UNITED STATES NAVY VETERANS ASSOCIATION

National Security Affairs Newstand            Including Breaking Chronological News and Analysis as a continuation of our Homeport Page National Security Affairs News
We don't need to beg the rest of the world to support us. If we truly lead, they will follow. We are the United States of America. We don't need for them to call us up and congratulate us on what we've done, or give us an award, a prize, or a red carpet. They won't anyway and, if you think they will one day, don't hold your breath. So we here at the United States Navy Veterans Association declare the United States of America the winner. Because WE are the winner. And always will be. *************** The Association believes there is a "New Frontier" for Americans. It lies in their newfound imagination as to where that imagination can take this Nation in its Greatness. *************** *************** The United States Navy Veterans Association current Mission Statement, as it relates to this Newstand, says that the purposes of the Association shall include: "The provision of nonpartisan education, news and analysis pertaining to the value of the goals of the Association, and other issues of interest to veterans, service members and the patriotic public." ***************				USN@NavyVets.org          WE PICK THIS PAGE UP CHRONOLOGICALLY FOLLOWING THE LAST ENTRY IN THE NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS NEWS SECTION OF OUR HOMEPORT PAGE: 5-6-02: The Bush Administration has withdrawn all its support, and any membership the United States may have, in the U.N.'s International Criminal Court. The Association supports this move. The U.N. court is mentioned nowhere in the U.N. Charter and therefore, as a matter of international law, a good argument can be made that neither the General Assembly nor the Security Council has the authority to institute one. More importantly, the supporters of this court, including American liberals, openly maintain it has the jurisdiction to try any American president or members of the U.S. Armed Forces for "war crimes." Such a jurisdiction would truly, and inherently, sublimate American sovereignty in our foreign and military policies to a supranational authority which could make up the rules as it went along. That is probably unconstitutional, since it would rip apart the powers given to the Executive and Congressional Branches of government by the Constitution for the sake of adherence to an interpretation of a treaty signed by the United States, the U.N. Charter. But even if it weren't unconstitutional, it would still be wrong. The impetus for this court was pushed a long way when President Clinton, as Commander-in-Chief of our Forces in Bosnia and Kosovo, gave the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, certain operational authorities over U.S. Forces in KFOR. You can probably tell what the Association thought of that. One of the lessons of history is that no great, mighty and free nation, and all true greatness among nations springs from their respect for individual freedom, can, with impunity, allow its destiny to be decided largely by others, with different interests and outlooks, and those mostly and naturally selfish, and still remain great, mighty and free. 5-12-02: There is what amounts to a "war" for President Bush's viewpoint going on in Washington currently between the "Powell" (Secretary of State Colin Powell) faction (the "doves") and the "Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz" (Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense (and former Cheney policy aide) Paul Wolfowitz) faction (the "hawks"). The doves want Israel to make peace with Arafat at almost any cost to get the U.S. out of a sticky situation [See, our War on Terror Section, 1-29-02], and for us to make nice with all our "foreign friends" so that we can continue to build coalitions. The hawks support Ariel Sharon's policies, love Israel as the only democratic state in the Mid-East, and couldn't give a darn if nobody supported us while we blew Saddam Hussein to kingdom come. While generally this Association sides with the hawks, both sides are American patriots, in our opinion, and the truth between these two general theories, if there is such a thing as "truth" in foreign policy, probably lies somewhere in the middle. Don't be surprised, however, if you see President Bush, whose heart probably gravitates to the hawks, and whose head probably gravitates to the doves, tilting toward one of these theories one day, and the other the next. Some may say that's vacillation, and others may say there's method to that madness. Time will tell, as it always does. One of the watersheds of this internal White House "war" is what to do about the Saudis. As of date we'd like to update you on the Association's position: The Saudis now openly operate in opposition to the U.S. goal of dual containment of Iran and Iraq in the Persian Gulf. The Saudis have hammered out security and oil pacts with their traditional Iranian competitors, and Crown Prince Abdullah, the ruler