The Army will return one Europe-based combat brigade to the United States in the coming years, not two as previously announced, the Pentagon said Friday.
Since 2004, the Defense Department has been planning to transfer two of its four combat brigades in Europe to the States as part of a larger post-Cold War drawdown. But based on a White House review, NATOs plans for the future and the broad range of 21st century challenges, officials decided that three brigades would stay put, according to a DOD release.
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#1
Why? POMCUS the materials with caretakers and return the lot. If the Euros are not up to protecting their own interests, why should we? This is just another version of PBS and NPR, it has a life of its own, its tradition, its precedent. It's expensive.
#3
The Germans calculated out that having the US forces there stimulates their economy by billions of dollars every year, at minimal social cost, that is, welfare.
Figure the average base pay for all personnel in a brigade of 5,000 is about E4, or $25,000, that's $125,000,000. Now add off post housing for a quarter of them, which probably bumps it up to $200m. And lots more on top of that.
And that "windfall" money has a pebble in a pond effect.
#4
The Germans calculated out that having the US forces there stimulates their economy
They could look back on their experience in the mid-'90s, when President Clinton closed so many bases. When we moved out shortly thereafter, the new tenants paid about 1/3rd less rent.
[Maghrebia] Some 23,000 undocumented Democrats who arrived in Italy after the Tunisian revolution were granted temporary humanitarian visas on Thursday (April 8th), TAP reported. Under the decree signed Thursday by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the Tunisian colonists may travel within the Schengen zone for six months. The measure applies only to African colonists who arrived before the Tunisia-Italy immigration accord of April 5th. Italy also agreed to support SMEs and other income-generating activities in areas where African colonists originate.
Any chance even most of them will go home when the emergency is over?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
