Troop strength

While politicians busily try to get their names in the news, introducing resolutions about troop deployment and withdrawal, here's the actual, current, working plan.

U.S. troop numbers are down 17% from their peak, last year, and expect to be under 100,000 by the end of this year.

Pop quiz: in 1990, 45 years after the end of WWII, how many troops did we have stationed in West Germany?

Answer: 250,000. Plus, oh yeah, their families. My sister, Jo, was born there in 1952 -- just half a dozen years after a war with them in which fifty million people died.

The area of West Germany? 250,000 sq. km. America still had one man stationed there for every square kilometer. In 1990.

The area of Iraq? Nearly twice that.

Okay, you didn't know those things, but do you think the posturing legislators don't? It is, let's face it, their job to know that national defense/government/history/geography stuff.