of Saudi Arabia, literally, at the Arab League summit, kissed and made up with representatives of Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, the Saudis have joined Iran and Iraq in lavishing money, along with moral support, on Palestinian militants [See, our War on Terror Newstand, 4-4-02]. So the Saudis are fellow-travelling with the Arafat/Saddam/mullah axis in the Middle East, while resisting U.S. action against Saddam, which is intended to strengthen the moderate states of Jordan and Turkey with a liberalizing, reformist Iraq. [When we speak of the Associaton's hopes that we do in fact overthrow Saddam, don't get us wrong. We're not in favor of establishing pro-American puppet governments everywhere in the world. That would be imperialism, and it would be stupid, and it would be wrong. Let real democracies establish any government they want. But if that government decides to be our enemy, or seeks to destroy the United States, or American civilization, or gives aid and comfort to those who would terrorize us, we need, in the name of self-defense, to destroy that government. Period. Then they can start all over again.] Since a U.S. sponsored regime in Baghdad would threaten the status quo in the Mid-East generally, and in Riyadh in particular (by increasing U.S. leverage and providing an example of decent governance next door), the Saudis will have to be pushed hard to acquiesce in it. All signs from the Crawford Summit [See, our War on Terror Newstand, 4-25-02] are that the Bush Administration is not yet ready to apply such pressure, as the hawks want. The USG - and especially the doves at State and old hands from Bush I, including the former President himself-still apparently buy the Saudis inflated self-image. The Al Saud have long considered themselves, ridiculously, a budding world power. In their view, the growth of the Jihadist movement around the world was a sign of Wahabi [WOT, 11-1-01] vibrancy. In their opinion, the Al Saud helped bring down one superpower, the Soviet Union, and now holds the key to the economic health of the remaining one. Constant pandering from the U.S., intent on maintaing its oil "partnership" with the Saudis [WOT, 4-25-02], only fuels this Saudi self-regard. The Al Saud, in fact, maintain their vaunted excess-oil-producing capacity not primarily to cushion the U.S. from volatility in the world market, as they claim, but to maintain their power over OPEC. (Any potential surge of low-cost production is a threat to other OPEC countries, which could be swamped by it.) In any case, the Saudis don't have quite the lock on the world market that they once did, with new production coming online in Russia, West Africa and (after a U.S. invasion) Iraq. That's right, folks, you heard it here first and, although you won't catch anyone in the Bush Administration ever saying so out loud, one of the key purposes of the U.S. overthrowing Saddam is to get a regime which will produce more, thus lowering the world crude price for U.S. consumers and thus alleviating to a significant degree the oil crisis we talked about in our first NSI News and Analysis Article. Fully 50% of all American oil imports now come from the Western Hemisphere, and the U.S. imports as much oil currently from West Africa as it does from the Saudis. But the USG is not tip-toeing around the Nigerian junta, afraid they might unleash their "oil weapon." By any reasonable standard the Saudis, in fact, are not an international power at all. Saudi Arabia has the national income of the State of Connecticut [NSI First Article]. It has a bankrupt one-sector economy that is carrying almost $200 billion worth of debt. It is utterly incapable of defending itself either from its foreign or domestic enemies, despite years of gaudy big-arms purchases from the West (which it can no longer afford). If this is not the picture of a regime the USG can bend to its will, no such regime exists. Crown Prince Abdullah, believing, like the rest of his brethren in the Al Saud, that they are the center of the universe, surely wants nothing more than that that House continue to rule forever. If it's clear to him that only by appeasing the U.S., and embracing its vision of a changed, anti-terrorist, liberalized Mid-East, will that be possible, he may reluctantly make a turn. The Saudis, after all, have always had a strong streak of schizophrenia in their foreign policy [WOT, 4-25-02]. During World War II, they flirted both with Hitler and Roosevelt at the same time, and got away with it. Abdullah now is keeping his options open in the finest Saudi tradition, hoping he can help preserve and ride out the status quo in the Middle East. It's our opinion the USG should convince the Al Saud they have only one option - our option. 