Free Republic

The Army is showing no signs of curtailing its deployments to Europe as the war in Ukraine continues to grind on. On Wednesday the Army announced that about 3,400 soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division’s 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team will head to Eastern Europe this fall, as will 200 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division Headquarters. The units will deploy primarily to Romania as well in Southeastern Europe and to the continent’s “High North” region that includes Scandinavian countries, Army officials said. Among the 101st troops are infantry units from the division’s storied 187th Infantry Regiment, known as the...

BRUSSELS: Nato’s 17,000-strong Kosovo peace force is on alert for potential violence as the United Nations prepares to reveal plans for the future of the breakaway Serb province, the alliance’s chief said on Monday. UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari is due on Friday to go to Belgrade and Pristina to present long-awaited proposals expected to grant virtual independence to the majority Albanian province. The Nato-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) has sought to keep thepeace there for eight years since the alliance drove out Serbforces accused of ethnic cleansing, and is geared up for new tensions triggered by the Ahtisaari report. "KFOR...

CAMP BONDSTEEL, Kosovo (Army News Service, July 5, 2006) –Soldiers from the Texas National Guard’s 36th Infantry Division and Multi-National Task Force (East) marked America’s 230th year of independence during a July 4 ceremony on the Camp Bondsteel parade field. Brig. Gen. Darren Owens, commanding general of MNTF(E), spoke about America’s struggle for independence. “We as Americans can proudly say the Declaration of Independence, signed in 1776, gave birth to the ideals of freedom that others in the world only dream about,” Owens said. “We are free to love, worship and live as we want – but freedom does have...

President Bush's planned deployment of National Guard troops to the Mexican border would last at least two years with no clear end date, according to a Pentagon memo obtained Friday by The Associated Press. The one-page "initial guidance" memo to National Guard leaders in border states does not address the estimated cost of the mission or when soldiers would be deployed. But high-ranking officials in the California National Guard said they were told Friday that deployments would not begin before early June. While the military document makes clear the troops would remain under the command of their governors, it also...