American GIs 'Police' 100 Countries

While foreign troops are increasingly being stationed in America, U.S. troops are being sent worldwide.

Under President Bill Clinton, the United States has troops deployed in more places around the world than at any time in the nation's history. This from a president who did virtually everything humanly possible to avoid military service during the war in Vietnam.

Recently, the Army announced that it had reached a "new milestone," having troops deployed in 100 nations around the world.

At the end of July, according to Army figures, there were 26,778 U.S. troops deployed somewhere around the world, all doing something, but none involved in the mission for which they were intended -- protecting the United States.

However, Clinton's unequaled deployment of American troops drew little notice from anyone it seems, other than the U.S. libertarian Party, which issued a press release about what it referred to as "a global case of military mission creep."

"Our armed forces have become the world's referee, all-purpose handyman, and heavily armed good Samaritan," the press release noted.

As examples, according to figures obtained from the U.S. military, America has recently deployed troops to (among other things):

• dig water wells in Haiti;
• evacuate 57 people and a dog from the Congo;
• supervise a civil war cease fire in Morocco;
• clear land mines in Cambodia and Laos (although neither of those communist countries has done much of anything t account for hundreds of American POWs and MIAs from the Vietnam War;
• build a warehouse in Micronesia;
• monitor the Israeli-Egyptian demilitarized zone in the Middle East (mostly with unloaded guns);
• monitor a disputed border region between Ecuador and Peru; and
• renovate schools and roads in Belize.

And if that isn't enough, the Clinton administration plans to send troops to 32 Latin American and Caribbean nations to:

• guard rain forests in Brazil;
• protect endangered species in Venezuela; and
• to build nature parks in Colombia. Colombia has been pouring tons of cocaine into the United States for years, polluting the minds of America's young.

"Can Americans sleep better at night because our soldiers are guarding a South American rain forest?" Steve Dasbach, chairman of the Libertarian Party, asked.

"Is this why Americans each pay $1,000 a year in military taxes?" Dasbach further asked. "From A to Z -- Australia to Zimbabwe -- American soldiers are roaming the world doing everything but defending our country."