Good bye Keflavik Naval Air Station Iceland Base

The four F15's and one chopper squardron that form the yankee govts main defense effort for Iceland is moving out and heading somewhere closer to thug infestation areas. Iceland officials are not amused at the loss of 600 Icelandic civilian jobs and a U.S. base with an annual operating budget of $260 million. On the bright side, however, Iceland will no longer have to worry about how many of the 1200 U.S. military and 100 DOD empolyees are black. Valur Ingimundarson explains the Icelandic goverment's position in his article:

"The 1951 U.S.-Icelandic Defense Agreement paved the way for a permanent U.S. military presence at the Keflavik base in Iceland, an outpost that played a crucial role in U.S. strategy during the Cold War. The article explores two gender-related aspects of the U.S.-Icelandic Cold War relationship: the restrictions on off-base movements of U.S. soldiers, and the secret ban imposed by the Icelandic government on the stationing of black U.S. troops in Iceland. These practices were meant to "protect" Icelandic women and to preserve a homogeneous "national body." Although U.S. officials repeatedly tried to have the restrictions lifted, the Icelandic government refused to modify them until the racial ban was publicly disclosed in late 1959. Even after the practice came to light, it took another several years before the ban was gradually eliminated. Misguided though the Icelandic restrictions may have been, they did, paradoxically, help to defuse domestic opposition to Iceland's pro-American foreign policy course and thus preserved the country's role in the Western alliance.