of the top people were displaced by the "revolution." There is terrible corruption and disfunction still, with some regions being significantly worse than others. Still I think this is all the more reason to go in. I think it would be a great strategy for the expansion of freedom and democracy to do everything we can to help the Romanians, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Serbs, Slovaks, Poles, Czechs, Ukranians, Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians to get their countries up and running. And of all these I think if you look at location, cultural resources, population, and pro-Americanism the Romanians are a good choice in spite of the curruption under which they still suffer. If you wait until everything is hunky dorey, then you aren't being a real friend so much as a mere trading partner. Let the Germans, French, Austrians, etc. look down their noses at and belittle the east. Let them refuse to help and be completely selfish and cynical and materialistic. Let us be Christian and decent and do the right thing. I believe it will work out best for us and for our way in the end.
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