http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=9770

U.S. Armed Forces on Guard Everywhere Except on America's Border

By Wayne Lutton - Middle American News

While neglecting to guard our own nation's borders, America's political elites have no trouble sending military units to guard foreign countries.

According to the Wall Street investment firm Bear Stearns, twenty million illegal aliens are currently residing in the United States, double the official Federal government estimates. And as Donald Bartlett and James Steele reported in Time magazine, "the number of illegal aliens flooding into the United States this year will total 3 million. It will be the largest wave since 2001 and roughly triple the number of immigrants that will come to the U.S. by legal means."

The American public is constantly told that we can't "seal" our borders and better screen entrants through our ports of entry. The fact is, Congress and the White House have never tried. Official Washington is more than willing to deploy the U. S. Armed Forces to help secure the borders and ensure the political and economic stability of foreign countries. The U.S. Army currently has more than 300,000 soldiers serving abroad. As of March, 2005, the U.S. Department of Defense mobilized for active duty 184,103 National Guard and Reserve personnel for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. The U.S. House Appropriations Committee recently approved $81.3 billion in additional spending for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushing military costs there to more than $100 billion in fiscal 2005 and increasing Defense Department spending overall by about 25 percent.

Additionally, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (the Federal agency that replaced the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and is now a division of the Department of Homeland Security) deployed another team of CBP officers and Border Patrol agents to Iraq to help secure Iraq's borders. While CBP is charged with the management, control, and protection of our Nation's borders and official ports of entry, CBP Commissioner Robert Bonner said of their deployment to protect Iraq's borders, "There is no more important mission."

Of the 192 countries in the world, the United States currently has military units stationed in 135 of them. The following list is taken from the U. S. Department of Defense, Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country:


Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Antigua
Argentina
Azerbaijan
Australia
Austria
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belgium
Belize
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Bulgaria
Burma
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Chad
Chile
China
Columbia
Congo
Costa Rica
Cote D'lvoire
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominican Republic
East Timor
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Fiji
Finland
France
Georgia (the country of)
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Guatemala
Guinea
Haiti
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iraq
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Liberia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Mali
Malaysia
Malta
Mexico
Mongolia
Morocco
Mozambique
Nepal
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
North Korea
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Romania
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia and Montenegro
Singapore
Sierra Leone
Slovenia
Spain
South Africa
South Korea
Sri Lanka
Suriname
Syria
Sweden
Switzerland
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
Uruguay
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe

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