More Journalism At It's Worst

From the Wall Street Journal which argues the statement by Ron Paul that:

"We're under great threat because we occupy so many countries. We're in 130 countries. We have 900 bases around the world."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904060604576572771371103988.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

The author is going over the semantics of the statement. What is a base? how many constitutes to a base? He then uses statistics to try to back up his point. The main problem I have here, is that the article is using statistics that are in themselves inaccurate. The Pentagon reporting that it 'only' has 662 bases around the world doesn't count classified projects.

Now let's take this statistic in from the article itself:

"Afghanistan, Iraq, Japan, South Korea, Germany, the U.K. and Italy, all of which are home to at least 9,000 troops. Aside from Afghanistan and Iraq (which may soon drop off that list) all of these are World War II and Cold War legacies. Another five countries—Spain, Turkey, Belgium (the headquarters of NATO), Bahrain and Djibouti—have between 1,000 and 1,500 troops. The next largest deployments are Portugal (703), Qatar (555) Honduras (403) and Greece (338)."

Japan, South Korea, Germany, the U.K., Italy have atleast 9,000 troops? 9000 troops across how many bases? Spain, Turkey, Belgium, Bahrain and Djibouti have between 1,000 and 1,500? Across how many bases? From Wikipedia:

"As of 31 December 2010, U.S. Armed Forces were stationed at more than 820 installations in at least 135 countries.^[23] Some of the largest contingents are the 85,600 military personnel deployed in Iraq, the 103,700 in Afghanistan, the 52,440 in Germany (see list), the 35,688 in Japan (USFJ), the 28,500 in Republic of Korea (USFK), the 9,660 in Italy, and the 9,015 in the United Kingdom respectively. These numbers change frequently due to the regular recall and deployment of units."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_armed_forces

Using the wording 'at least 9,000' is very misleading.... 85k, 103k, 52k, 35k, 28k, 9.6k, and 9k. The author could have said that atleast 5 countries have more than 28,000 troops, but he didn't because to prove his point "atleast 9,000" sounds better. Also why would you recite the exact troop count of the smaller deployments, but neglect doing that in the larger deployments. To hide some statistics, but state others to prove a point IS MISLEADING YOUR READERS.