Imperial power

There is also a US navy, Marine and air force base in Diego Garcia, a British territory, in which there is a CIA prison. This territory was given to the US illegally, and Britain's highest judiciary recently ordered that the original inhabitants should be allowed to return to their homes, but the ruling was ignored by the British government. The power of Bush Washington is such that the government of a sovereign nation considers it must put the interests of a foreign country above those of its people.

The US Marines are in force in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Djibouti, Germany, the United Kingdom, Iraq, Japan (13 bases, around which protest is common as there have been several rape cases), and Kuwait, while the United States Air Force has bases in Afghanistan, Antigua, Aruba, Bulgaria, Colombia, Curacao, Ecuador, Germany, Greenland, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, Panama, Qatar and Turkey as well as in US colonies such as Guam, where "The US military maintains jurisdiction over its bases, which cover approximately 39,000 acres (160 km²), or 29 percent of the island's total land area."

The US has fourteen "overseas territories" including Guam, in the Pacific, in which "US Naval Forces Marianas oversees the US Navy's largest and most strategic island base located in the Western Pacific. It is home to over 160,000 residents and more than 12,000 military members and their families. Guam is the most populated island in the geographical area known as Micronesia," and in milspeak is "Supporting Command to the Warfighter" - whatever that means, as there is no war going on in the region so far as one can make out.

Then there are US military bases in Australia (enormous complexes that spy electronically on the East Asian region) and in countless other countries. In addition to the some 780 major bases in all parts of the world, there is a significant US military presence in, for example, the Philippines (which chucked the US out of its many bases in 1992 because Washington would not tell its government whether or not there were nuclear weapons stored in Philippine territory), together with Algeria, Ghana, India, Mali, Morocco, Pakistan, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tunisia and Uganda. In all these countries there are more US military personnel than is justified by the purposes of normal diplomatic liaison. The one bright light is that the newly created US Africa Command is regarded with justifiable suspicion by African nations, who have refused to have the Command in the continent, making it necessary for the HQ to remain in Germany, of all places.