US Troops Go Bye-Bye

The New York Times is pretty excited about it's latest scoop:

"President Bush is to announce on Monday that he supports a Pentagon redeployment plan and will withdraw up to 70,000 troops from Europe and Asia in the most significant rearrangement of the American military since the end of the cold war, an administration official said Saturday.

The redeployment plan itself was first reported by The New York Times in early June."

But have a think about this - Germany doesn't want or need US troops on its soil any more, neither does Japan, neither does South Korea. In fact, all three of these countries are probably very, very wary of the newly bellicose USA and its international adventurism. Their citizens will breath a huge sigh of collective relief when the long-despised US troops depart.

The NYT reports that the US Army is "stretched thin by large deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, but administration officials said the new realignment is unrelated to the conflicts in those countries."

Two sentences later, however, it contradicts this:

"Pentagon officials, who have been working for more than a year on the troop plan, have said the goal is to create more flexibility to send forces to the Middle East, Central Asia and other sites of potential conflicts."