20 years after the Berlin Wall: In Europe, U.S. military remains committed to ensuring stability whi

[unhappycamper]

An original piece of the Berlin Wall, illuminated during the Festival of Lights, in Leipzig Square, near the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. Twenty years ago this week, the Wall -- perhaps the leading symbol of the Cold War -- began to crumble.


20 years after the Berlin Wall: In Europe, U.S. military remains committed to ensuring stability while taking on new threats
By Kevin Dougherty, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Monday, November 9, 2009, 2009

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — The new American subdivision in Grafenwöhr features 820 homes with model names such as Virginia, Georgia and California.

There are playgrounds, youth centers, schools, stores and freshly paved streets, all part of a $1.1 billion Pentagon construction effort to expand the base into a facility for some 15,000 people, including 4,500 U.S. servicemembers.

A few hours away, in Wiesbaden, the U.S. government is spending $500 million to transform that community as well.

And officials at Ramstein Air Base near Kaiserslautern recently opened a $170 million complex that includes a shopping mall, a multiplex cinema and a hotel.

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall — and the beginning of the end of the Cold War — the American military is scarcely getting out of Germany. Instead, it’s digging in.


Rest of $$$$ article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=65954