5-13-02: The Bush Administration has announced a new treaty with Russia, to be signed in Moscow later this month, reducing over 10 years each sides' nuclear warheads from about 6,000 apiece today, to about 2,000 apiece. This is exactly what Bush wanted, and what he campaigned on. He was opposed at the time by Clinton's Department of Defense, which termed the idea "dangerous." In fact, the reduction of the warhead levels, which is the largest since the Reagan Administration's START II, substantially reduces the risk of nuclear confrontation between us and Russia, while still leaving the U.S. with plenty of nuclear deterrence directed at any potential enemy. It is, acordingly, a major achievement. At USG urging, Russia will also simultaneously be brought into a joint NATO-Russia Council so that Russia's voice can be heard in NATO's deliberations, the type of reward this Association called for in WOT, 11-1-01. This Council is good for Russia, and good for the U.S. Russia is an oil exporter, unlike our 17 NATO European allies who kowtow to almost everything the Arab and Iranian oil producers want, and has a government extremely interested in fighting Islamic terror, which needs to become a new and important focus for NATO. 5-14-02: Former President Jimmy Carter denounces the USG, in Havana, for labelling Castro's Cuba a terrorist state [WOT, 1-24-02], because it distributes biochem technology to other terrorist states and organizations. Carter, who pretends to speak a version of Spanish which more closely resembles Klingon, also specifically criticized the current USG for wrongfully imprisoning and executing people on racial and economic grounds, and for denying U.S. citizens health care. This former Commander-in-Chief never liked America or America's military might when he was in the White House, and he obviously still doesn't today. This Association cannot, and does not, endorse or oppose candidates for American public office. Perhaps Carter is running for President of Cuba to succeed Castro. If he were President of Cuba, we doubt Cuba would be any more free of the lies about right vs. wrong that it is subject to under Castro, or any more pro-American. Apparently, also, the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba doesn't apply to Jimmy Carter. If it doesn't apply to him, with his well-publicized anti-American remarks in Havana, we question why it should apply to anyone. As to Castro and the Cuba Embargo: Embargo - Sch-mar-go. Castro should have been taken out a long time ago as the mad dog he is, and all his supporters are, as the last real Navy hero we had in the White House (before the first President Bush), Jack Kennedy, wanted to do 40 years ago. 5-16-02: President Bush received a National Intelligence Briefing (NIB) on August 6, 2001 in Crawford [A NIB is a daily short briefing by the Intelligence Community to the President. In this case the briefing in question was by the CIA; we believe that the story in question came from Agency humint; and that the pertinent report was ranked low by the Agency on substantive probability] stating that Al Quaida operatives "might" try to hijack an American airliner or airliners in the near future. The story lacked any further specifics. Presidents going back at least 20 years get NIB reports like this sometimes every other day. There is very little any Executive Branch can do, at all, to react to a story like this, without any specifics to follow through on. Presidents can't go around holding news conferences every time they get a NIB like this; that would drive the American people crazy. Polls show we're already complaining [and this is post 9-11] about too many security alerts and find them confusing. The State Department for years has put out travel advisories for Americans not to travel to certain countries; very few travelers, then and now, even bother to read them. All this is as true today, as it was last August, and will still be as true next year, and the year after that. William Casey (President Reagan's DCI) was the first DCI to specifically tell the Agency he wanted to see reports based on rumors no matter how vague or how much they lacked credibility. Assessing those vague rumors has been a problem for Presidents ever since. [Were there "clues" in written intelligence reports prior to August 2001, and dating back to the Clinton Administration, about possible Al Quaida hijackings and flying planes into Langley? Sure, there were a couple. There were also clues, in the years building up to Pearl Harbor, in U.S. intelligence reporting, about a possible Japanese attack on the West Coast. But there are masses of reports flowing both into and out of the American Intelligence Community every day on every imaginable topic (We note that, in addition to NIBs, there are also NIDs, NIRs and special briefings for the President; if it were up to the 13-Agency Intelligence Community the President would do nothing but listen to intell 24-7) and reports of future hijackings are, after all, "old news." A computer program, by keyword, might be able to unite some of these stories (and probably this is the only way to "connect the dots"), but even if that were the case, it wouldn't by itself lend linked stories any greater credibility.] [And, by the way, this Association never criticized President Clinton for failing to prevent the 1993 WTC bombing by Al-Gama'a.] The attempt by certain