Asherman wrote:I'm a retired old duffer who has some contacts in the military and intelligence communities. Almost everything I know is available from open sources, or is long out of date. It sounds as if you are pretty knowledgable yourself, and served in Korea..
The move of 2ID is still up in the air, because ROK doesn't want to pony up the cost of acquiring the land. They would like us further south, but as usual will take forever adjusting to it. The younger people are, as you probably know, the problem. Older Koreans and ranking officials know the score, but they get lost in the babble. Some troops have already left for Iraq, but the bigger drawdown will probably be 18mos to 2 years down stream. The reduced troop strength is mostly in support units. I can't comment on moral at troop level, but things higher up are alright.
Korea is more the perview of the Army, and to a lesser degree the Airforce. However, in my run-ins with Army personell (Go Navy!) they make it clear that duty on the Peninsula is the worst draw. I haven't heard anything from the Airforce, nor have I ever thought to ask, but I know they keep an Airbase or two there.
Some of the stories I heard of Korea, however, mirror that of stories I know about in Naval experiences in Japan. In Korea, there are a lot of troublemakers, often quite young, who specifically target Army personell by claiming things like physical abuse and/or rape. Making false claims, accusations, mob violence, and the proverbial "set-up" is one thing the 2ID apparently has to watch out for. And there's something else that tugs on my consience:
These stories are familiar to me, because I can tell you it definitely happens in Japan, though perhaps not recently. Except in this case, it was the Marines and the Navy who were the target. A few years ago, there was a young US Sailor, who's name I forgot, he was accused of rape by a girl in Okinawa. This wasn't a he said/she said case either. The sailor had followed all the rules: He was with his "buddies." There is a Buddy system that holds that you will not go on Liberty without other people to watch your back - and vouch for you. And his buddies did. The other Okinawan girls at the bar where they met also vouched for his story, interestingly enough.
And you can guess what happened next.
None of that ever made the Japanese papers. If it made the courts, it didn't make a difference. And of course, the Japanese never allowed him to question, to face his accuser. Worse yet, the Japanese had full control of the legal proceedings, interrogated and imprisoned him without his lawyer, SOFA treaty be damned.
But the one thing that keeps sticking in my mind after all this time, was what I felt when I reviewed a couple of the related articles being printed in the USA. They all mirrored the Japanese versions, both in their aggonizing sorrow for "the victim" and in the condemnation of the America and us in general - except for one big detail:
The sailor was black.
It doesn't matter you say?
Agreed, it shouldn't. I know this as well as anyone and those in the military understand what I'm talking about. We all have friends who we know of only by name; color of skin has been relegated to a significance equal to color of shirts, if not lower.
My point is: It matters to the Japanese.
ALOT.
I'm Asian, and can pass for Japanese easily enough as long as you don't bow or talk to me. But most of my friends can't. People in the US spout platitudes about the presence of intolerance. They're fools. Until they've walked the streets of Yokohama with a black man, they've never seen the tenets of real Racism.
The US Media never printed a picture of him, never made any mention of that he was black. But the Japanese media did, in the most vitriolic of terms. I couldn't read the Japanese papers, but believe me: Many US Sailors can, , especially their Japanese wives. Besides, looking at the front pages told me everything I needed to know. Some even made excuses for it (It's their culture). More disgustingly, one went as far as to adopt the local outlook (It's true when they say you can tell just by looking at them).
I had never been so angry. I knocked him flat on his back - and was punished accordingly.
To be fair, he was protecting his Japanese wife's, her family's, opinion, her "face". He thought of it as "Honor".
And in the meantime, a shipmate got hung out to dry. By our government. Even by some of us. So much for loyalty.
So much for Honor.
Quote:Both India and Pakistan claim to have good control of their nuclear weapons, but neither are anything close to the failsafes exercised by the U.S., U.S.S.R., Britain, or France. China probably has very good control over its stockpiles, and I see nothing to worry about with the Israelis. Mao said that nuclear weapons are "paper tigers", and he wasn't far wrong in assessing the restraint nuclear countries have so far shown. Small numbers of nuclear weapons are useless if they provoke massive retaliation from someone like the U.S. Nuclear weapons are good negotiation counters though. The danger is two-fold. First, that some yahoo makes a very big mistake and preemptively launches against an enemy. If, for instance, general conflict broke out between India and Pakistan the odds are that Indian troops would have a great deal of initial success. A battlefield commander, given use of a tactical nuke might well use it to avoid being overrun, and the dogs of war would be off the leash. The second danger is that one or more nuclear devices fall into the hands of an international gang of terrorists who would leave no clear target for retaliation. Neither case would be the end of civilization, but a lot of people could die really fast.
