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TechnoratiBush Sees South Korea Model for Iraq
WASHINGTON - President Bush envisions a long-term U.S. troop presence in Iraq similar to the one in South Korea where American forces have helped keep an uneasy peace for more than 50 years, the White House said Wednesday.
The comparison was offered as the Pentagon announced the completion of the troop buildup ordered by Bush in January. The last of about 21,500 combat troops to arrive were an Army brigade in Baghdad and a Marine unit heading into the Anbar province in western Iraq.
Brig. Gen. Perry Wiggins, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there are now 20 combat brigades in Iraq, up from 15 when the buildup began. A brigade is roughly 3,500 troops. Overall, the Pentagon said there are 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. That number may still climb as more support troops move in.
The administration warns that the buildup will result in more U.S. casualties as more American soldiers come into contact with enemy forces. May already is the third bloodiest month since the war began in March 2003. As of late Tuesday, there were 116 U.S. deaths in Iraq so far in May - trailing only the 137 in November 2004 and the 135 in April 2004. Overall, more than 3,460 U.S. service members have died.
Presidential spokesman Tony Snow said Bush has cited the long-term Korea analogy in looking at the U.S. role in Iraq, where American forces are in the fifth year of an unpopular war. Bush's goal is for Iraqi forces to take over the chief security responsibilities, relieving U.S. forces of frontline combat duty, Snow said.
"I think the point he's trying to make is that the situation in Iraq, and indeed, the larger war on terror, are things that are going to take a long time," Snow said. "But it is not always going to require an up-front combat presence."
Instead, he said, U.S. troops would provide "the so-called over-the-horizon support that is necessary from time to time to come to the assistance of the Iraqis. But you do not want the United States forever in the front."
The comparison with South Korea paints a picture of a lengthy U.S. commitment at a time when Americans have grown weary of the Iraq war and want U.S. troops to start coming home. Bush vetoed legislation that would set timetables for U.S. troop withdrawals, and forced Congress to approve a new bill stripped of troop pullout language.
Asked if U.S. forces would be permanently stationed in Iraq, Snow said, "No, not necessarily." He said that the prospect of permanent U.S. bases in Iraq were "not necessarily the case, either."
Later, Snow said it was impossible to say if U.S. troops would remain in Iraq for some 50 years, as they have in South Korea. "I don't know," he said. "It is an unanswerable question. But I'm not making that suggestion. ... The war on terror is a long war."
South Korea is just one example of U.S. troops stationed more than a half-century after war. Germany and Japan are two other examples. American forces are deployed in roughly 130 countries around the world, performing a variety of duties from combat to peacekeeping to training foreign militaries, according to GlobalSecurity.org, a defense-oriented think tank.
In South Korea, about 29,500 U.S. troops are stationed as a deterrent against the communist North, but that number is to decline to 24,500 by 2008 as part of the Pentagon's worldwide realignment of its forces. The two Koreas remain technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty.
Adm. William Fallon, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, seemed a surprising choice when he got the job earlier this year, yet his experience as U.S. commander in the Pacific overseeing the Korean peninsula would serve him well if the U.S. military adopts a Korea model in Iraq.
AP writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report from the Pentagon.
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press.
28 Comments so far
Show AllI don't think Bush sees much of anything, except that which his handlers want him to see
If we Americans are going to pay for the war, we should be required to at least see some of the pictures...
WAR PICTURES
Pictures of Destruction and Civilian Victims of the Anglo-American Aggression in Iraq.
These photos are only of a very tiny fraction of the thousands of Iraqi Civilian Victims who have been terrorised, humiliated, injured, maimed
and killed through British and American bombing of civilian areas in various cities of Iraq.
Due to insecurity, independent reporters could
not and still can not reach many areas to photograph and report the atrocities. Several independent reporters and journalists were deliberately bombed to prevent them reporting the atrocities.
WARNING: SOME OF THESE PICTURES ARE NOT SUITIBLE FOR SMALL CHILDREN AND THOSE WITH WEAK HEARTS
Robert Fisk:
http://snipurl.com/h6tm
Mind Prod:
http://snipurl.com/h6tp
Conservatives put us in Korea to stop Communism, but communist China owns us. The South Koreans don't mind us there because they profit from our military.
They sent us to Iraq to steal their oil, to sell weaponry and to make the Middle East safe for Israel though it's costing us lots more in lives and money than if we bought the oil and followed the UN Security Council's determinations on Israel.
Meanwhile we're working to support our gargantuan M/I/I complex for which we need to keep making enemies, conjuring up demons and starting wars. Israel is driving our Middle East policy and has turned the world against us.
And the plutocrats are rigging elections and keeping us in fear and ignorance to keep their banks and corporations looting our treasury. We can't fire them because they control our media that forms the public opinion that keeps us under control and they own most politicians from both parties.
