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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (202842)	9/13/2006 4:18:23 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Yes, with our military bases we still occupy Germany and Japan. In practice we have permitted these countries to operate under their own functioning governments with all the institutions needed for their own civil order. However, we assigned ourselves permanent rights of military occupation and continue to assert those rights to this day. You will no doubt be aware that neither Japan nor Germany maintain large military bases in the United States -- nor would we allow them to occupy our country in that way. It is likely that at some point Germany will invite us to leave -- we should have left long ago as there is no reason whatsoever for us to have troops in Germany, other than as part of our ongoing military occupation of Germany. The same is true in Japan. Iraq does not have functioning institutions of of government and civil order and yes, we maintain a military occupation of Iraq -- an occupation that has failed by almost any measure to live up to its responsibilities. We came to Iraq as invaders. We smashed Iraq's government. We smashed Iraq's civil institutions. We smashed Iraq's already dilapidated infrastructure. And so far we have made virtually no progress in fixing what we broke -- except to put a handful of politicians in a room to argue with each other while we pretend they are running the country.