US troops for the Ethiopia/Eritrea border.

[alfredo]

This was passed on from an old hand in the region. He said somewhere around 50,000 US troops will be patrolling the disputed border region between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Some of the troops thinking they are going home after Iraq are going to Ethiopia.

I lived there (Eritrea) for 3 years and I would recommend we not get involved. The Eritreans are some of the toughest fighters in the world. They are smart and they are united.

Here's an article by Michela Wrong. She's one of the good guys. She has contact with our group of old Eritrean (Kagnew) vets and wrote a whole chapter about us in her book on Eritrea. the book: http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/ethiopia/eritrea.htm Highly recommended by us Kagnew veterans. this book will give you an idea of what we would be up against.


Here's Wrong's article from Slate Magazine.
http://www.slate.com/id/2178793/


America's Latest African Blunder
HOW AN ABOUT-FACE ON A BOUNDARY ISSUE COULD DESTABILIZE AN ENTIRE REGION.
By Michela Wrong
Posted Thursday, Nov. 29, 2007, at 5:38 PM ET

John Bolton
Sometimes, authors of tell-all memoirs reveal even more than they realize. One such revelation comes on Page 347 of John Bolton's Surrender Is Not an Option, published earlier this month. I doubt most reviewers noticed the line as they leafed through the book in search of the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations' famous putdowns. But for anyone who follows events in the Horn of Africa, it had all the impact of a small explosion.

Bolton, whose contempt for the United Nations is only matched by his exasperation with the State Department, recounts the position Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer adopted in 2006 toward the "final and binding" ruling an international commission had reached over the Eritrean-Ethiopian border, the cause of a war that claimed some 90,000 lives.

"For reasons I never understood," writes Bolton, "Frazer reversed course, and asked in early February to reopen the 2002 decision, which she had concluded was wrong, and award a major piece of disputed territory to Ethiopia. I was at a loss how to explain that to the Security Council, so I didn't."