U.S. Congresspersons, especially when they received the content of the same NIB, to utilize this NIB for partisan political purposes, like a bunch of jackals jumping up and down, is despicable, in our opinion. The Association's recommendation is that NIBs be delivered by the National Security Advisor and not by the agency that developed the information, although all such agencies should be present for verification and discussion. Moreover, the President should be automatically told (we doubt he is now) the credibility rating for both the substance of the story and the original source, from the originating agency. The originating agency, in the case of a potential threat to Americans, should also be required to recommend, or not recommend, that the threat be made public, with the President having the final say. None of this is going to cure the problem of vague reports, but it might stop some of the backbiting, leaks, and partisanship about national security. [President Bush, in contrast to one of our recommendations above, has ordered, as of 5-18-02, for the CIA and FBI to deliver two separate NIBs every day. Each one still lasts about 15 minutes on average.] [Ed. Note: If you listened to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on PBS-TV's News Hour with Jim Lehrer on 5-22-02, you would have heard him almost literally quote our comment in this Entry about the Intell Community wanting the President's ear 24-7.] 5-22-02: Unless the USG intervenes to keep the peace, we warn our viewers that war between India and Pakistan is imminent. India and Pakistan together have 20% of all the people who live on this planet. The cause of the conflict is Jamat-e-Islami [WOT, Terrorist Glossary] terrorist activities in Muslim majority Indian controlled Kashmir, designed to force the Indians out. We post this story in NSI because it has long-term national security implications for the U.S. in the war against Muslim terror, our greatest enemy since Soviet Communism. Pakistan has replaced its leaders after every war it has fought with India, and it has lost every one of those wars, and will utterly lose this one too, with or without nuclear weapons. [India has about 200 nuclear warheads; Pakistan about 100 (the U.S. and Russia, by comparison, apiece have about 6,000 today); 50 dirty warheads dropped on Pakistani cities would be enough to take out a country the size of Pakistan, and when we say "take out," we mean "take out." The maniacs in Jamat-e-Islami (see, WOT Terrorist Glossary) would love a nuclear war between India and Pakistan because "end day" fanatics like them love the notion of martyrdom no matter how many innocents go down with them.] Pakistani President Musharraf is basically pro-U.S. and has gone far to crack down on Al Quaida activities in Pakistan since 9-11. If he is overthrown in the aftermath of an Indian-Pakistani war, there are plenty of pro-Al Quaida Pakistani military officers, especially in Pakistani military intelligence, ready to step in and take his place. Nor will India solve its long-term problems in Kashmir by merely defeating Pakistan in another war. Based on what we've said about the possibility of Musharraf falling in the aftermath of an Indian-Pakistani War, India knows it can pressure the USG to pressure Pakistan to eliminate Jamat-e-Islami incursions into Kashmir, which Indian Prime Minister Atel Vajpayee [Remember when Candidate George W. Bush didn't know his name? He does now.] is doing. Do not underestimate the domestic Hindu nationalist pressure within India on Vajpayee to destroy Muslim Pakistan once and for all. 5-23-02: President Bush, in Moscow, tells India and Pakistan to back off, stating that India has nothing to gain from an Indian-Pakistani war. Of course, our viewers already knew what the President was going to say, because they first read it here on this Newstand yesterday. 5-24-02: The liberal-leftist establishment media seems to be asking a number of questions, disguised as nonpartisan, about current national security issues as they pertain to the War on Terror. In their own words and expressions, here are the questions: (1) Is the Bush Administration overly secretive? (2) Did the Bush Administration know about the 9-11 attacks and do nothing about them, or do less than adequate about them? (3) Is the Bush Administration now making ridiculous warnings of future terrorist attacks so that people won't accuse them of not doing enough? (4) Have the FBI and the Intelligence Community hid information from the public that the American public had a right to know? (5) If so, is that a problem to be laid at the foot of the Bush Administration? Here are the answers: (1) In its' less than two year history the Bush Administration has shown itself to be no more or less secretive, overall, than the Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I or Clinton Administrations. Nixon was certainly the most secretive of the Presidents in question and, compared to him, Bush doesn't even get close. As Gloria Borger of U.S. News said on PBS-TV's "Washington Week" 6-7-02, the reason the