Hawkeye Republican

TROOP MOVEMENT: This site applauds the Bush Administration's plan to bring home thousands of troops from areas in which they are no longer needed, namely Germany. For too long, too much of our military has been stationed in entirely peaceful areas that have not needed any sort of US presence. This plan will cut costs for our military and will streamline our forces from areas of conflict thirty years ago to areas of conflict today.

Some have said that this is a "hastily drawn up plan" used to score political points. On Wednesday's Hardball, former Presidential candidate and "I Have a Scream" legend Howard Dean made such an argument. The fact of the matter is that this plan has been in discussion for years. It was one of Secretary Don Rumsfeld's initial plans as Secretary of Defense. And if this is merely a political move, why didn't the Bush Administration make this announcement significantly closer to the election? By making the announcement now, this decision's impact will have run its course within a couple of weeks. If Bush had made the announcement within a couple weeks of the election, it would be a different story.

Dean also vented about how we are giving up on North Korea. However, South Korea has welcomed the news of our withdrawal of troops from the peninsula.

How are the other politicians reacting? Here's what a Massachusetts senator has to say about our troops worldwide:

“I think we can significantly change the deployment of troops not just [in Iraq] but elsewhere in the world. In the Korean peninsula, perhaps in Europe perhaps. There are great possibilities open to us.” -John F. Kerry, August 1, 2004