ITH Poker Forum

[darvon]

I thought I heard in second hand remarks on the State of The Union speech that Obama remarked that all troops are now home.

That suprised me.

Are they? Did I mis-hear?

[nsidestrate]

Officially, there are no combat troops left in Iraq as of mid-December 2011. There are troops in Kuwait and Afghanistan, but not Iraq. There remains a small contingent at the embassy and the authorization by Congress for war fighters remains in effect, so it is possible that some special operations forces continue operations, but there are no significant troop concentrations left. Some number of contractors remain, but the environment for us is now much different because of the exposure to prosecution under Iraqi law, so most companies have dramatically curtailed their presence. I know that my firm removed several thousand employees from Iraq and now has not more than 50 people left.

It is probably the case that we have fewer troops on overseas deployment than at any time in our recent history, although I'm just making that up.

[Bullajami]

East Africa has long taken a backseat to the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts - for obvious reasons. We have had to make do with the resources available, which usually meant the stuff CENTCOM chose not to use. We are now seeing some asset reallocation to this region. It's causing a fair amount of both jubilation and mayhem as we try to figure out what to do with it.