Interesting. Many of us believe that the Israelis have long since acquired nuclear weapons, including me, but I've never been able to confirm our suspicions, and I suppose I'm not meant to...
Speculation: I wonder how the Russians are doing, upgrading their nuclear weapons, while the funding for ours gets cuts. Granted that theirs concentrates on MIRVs, a reinforement of the Strategic (brought on by TMD?), while ours concentrates on moving into the Tactical realm. The term "paper tiger" (Mao said that, eh?) is a political term perhaps more than a military one. If your enemy believes that you won't use a weapon, that weapon doesn't exist. One of the precautions you can take to avoid getting hit without knowing who to retaliate against is to get ahead of the curve: Ensure you know what those weapons are before he launches them. If the weapon can then be traced back to him, giving the Nuke to a terrorist is the same as launching it from an ICBM.
Or ensure those weapons aren't newly created in the first place, which is Bush's goal.
Another option is to threaten to hit every unfriendly country if ANY nukes explode in the US, especially because ANY nuke development requires some state sponsorship. A bad outcome I agree, but one that might occur if all else fails.
If our weapons actually DO become "paper tigers" in the eyes of our enemies, God help us all.
How detailed is our knowledge of other countries' nuke stockpiles and ability to identify them? Who actually inspects the Russians in our agreements with them? And others?
Quote:It is true that Iran has the capability of closing the straight, but it would not be in their best interests. Iran doesn't want to invite US military response anymore than Jong-Il does. I'm sure the Mullahs are quietly cheering on the radicals, and providing covert support wherever they can. They need to be treated with the same basic methods we've learned to adopt in dealing with the DPRK. Iraq used gas against Iran, but if Iran responded in kind, I missed it. Iran did use trench warfare techniques that were primitive even in 1918. Using little kids to disarm minefields in no-man's land is pretty ugly and would only be used if they had few other resources. Iran is still backward and hasn't even a portion of the DPRK's military muscle. I think they'll stay on the sidelines while rooting for anyone who can deal the West a blow.
Yes. I agree that's what should be done - but they shouldn't be allowed to get Nukes (unless they already have). Do they have them you think? Everyone says N Korea does (they said they did), but I'm a bit of a skeptic.
That I posted the article in the first post, didn't mean that I agreed with it. I did a quick search and it seemed the best one I could find (which goes to show you the type of information in the media elite). His analyses is interesting, but his facts are seriously flawed, and besides - however widespread his conclusions are, they only reflect a prejudice looking for data that fits.
To be short, the Navy is in a bottleneck, yes, but we aren't as helpless as he says we are.
Quote:The shipment of missiles to Yemen from the DPRK is well known, and perhaps we shouldn't talk too much about it.
There are BTW a number of militarily knowledgable folks here. Timberlako is a retired Marine, and Georgeob1 is a retired field-grade naval officer. Lets see if you can identify which know a little something about war, and which are armchair strategists who believe that if we'd just disband our military the world would soon be at perpetual peace.
Did you mean that one of them voted for John Kerry?
I met Farmerman, who was in the Army Corps of Engineers, and he was very kind.
Even though the Tsunami is taking center stage 24/7, I was a little worried that this might distract everyone from the other potential crises of the world. Don't get me wrong, this Disaster is a Full Blown Crises, but from my vantage point, it looks as if we're doing the best we can. Talking to some of the guys at the base and the KAB, the talk and worry wasn't that we might be doing too little, but that we might do too much: That we might pull vital assets (and our eyes) away from some of the world's flash points, thereby allowing our enemies an opportunity to strike. We settled on our belief, as we usually do, that our leaders were doing the job as best as humanly possible. 
), but I've known a few from living in New York and going to Canada. And, believe it or not: the French Military isn't too shabby, either. I've heard all of the French jokes you could ever toss around. For Christ sakes, I'm in the US Military. Where do you think all those jokes came from? 
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