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Germany may not need US troops any longer, on that we may agree. But if you welcome the presence, you could show it a bit more. And your history books don't sound too terribly accurate to me. Why was the Eastern economy weak? What did Kohl do? It was Reagan's polcies of peace through strength and containment that wrecked the Soviet economies. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War - don't doubt it for a second.

I understand that we fund our own bases over there. My point in that regard is that if you had to pay for your own defense, you wouldn't have the money for all the social programs we have to hear about over here from our Lefties.

I am not in any respect anti-German, and do not support the "scum" label applied earlier. But if you are going to pick your leaders on the basis of who can be more critical of the U.S., maybe it's time you paid for your own defense. There are no threats put there, right?

I cannot see where the US pay for our defense. We don´t need these 90,000 soldiers, our forces count 300,000 and we´re surrounded by NATO-members or neutral states. In case of an attack with ABC-weapons (which we promised not to produce on our own free decision), we´ll be defended by the NATO - so US, UK or French nukes will be used.

Let´s say it was the West winning the Cold War.
Kohls diplomacy won the trust of Gorbatchov who wasn´t sure how to deal with the idea of a united (and stronger) Germany. It was Kohl who defeated the fears of a new dangerous Germany by our neighbours so that France, the UK and the Soviet Union agreed to our renunification.
Thats fact. It was Bush who early supported him on that way but in these days, the whole world looked at him.

For me, it´s 2003 - I just came back from our New Years eve party and I´m tired. For your timezone: see you in Y2K+3 (lol).