Ominous NATO expansion. (Insider Report).

NATO is "widening" its membership and "deepening" its powers and jurisdiction in the most sweeping expansion of the Cold War alliance's 53-year history. At a NATO summit in the Czech Republic capital of Prague on November 21st-22nd, membership invitations were extended to Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia, all formerly within the Communist Warsaw Pact. Meanwhile, the alliance is proceeding with plans for assembling a NATO rapid response force of 20,000 troops to deal with terrorist threats worldwide.

"We are building a new NATO, with different military capabilities and a new mission, which is to go outside the alliance's geographic borders to defend its members," stated Nicholas Burns, the Bush administration's ambassador to NATO. "NATO is becoming the one organization that can integrate the entire Euro-Atlantic world, from the Western reaches of Canada and the United States all the way across to the Russian Far East," Mr. Burns said in a Washington Times interview.