media think the Bush Administration is secretive is because "we don't get any leaks out of them." (2)The Bush Administration, meaning the President and his top advisors and appointees, did not have any specific, credible warnings of the 9-11 attack. As an Administration, there was nothing more they could do to prevent the attack than they did. (3)Dick Cheney and the other members of the Administration are quite accurate when they say that the Muslim terrorists are among us already; that they can move about and select targets almost at will, and that there are a lot of targets to select from; that they have a penchant for mass murder and destruction, which means, if they can lay their hands on them, nuclear weapons or biochem; and that interrogated terrorists have specifically mentioned our nuclear power plants, national monuments (including historic bridges and buildings), and crowd venues as planned targets. It is reasonable to be disturbed by the fact that there is very little, if anything, the average American can do to act on any of this information, and this Association has already expressed its opinion that the USG is, as of the beginning of 2002, not acting aggressively enough to ferret out the Islamic terrorists already in the United States. Is there an element of CYA in these non-specific warnings? Of course there is. If or when there is another attack, the Administration wants to be able to say, even if they don't say out loud, "We told you so." Any Administration, Republican or Democratic, would want to be able to do the same. (4) Always have; always will. There is a mindset that sets in to all professional intelligence officers after a while: Classify everything, just to be on the safe side. That's because they are intelligence officers first, second and last. What the American people want to know, or what the domestic political fallout will be by not telling them, are both concerns that do not appear on the professional intel officer's radar screen. But there are really two separate problems posed by the Question, but the way the Question is posed blurs, perhaps deliberately, those two issues, wrongfully, into one. One issue deals with this generic mindset among all intel officers in all agencies to keep as many secrets as possible, which we have discussed above. But the second issue is what happened in the FBI's investigation of the Mossaoui case, which in fact has nothing to do with penchants for secrets, other than in the now-failed coverup of the lack of aggressiveness with which Mossaoui was originally investigated. In the particular case of Moussaoui (the "20th hijacker"), FBI higher-ups seem to be the culprits. As the Association has pieced together the story, FBI field agents within the Minneapolis field office were gung ho to get Mossaoui pre-9-11 and get to the bottom of what he knew [and also made written speculations about other foreign Muslims in the U.S. receiving flight training for some sort of a hijacking or use of a plane as a weapon, speculations which were not passed very high up the chain of command], but were frustrated in their efforts to search or arrest Mossaoui earlier by higher ups both in Washington, apparently acting out of timidity caused by fears of accusations of "racial profiling." [Our viewers may recall numerous WOT entries in the aftermath of 9-11 expressing the Association's opinion that what we needed was more profiling, not less, but specifically targetted at Muslims, Arabs and Persians, and not at Americans.] Mossaoui was still arrested pre-9-11. Had the FBI arrested him sooner, it is dubious they would have received any information which would have permitted anyone to actually prevent 9-11. We say this because this fanatical Muslim hasn't confessed or admitted anything since his arrest, nor has he provided any information about future terrorist attacks. But this is, in fact, Monday morning quarterbacking. We didn't know, prior to Mossaoui's arrest, what he would or wouldn't do after he was arrested. There were also speculative memos from FBI agents in the Phoenix and Oklahoma City offices about foreign Muslim flight training in the U.S. None of these reports made it to the Director of the FBI. (Robert Mueller, who came in as Director one week before 9-11, is probably not the problem; in fact, he's probably the solution.) The CIA also knew in 2000 that two Arab terrorists, Al-Hazmi and AL-Midhar, who later hijacked the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, were in the U.S. taking flight training, and did not tell the FBI. We point out no regulation required them to (neither of the two had outstanding warrants or were in the country illegally), and no regulation probably requires them to today. We say: Same problem as the FBI's handling of the Mousaoui case: fear of ethnic profiling in terrorism cases, which is what we need to get rid of (the fear part), and what law enforcement needs to prioritize (the ethnic profiling part) if we're truly going to protect the American people from Islamic terror. (5) Generic mindsets among intell officers to be overly secretive is not a problem which is unique to the Bush Administration, as we explained in Answer 4. We do, after all, pay our intelligence people in part to keep secrets, and if they didn't keep their sources secret (manytimes revealing the story in and of itself almost certainly points directly to the exact source), many of their sources would never talk to them again. Nor is Congress, with all its chest-thumping, going to legislate away this intelligence community mindset we referred to. If any fault lies here with the Bush Administration, it is in not getting rid of, pronto, those within the Bureau who feel politically impaired from aggressively going after the Islamic, Arab and Persian terrorist threat that walks amongst us currently. 