Check out how much Poland cost us

[SoCalDemocrat]

Ooh ooh ooh, this one's better!


http://www.mwaw.org/print.php?sid=2070

What the study does not say is that they all expect a lot in return. They expect to host new US military bases. They want very special treatment - like the recent $3.8bn US-subsidized loan to Poland to finance the purchase of a bunch of Lockheed Martin F-16s. Hungary - where the US is training Iraqi exiles - wants US military equipment.


Those Polish troops sure are expensive to hire. Especially since we made a deal not to put them into actual combat situations. :-(

Hey I did the math, it's only $1.5 million dollars per Polish soldier! These guiys must be like cyborgs or something. Terminators, that's it! We should send the Polish terminator units into Fallujah, they would own!


http://www.counterpunch.org/schaefer06022003.html

Shortly before this, the San Francisco Chronicle published a story about the Defense Department's recent acknowledgement that it is missing over $1.3 trillion U.S. and that the Army lost track of 56 airplanes, 32 tanks, and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units.

First, given that many of Corporate America's finest managerial minds have worked for the DoD, how is it that this reform process has been so thoroughly bungled? Second, could the missing tanks and planes be located in places like Poland, for example, or any of the other countries that the US bribed to join the "coalition of the willing"? The fraud in military spending is, of course, legendary, but what is not addressed is the mismanagement and how it quite possibly furthers America's most covert foreign policies.



http://www.amconmag.com/2004_08_30/article.html

Italy’s conservative prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has also come under intensive popular pressure to pull his nation’s 3,000 troops out of Iraq. Over 80 percent of Italians oppose military involvement there. But ideological solidarity between Berlusconi’s coalition partners on Italy’s neo-fascist and neo-Mussolinist far Right and the Pentagon’s neocons is helping keep Italy committed, though doing so has caused Berlusconi’s popularity to drop sharply.

After none of the fabled WMD were found, Poland’s former prime minister expressed grave doubts over keeping 2,460 troops in Iraq, but elected, in spite of intense domestic opposition, to maintain them until the middle of next year, a decision likely encouraged by lavish stipends from Washington. The Netherlands has announced it will withdraw its 1,100-man contingent by mid-2005.

Norway, New Zealand, and Thailand, all smarting from public protests, will pull their token units out of Iraq by this September. Ukraine, which sent 1,600 soldiers to forestall U.S. criticism of its egregious political corruption, is considering a pullout. By contrast, South Korea is grudgingly sending 3,700 more men, in spite of violent objections by its people and the beheading of a hapless Korean hostage.

Australia has only 250 men left in Iraq, but even this small number has become a major issue in its forthcoming election. Prime Minister John Howard is looking vulnerable on Iraq as a majority of Australians oppose his Middle Eastern adventure. In a memorably piquant Aussie phrase, antiwar Labor Party challenger Mark Latham described Howard and the other coalition leaders that sent troops to Iraq as “a conga line of suck-holes.”


Poland
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0323-07.htm

BRIBED President Aleksander Kwasniewski, left, agreed to deploy up to 200 troops in the Gulf region, to perform non-combat roles supporting any US-led offensive.

He also signed an open letter in support of the US. There's a reason he loves America - Poland is the first former communist state to join Nato and is among the 10 countries which have qualified to join the European Union in 2004.

[peacetalksforall]

1. All this should be sent to Edwards.

It's got to get into the debates somehow. Or their stump speeches. On the other hand, did the Senate see the details of this payola?

[obelus]

2. The Poles are a trusted ally.

In this year, the 60 anniversary of the Warsaw uprising, I believe it is proper to salute Polands trusted alliance as well as the 13 fatalities they have suffered in Iraq. If anything they have paid a price over the years for being our friend. Too often, we have little reciprocated their kindness.

Poland was the first country to stand up to Hitler with arms and they paid an awful price. They were extremely instrumental in breaking the German Enigma code having captured an ULTRA code machine prior to the start of WWII. They pledged over 200,000 troops to fight in Italy and Africa during some of the darkest days of the war. During the Warsaw Uprising, as insurgents they took on the full brute force of the German Army while the Soviets held other allies back and the Red Army camped lanquidly in view of terrible carnage. Warsaw was utterly destroyed.

Now, they have stood by the Americans with lives lost and with little complaint. I think that if alliances mean anything it should mean a long memory of good faith. It should mean trust. Far from being mercenaries, we still owe them.