The international oligarchy wants to help our corporations stay competitive (by moving jobs overseas?) so we must continue to give them tax breaks and corporate welfare to be good patriots. They tell us to work hard and pay our taxes so they don't have to. They give our troops medals for killing corporate enemies and for the idolatry of a piece of red, white and blue cloth. They keep our hopes up with the lottery and "The Millionaire". They put us in jail for soft drugs while they sot with alcohol, the hardest of drugs. Their religious fascists kill, maim, torture, rape, steal, pillage and plunder in God's name.
They keep us sedated with inane commercial ridden tv programs urging us to consume the stuff of indifference to what's going on. Their plan is to keep us working so hard to pay for it that we don't have time to protest, except against those that don't buy the corporate line. Like Marine General Smedley Butler said: What a racket!!!
If you've had enough, check out the Greens.
We will have a protest vote for the next election for President that will mean change but it will be a protest that matters because it will for the first time unite voters on the right and left who have had enough of the big Money rule in politics and our search for happieness and a secure future.
Voting for any of the 3rd parties will not be large enough to win because they are all splintered and don't get enough money to win.
So this is our option in case none of the big money candidates measure up to the task of a real revolution to face the future and fix it.
Vote for yourself by writing yourself or anyone else who is the best choice.
The massive under-vote for president will stand as a virtual "none of the above" and will serve for the first time as a protest vote against the big money system.
Us regular folks need to realize that framing is how we got to where we are in our political trap and the frame goes back to the earliest days of government.
over ninety percent of the global population are right handed and since the human mind uses association for all critical thinking, the ruling classes always claimed the right side in the symbolic framing of political power so that the ruled majority always were on the left side (with the weak, evil, connotation it gets) while the rich and powerfull capture all the mental associations of being right, strong and even though the wealthy are in the minority they can claim by unconscious mental association the majority of right handed people to their convenient
Right/Left universal political frame.
I believe there will be no real good revolution or change as long as we do not face up to the straw men of Right against Left and capitalism against socialism which really are the balance of private and public ownership.
People of the world unite the only thing to lose is your frames.
3rd parties will not unite us untill we face up to the old tricks that divide us.
We now have the option and it wont take big money....just pass the word around our internet revolution that to vote for yourself will be the big protest vote that will see the change in the big money game. The huge undervote for president will be our Boston Tea Party.
Let the party begin.
Love Ya, Jim
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=10081&st=0&#entry104042
After destroying Iraq, murdering nearly a million Iraqis, and another 4 million refugees, now the U.S. war secretary announces that America intends to stay in Iraq for a long time. What a nerve! Obviously, shamelessness is bottomless.
Come to think of it, may be they do need to stay for a very long time. You see, it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find the non-existent WMD's.
Well kids this was the plan all along. At least they finally came out and said it. Why not just hand the trillion bucks [borrowed from China] we have spent on this fiasco over to the corporate war interests and call it a day.
Controlling the regions resources is a desperate attempt to prop up the value of the dollar. We should be doing it the old fashioned way hard work and intelligent choices in the way we live.
Problem is these people are stupid and their idiot plan never had any real chance of working. Get ready for some rough sledding ahead. And remember and hold to account the ones that put us into this situation.
Only Bush is dumb enough to draw a comparison between the two countries!!!! South Korea isn't inhabited by dozens of fanatical Muslims either! Whose hatred for one another has been simmering for thousands of years! Bush needs to do some research before he makes such ludicrous statments! The only way Iraq will live in any kind of a peace is to have another despot like Saddam Hussein who is willing to kill a few to keep the majority in line! It is a sad fact of life, radical's don't respond to anything but that kind of force. But, I know Bush is to simple-minded to comprehend most of that statement. He doesn't live in the real world. Perhaps George should consider relocating to Bagdad with his family after he gets out of office and become their new despot minus US troops!
Uh, when was the last suicide bombing of a marketplace in South Korea? Uh, when would any American politician have to be protected by hundreds of troops and airborne artillery when he took a stroll through Seoul?
"I said I would not vote Republican the next time, but if Thompson runs I probably will. That man has the brains, courage and will to straighten up a lot of messes in DC."
Don't. Let everybody put this very clearly in their head. The republicans are a non-party. It has no place in a democratic society. They are the enemies of the people and of the world. There are two major parties in the United States, the Democrats and the Greens, and several smaller parties, that span the entire spectrum of political choices from left to right. So there is enough choice. Anybody that is aligning themselves with these thugs in the Republican Party, does not have brains, courage or capacity. If they have any of those, let them start their own party.
Ever heard of the "protest vote" ? In a normal democratic society, if the running government messes up big time, it means that a larger proportion of the votes will go to parties like "the Soccer party" or the "Party for the animals". Not to be taken serious, but the message is clear: we keep an eye on you !
Why can't you guys in the States organize a protest vote ?
