[ExSoldier]

That's a TRAINING deployment that happens every year about this time. I went once. It's like the annual REFORGER war games. Return of Forces to Germany is a NATO exercise we ran for decades. I went on that one too. I think the exercise in Korea is Operation Bright Star or something like it. It lasts a few weeks, perhaps a month then everybody comes home.

[freeperfromnj]

Bush shifting U.S. troops out of Europe, Asia

Major redeployment of up to 100,000 GIs due to war on terror

Mike Allen, Tom Ricks, Washington Post
Sunday, August 15, 2004

Washington -- President Bush will announce Monday that he plans to pull 70,000 to 100,000 troops out of Europe and Asia in the first major reconfiguration of overseas military deployments by the United States since the Cold War ended, according to White House officials.

Bush, who will reveal the changes in a speech to the annual convention of the 2.6 million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars in Cincinnati, will say the change is necessary to adapt the nation's military to the demands of the global war on terrorism and to take advantage of new technologies, said a senior aide involved in developing the plan.

Two-thirds of the reduction will come from Europe, most of them Army soldiers in Germany, and most of the troops will be reassigned to bases in the United States, the aide said. Officials said exact details of the moves have not been finalized, but some of the troops from Germany and South Korea will be moved to expansion countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Eastern Europe......

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/08/15/MNGPQ88BLE1.DTL