Plus France's dawning realization that the German horse has been gelded and put out to pasture with Ferdinand! I would hope someday that France might see the benefit of trying to manipulate American power rather than trying to conjure up some ghostly army ready to counter every US move.

Is that a mistranslation and the intent is simply to have 60,000 new military planners in Brussels ready to raise an army of hundreds at a moments notice?

Seriously, do you have a pathological desire to only link to the websites of the unbalanced of either the right or left? There are literally hundreds of websites, of the right and left, that discuss defense issues rationally. Their differences are usually in the interpretation of the facts and not in the kind or deranged intercourse that assumes blathering on about conspiracies, spaceships, Islamic presidential candidates in the US or ZOG is a substitute for rebuttal when faced with contradiction.

And what links might those be that you claim Joe N. or I have used? Near as I can tell on this thread you are the only one providing links to some residents of Bedlam as if they were a rational source of information.

As to that claim that Iran-resist is pro-Shah that is easily dispelled since the Crown Prince, Reza Pahlavi, has denounced them several times as being hysterics and obstructionists but admittedly they are pro-democracy in Iran. They seem to do a fairly good job on reporting on what the media is saying in Iran but then lose the bottle when trying to argue a point of view and lapse into ludicrous conspiracy theories straight out of drunken midnight bull sessions.

Many of the articles in Iran-resist are in English and I must admit that my French is not that bad in reading screeds but generally not adequate for technical articles. Note I did not say that the only group Reza Pahlavi had criticized was Iran-resist but that was the topic at hand not whether Marjane Satrapi was still a communist like her parents.

Both presidential candidates in the US have called for the creation of at least one more mechanized division for the US Army and increasing the size of the USMC by 8-10,000. The recent White Paper on the French military called for reclassifying parts of the reserve forces to the direct control of the Gendarmarie which would indeed reduce on paper the number of soldiers. But the papaer called for increasing the size of the actual combat forces but that 60,000 figure or rather France's share will come from existing formations not new ones.

France could, with determination of course, become a world military power again but so far it has refused to modernize and remains both a Cold War relic of large heavy formations, stealthy submarines and a miserable waste of resources in occupying various tropical paradises. For example, instead of building 3 or 4 helicopter carriers that could carry a battalion of French Marines and their equipment, France will again build an ego satisfying super carrier, without any jump jet capabilities, that will rarely leave the Bay of Biscay except for an occasional cruise in the Med. Instead of saying that since the US has the carrier battle groups we should be building ships that fit our strategic goals rather than spending billions on the ability to say me too.

But I am still waiting, in vain I know, for some of those websites that you claim I have referred to as more legitimate that some others.

Pamela-I checked Open Europe a few minutes ago and found the article in a pdf file.

http://www.openeurope.org.uk/research/frenchpresidency.pdf

I thought Pres. Sarkozy was planning on 60,000 more troops but it appears that he is arguing for retasking of some of the current assets allocated to NATO. And is only planning on spending 2% of GDP to accomplish this goal. But it doesn't say if this is in addition to current spending or merely how much will be spent from already existing budgets. In other words, more division or army patches but only attached with Velcro depending on which group in Brussels is giving suggestions.

The article you referred to doesn't say anything about what size army is needed for modern warfare in fact it doesn't say much of anything about an actual army. But rather appears to be some of the first steps in creating a working realtionship between the armies and the foreign policy establishments of those countries willing to get involved.

And owing to the fiasco of a recent European Council demand that Italy not put out bids for all its needed helicopters at one time, Italy has traditionally used the same model in a variety of roles, then some of the countries suspect that this cooperation has more to do with arms sales than actually creaing a military force independent of NATO.