5-26-02: The FBI announces it will re-prioritize 1500 of its total force of 11,324 field agents exclusively to counter-terrorism, bringing CT agents up to about 2000. Re-prioritization will come from, among elsewhere, 400  narcotics enforcement (not good; all narcoterrorists are murderers too; take the force from elsewhere, from stuff that doesn't involve the viciousness and true evil of intentional violent crime and, believe us, there's plenty of current agents in those areas to go around).The FBI is also bringing in CIA officers to train its agents in identifying terrorists as a preventative, as opposed to a prosecutorial, function. These are, however, speaking generally, good moves and similiar, almost identical in fact, to many of the things this Association has been calling for in our WOT and NSI Newstands and dating back to our original 9-15-01 Recommendations to the Nation contained on our 2001 News and Analysis Page. These new proposals from Director Mueller are still pretty vague, however, especially as to how specifically these agents will be used, and the 2,000 figure is still too low. Mueller should re-read our WOT and NSI Newstand entries. Moreover, while there is precious little the average American can do about the vague terrorist threats we are currently receiving from government, there is a lot more local law enforcement can do about those threats. All American law enforcement, not just the FBI, needs to be re-prioritized off of the non-threatening activities they currently spend so much time on [the Portland, Oregon Police Department flat out just refused to assist the FBI in questioning foreign Muslim suspects there last December], and onto the real threats of the murderous individuals, terrorists, and drug dealers who operate openly in so many of our towns, cities and counties. One Pinellas County, Florida deputy sheriff was quoted on Tampa Bay's WABC-TV Channel 28 affiliate saying on Memorial Day: "There is nothing more important we [as police officers] can do than ensure traffic safety." That attitude is what is wrong with local American law enforcement. And his statement is not true. 6-2-02: President Bush proposes a new Department of Homeland security, with Customs, the Border Patrol (not the entire INS), FEMA, the Secret Service and the Coast Guard as operational agencies under it and, also, as a central clearinghouse for CIA and FBI information. Legislation authorizing the new Cabinet-level post will be approved by January 2003 (our prediction) with fine-tuning as to the operational agencies involved. You heard about all this here first, on our this Newstand, on 5-2-02. Now, this Association has made comments in the past on this Site, which we stick by, about our belief that the USCG should be a new Branch within Defense. The President's total proposal, which we can accept, is important, though, in protecting Americans from Islamic terror, and incorporates our important proposal, made here first on this Newstand before the President's speech, for a clearinghouse for conflicting CIA and FBI reports, providing the new Department has unlimited access in advising the President as to conflicts in reporting between the CIA and FBI (and provided both agencies "kick up" more reports to all intel consumers than they have in the past). In sum Congress, for petty bureaucratic reasons, should not be permitted to derail, or not act on, this proposal, and should be urged to act on it by December. What President Bush has been trying to do incrementally since 9-11, not just with this step, but with others as well, can best be perceived like a homeowner trying to burglar-proof his house. First, you fortify the seals on the windows, then you add deadbolts and burglar bars, then security alarms and searchlights; you buy hardened doors and a dog. But no matter what you do, there will never be an absolute guarantee "they" can't get in. If they "want to" hard enough, they will be able to get in and cause damage. But, with prevention measures, you can make it so very, very difficult and time-consuming, that "they" give up trying. You can't make it impossible, but you can make it more likely to be almost impossible. In general, this Association supports these measures of the Bush Administration, and we think you should too. But don't forget, this is an American home we're protecting, not a Dutch or Chinese or Canadian one. And the final measure of home security that may be suggested by all these burglar bars is that the homeowner stay home 24-7-365 to protect his own house; that he in effect become a prisoner, a servant, of all the exterior fortifications he has acquired. That would be wrong. The price of the "hardening" measures on the house should not include limiting that American's freedom of travel, and of his privacy while moving about and going about his business, and we have been, and will remain, critical of measures with that proposed effect or consequential countereffect. 