70,000 Troops to be Reassigned from Europe

Whenever there's something like this, I always suspect the worst from this administration. Do they know something, or is this just rearranging the deck chairs?

U.S. to Pull 70,000 Troops from Europe, Asia

The United States plans to withdraw about 70,000 troops from Europe and Asia in a major realignment of American military presence prompted by the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the war on terrorism, U.S. officials said on Saturday.

President Bush will unveil the move to make the high-tech military much more mobile in a speech on Monday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Cincinnati, Ohio, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"The president is going to make an announcement about a major initiative to reduce the burden on our forces overseas," said one of the U.S. officials.

They confirmed a report in the Financial Times of a total shift of at least 70,000 troops from overseas to home bases. The British newspaper, citing people briefed on the plan, said two-thirds of the reductions would be made in Europe, mostly in Germany.

The Washington Post reported on Saturday that as many as 100,000 U.S. troops could eventually be returned to the United States as the realignment evolved in years ahead.

Pentagon officials have been carefully studying U.S. commitments overseas to rearrange the ponderous global deployments of U.S. forces adopted in the Cold War and make the American military more mobile in the new war on terrorism declared by Bush after the 2001 attacks on America.