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ROOSEVELT ROADS, Puerto Rico -- Bivouacked
behind barbed wire, dwarfed by towers of shipping containers,
the vanguard of a U.S. Special Forces team is stealthily setting
up shop at this naval base in eastern Puerto Rico.
Their assignment: Establish communications,
living quarters, aircraft hangars and all the accommodations
for an elite force of Green Berets, Navy Seals, Marines and Air
Force commandos. So sensitive is their mission that Army Brig.
Gen. Richard Parker forbids public briefings on their work.
But the activity signals a significant
shift for the Southern Command, the U.S. military group responsible
for 12.5 million square miles from Antarctica to the Florida
Keys.
Puerto Rico this summer becomes home
to the greatest concentration of U.S. military resources in Latin
America.
''Puerto Rico will now assume the role
that Panama has had for Southern Command for about the last 50
years. Puerto Rico will really become the hub of our operations,''
Southcom commander-in-chief Charles E. Wilhelm, a Marine general,
told Congress June 22. -THE MIAMI
HERALD
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Puerto
Rico Searches for Its Future
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