الجمعة، 31 أغسطس 2012

Military golf courses

"Welcome to Cole Park Golf Club at Fort Campbell, KY. Cole Park is one of the finest golfing facilities in the Army. Our goal is to provide golfers in our Army community with everything they desire in a top-notch golf facility... We have an 18-hole Championship course that covers over 350 acres of prime real estate..."
The description is of Cole Park Golf Club at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, just one of hundreds of military golf courses situated around the world.
Back in 1975, Senator William Proxmire (D-Wisconsin) decried the fact that the Department of Defense spent nearly $14 million each year to maintain and operate 300 military-run golf courses scattered across the globe. In 1996, the weekly television series America's Defense Monitor noted that "Pentagon elites and high government officials [were still] tee-ing off at taxpayer expense" at some "234 golf courses maintained by the U.S. armed forces worldwide."..

Take the Eaglewood Golf Courses at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. In 2004, the Pentagon paid out more than $352,000 to George Golf Design to refurbish its two courses... George Golf Design considerately worked on the courses one at a time, so that local duffers would not be left linkless. This was of critical importance since if both courses were out of commission, Virginia would have been left with only nine military golf facilities (navy, five; army,three; Marine Corps, one) with a total of fourteen courses...

[In 2004], according to DoD documents, the U.S. Army paid $71,614 to the Arizona Golf Resort -- located in sunny Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A Saudi homage to the American Southwest that claims to offer the "only residential western expatriate golf resort in Riyadh with activities for all ages," the resort actually boasts an entire entertainment complex, complete with a water-slide-enhanced megapool, gym, bowling alley, horse stables, roller hockey rink, arcade, amphitheater, restaurant, and even a cappuccino bar -- not to mention the golf course and a driving range.
From a 2008 article at AlterNet (one doubts that anything has changed during the Obama administration).  At the Military Golf Course Guide, you can find a list of golf courses sorted by service, by state, and by country.

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