6-7-02: India and Pakistan begin backing off from talk of war. Kudos are in order for the Bush Administration. You read it all first here, folks in NSI 5-23-02. *****************************************          OUR MAJOR MILITARY DEPLOYMENTS AS OF 2006 Howard Dean, listen up: As of August 2006 the U.S. has 1.4 million men and women on active duty with the Armed Forces, including 336,000 from the Reserves and the National Guard (and another 1 million in the Reserves). This is approximately 2 million less on active duty than at the height of the Vietnam War. About 500,000 of our active duty service personnel are regular Army. Approximately 370,000 service personnel from the Air Force, Army and Marines are actually deployed abroad, as of 2006, in approximately 120 different countries. The U.S. Army has only 3 of its 33 regular Army Brigades not currently deployed and currently available. We had 5 million + on active-duty during the Korean War, and 16 million + were on active duty during World War II. * CENTRAL AND SOUTH ASIA: Since the Afghan War began in 2001, the U.S. has set up bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. We have troops in Afghanistan and Pakistan (about 10,000 as of mid-2006) , plus warships in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. * CAUCASUS: About 50 U.S. Special Forces arrived in Georgia 5-02 to train that nation's army against Chechen terrorists aligned with Al Quaida operating in the Pankisi Gorge area. * EASTERN EUROPE: Since December, 1995 the United States European Command has provided Forces in support of NATO-led operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Since June, 1999, U.S. peacekeeping troops have also been deployed in Kosovo, and , as of Spring 2004, the Army had about 3,000 troops stationed in those two places. * SOUTHWEST ASIA, INCLUDING THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE PERSIAN GULF: In the aftermath of the conventional war in Iraq, the United States has  land and air bases, hundreds of thousands of troops and equipment in Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen and Qatar. Friendly nations also provide port facilities for the U.S. Navy. Bahrain, for example, is the HQS of the USN's 5th Fleet, the Navy's Fleet with the geographical overlap of the boundaries of CENTCOM (See below.) As of mid-2006  about 70% of total force available to the U.S. Army is deployed in Eastern Europe, Southwest Asia, and the Middle East.  * PACIFIC: In the Philippines, about 600 U.S. Special Forces are training troops to fight Abu Sayef [WOT, Terrorist Glossary]. The USN's 7th Fleet also patrols the western Pacific and Indian Oceans. 37,000 Army troops are stationed in South Korea.  * SOUTH AMERICA: U.S. troops participate in joint training exercises and anti-drug efforts in many countries. About 400 U.S. military trainers are in Colombia, where the government is fighting a war against the FARC [WOT, Terrorist Glossary] guerillas. * WESTERN EUROPE: American troops are stationed at bases dating from the Cold War. The bases are hubs for supplying Forces further afield.   *WHAT IS "CENTCOM"? CentCom is the abbreviation for the U.S. Central Command. The U.S. Armed Forces, from time to time, divide the world into major "Commands," or areas of geographical or functional responsibility for military action, if necessary. Each Command has its own military commander, usually designated a Commander-in-Chief, or "CINC," although that causes confusion because the Constitution designates only one Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States. As of June 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dropped his original notion of permanently moving CentCom HQS to the Mid-East, opting instead, as the Association lobbied for, a dual HQS structure with a "mobile" HQS capable of being in the Mid-East (currently Qatar), and a permanent HQS at MacDill AFB in Tampa, Florida.  You're hearing so much about CentCom in the news because it has responsibility for the Mid-East (the "central" area of the land world, if you will), and that is where the action is, as of now.  CENTCOM's working poulation of DoD civilians and U.S. Armed Forces members, as of September 2006 totaled 4,000, up from 800 in 1995. Due to its central responsibilities for military action abroad in the War on Terror, NSA Newstand Editors predict the current population figure of CENTCOM will double by 2016.     CentCom Area of Responsibility   ,