The Poles - The Poles

The Poles - The Poles are sending a brigade of their troops to Iraq, according to the Washtimes:

[Polish President] Kwasniewski said he planned to visit Iraq himself once the force had settled in. 'I think that such a visit makes sense at a time we will already have gathered experience.'

...

Polish forces, including 370 officers, are to arrive in Iraq beginning Tuesday.
Stanislaw Boczkowski, in his 60s, who came to say goodbye to his son, said he spent six years in the 1980s in Iraq as a construction worker.
'It was a horrible dictatorship. Everyone was very poor, with the exception of a small elite of rich people. It is a very good thing that soldiers go there,' he said, looking proudly at his son.
The United States is footing most of the bill for the Polish-led division.
The soldiers, their uniforms marked with the Polish flag and the word Poland in Polish and Arabic, have also learned some basic Arabic and taken lessons in Iraqi customs and culture.
The coalition now has 13,400 non-U.S. troops deployed in Iraq, the bulk of them British, ground-forces commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said last week.
'There are 18 countries here right now,' Gen. Sanchez told reporters, adding that Britain was providing 8,300 troops and the Netherlands 800.
The United States said Monday that 30 nations have so far agreed to join it in an international stabilization force for Iraq even without a specific United Nations mandate demanded by some. "

Many other nations are contributing troops as well - and for a variety of reasons:

The Polish-led division will include 1,640 Ukrainian and 1,300 Spanish soldiers.
Bulgaria is sending about 500 troops; Hungary has pledged several hundred; Romania and Latvia each are deploying about 150, while Slovakia and Lithuania are dispatching 85 apiece.
The reasons why European countries have offered military support to coalition forces in Iraq vary.
Some, such as Britain, Poland and Spain, have done so because they genuinely believed in the justness of the war on Saddam's regime. Others have done so as a way of showing their loyalty to Washington.

All but Britain have experience in living with, or under, dictatorships.

Posted by Mitch at August 1, 2003 05:52 PM