Posted on 04/19/2004 7:47:13 AM PDT by kattracks
TIRANA, Albania (AP) -- Albania, a predominantly Muslim country, told the United States it was prepared to send more non-combat troops to Iraq, the government said Monday, in a possible expansion of the 71-member-strong contingent patrolling the northern city of Mosul under U.S. command.Despite the small number of Albanian forces, the public commitment from Tirana was bound to be welcome news to the United States after Spain's weekend announcement that it was withdrawing its 1,300-member contingent as soon as possible.
Albanian Foreign Minister Kastriot Islami made the offer Friday in a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell.
The statement did not say what the increase would be. But earlier this month the defense ministry said it was considering increasing its commitment to 200 soldiers, despite the recent terrorist attacks against members of the U.S.-led coalition.
"We have expressed our readiness to positively respond to the request for additional forces and we are working to set the practical details to achieve that," the minister was quoted as telling Powell.
Albania was one of the most vocal backers of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Although it was unable to provide significant military support, it opened its airspace and offered U.S.-led forces the use of its bases.
Why guns? They seem to do fine with matches alone.
QUICK NEWBIE LESSON
Learn some manners or earn a vacation.
I don't know....something about being the largest heroin running country in Europe?
Not likely. Russia and Romania, way, way before Albania.
"Jane's Intelligence Review estimated in March that drug sales could have netted the KLA profits in the "high tens of millions of dollars." It said the KLA had rearmed itself for a spring offensive with the aid of drug money, along with donations from Albanians in Western Europe and the United States."
There is ample evidence to be suspect of Albanians here in the US. Lots of naive posters here, with good hearts, but they aren't as knowledgeable as some of us.
Got a link to that?
Who said you did us any favors by saving Rome and the papacy? LOL. Is this true, Hermann? You were saved by the Albanians?
What, another bored eskimo?
Damn. There goes the nanookborhood.
Settle in, enjoy yourself, have a drink. I know you will find this to be a cozy thread.
Both Italy and Greece are very concerned with the number of prostitutes they keep returning and the crime gangs from Albania running heroin from their ports.
Albania is a main source of crime in Europe.
No more true than us being saved by the Serbs or the Romans of Constantinople or any number of other supposed saviors of the west.
The historical vignette provided in #13 is flawed in several respects. First, for example, it was the Serbs who "liberated" Albania in 1912, and then had the countryside of Albania "liberated" from them by the British/Austrian dominated peace conference and handed over to a group of Albanians who had never even considered revolting from the Ottoman Commonwealth.
Second, since the Albanians (and also Roman Greeks and Serbs and Hungarians) all failed in their quest to stop the Turk, its a little fatuous to pose them as saviors of the West. The West didn't spend the time the Turks wasted conquering the Balkans preparing its defences. Rather, it suffered the same catastrophic losses as the rest until the First and Second Battles of Vienna, and the Naval Battle of Lepanto, precisely because of its unprepared defences. The miracle of Lepanto was considered even more of a miracle because the Christian fleet was so much outgunned by the Muslims. The heterodox Bogomil tendencies of the people who would become Bosnak Muslims did not help either. They were a group of traitors in the midst.
Third, Rome was not an immediate target of Muslim operations. The Turks were more interested in expansion via land than overwater journies, being a steppe people, and not seafarers like the Greeks and Italians. Therefore, any route to Rome would need to first pass through Budapest, Vienna, then the Po Valley of Italy (Milan-Bologna-Venice). Seeing that the Turks never made it past the first obstacle out of the Balkans - Vienna -, its difficult to posit anyone but those who stopped them at Vienna - the German/Polish armies, as the saviors of the west. They were very likely also hindered by their ever expanding lines coming up out of the Balkans. The extension of Turkish rule further north and west than the roughly Trieste-Odessa line required an exponentially larger frontier for every mile of forward advance. The Turk simply was not capable of this considering his paucity of numbers (most of those who would become Turks in the future were then still Greek Romans not yet Islamicized and Turkified). Its simply a fact that the lines achieved were as far as they could logistically go, just as the similar lines achieved by the Romans in the Balkans were circa AD 100.
Some other Balkans historians are pinged for concurrence, amendment, reemphasis, etc.
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