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Anyone who has heard President Dwight Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address knows that there is a political nexus that links the Defense Department to its contractors. But Ike conveniently left out the middle player who makes the game possible: Congress.

Gordon Adams, Foreign Policy

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Friday
Sep302011

More Troops in Europe

DateFriday, September 30, 2011 at 8:56AM | AuthorMatthew Leatherman

Remember our play-by-play about how U.S. forces have gotten bogged down in Europe?  Bearing that in mind, take a look at this tidbit from a “senior administration official” at NATO:

Since 2003 the United States has deployed some of its brigades in either Iraq or Afghanistan, the net effect of the decision to wait until 2015 and to keep three brigades in Europe will be that there will be more troops in Europe after the transition has taken place.

Virtually everyone with ideas about how to discipline defense spending – including Simpson-Bowles, Rivlin-Domenici, and Gordon Adams and I – offers some reduction in forces stationed in Europe and a corresponding cut to military end strength.  With so many ready for that savings, it’s interesting to see such a public acknowledgment that inertia is pulling so hard in the opposite direction.

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