An interesting analogy from the presidential brain. Where, I wonder, does he plan to locate the 38th parallel? A donut shaped DMZ, perhaps, surrounding the Green Zone.
I saw this reported on Countdown with Keith Olbermann and at Huffington Post:
"Report: In Meeting, 'Wild-Eyed' Bush Thumped Chest While Repeating 'I Am The President!'
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05...
Georgie Anne Geyer writes today in the Dallas Morning News about President Bush's strange behavior during a recent meeting with "[f]riends of his from Texas."
But by all reports, President Bush is more convinced than ever of his righteousness.
Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country's destiny."
This is the second time in recent weeks that accounts have surfaced of Bush lashing out or "ranting" in private meetings when responding to criticism of his Iraq policy."
I think our "fearless" leader has gone 'round the proverbial bend.
"Far from being the terrorists of the world, the Islamic peoples have been its victims, principally the victims of U.S. fundamentalism, whose power, in all its forms-military, strategic, and economic-is the greatest source of terrorism on Earth.... People are neither still nor stupid. They see their independence compromised, their resources and land and the lives of their children taken away, and their accusing fingers increasingly point north: to the great enclaves of plunder and privilege. Inevitably, terror breeds terror and more fanaticism. But how patient the oppressed have been. Their distant voices of rage are now heard; the daily horrors in faraway brutalized places have at last come home."
John Pilger
It truly bothers me the PNAC plan, the execution of which some said along was this administration's true agenda, did indeed outline permanent military outposts in the Middle East for reasons of control and greed. And here we are.
this man is so delusional........he needs to go hunting with cheney. and take wolfie and rummy too.
HI Peacepoet - I've never heard your version of how we came to be involved in the Korean "Police Action" and you may or may not be correct. I will not diagree with you that we meddeled in a civil civil war and did so again in Vietnam. My point was and is: Comparing Iraq to Korea is utter nonsense.
I also believe that if North Korea should in the near future or any time in the future invade South Korea again, with our broken military we would be hard pressed to do much about it. In addition, if that should occur, we should not be surprised if China once again would send their troops to assist North Korea. I hate to think of the consequences, no matter who our President may be at that time.
Please see the discussion of this at Juan Cole's blog, http://www.juancole.com/2007/05/on-false-analogy-between-iraq-and-south.html
This analogy explicitly means the invasion was for the purpose of building permanenet miltary bases from which to control Iraqi hydrocarbons and to exert leverage over/threaten/invade other West Asian producers. It's admission to war for conquest--the #1 War Crime--the very reason given for entering and remaining in Korea.
Evelyn- You are touting the U.S. government version of what happened in Korea just after the Second World War. The U.S. just as it did in Viet nam and is doing in Iraq was meddling in the midst of a civil war. Just who invaded who is not so clear. The South Korean forces (all of whose officers had been Japanese collaborators)were clearly north of the 38th parallel before fighting started. The U.S. forces killed thousands of leftist oriented people in the South after setting up the military occupation that continues to this day.
The public's up in arms over the illegal Iraqi invasion even with talks of impeachment. But wait.....George W. Bush is still grinning with the smug looks on his face. Why? He has had the backing of Congress from the initial war authorization voted by Congress to the latest war funding approval to continue the war voted by those we voted in to represent us. These are the very folks who are now soliciting funds for reelection, and who the public will again put in office.........regrettably.
Bu$h the inferior is the ventriloquist's dummy. It will be interesting to see just how many he is talking for, besides Rove and Shotgun Dick.
I assume 8 years of these bastards will attract an awful lot of historians and psychiatrists to study the spectacle.
It'll be a Cuba/Philippines occupation model. 50+ years with leaders like Batista and Marcos running up World Bank debt, and American military bases there spreading munitions waste, venereal disease and pretending they are not proping up the dictatorships and training the death squads in terror.
50 years..that's how long the oil will last in Iraq. Then we leave. The oligarchy that runs this country doesn't have a problem with this.
A bug is fortunate to be a bug and not a man.
Bugs keep the world's ecology spinning--and humans?
bwhahahaha!
The news this last week was that May was the bloodiest month in Iraq since the invasion ended. The Bush administration has been trying to positive spin their way through the surge. If it is indeed true that their are less Iraqi deaths, then the loud and clear message is that they are targetting US troops more. In random accident when the insurgents in Iraq hear Bush promoting his *surge*?
To make the Korea analogy work, you would have to think of not North and South Korea with no dividing line, one Korea with an intense sectarian insurgency. There is no way America could have continued in Korea for about half a century under those circumstances, as American troops would be the targets.
Impeachment proceedings are desperately needed, not because it is realistic that Bush would ever be impeached. However, it would prevent him from feeling smug enough to even talk of continuing in Iraq like we have in Korea. This is something he can take lightly, even in having to ignore the first page news about the bloodiest month, because he is not making the sacrifice himself. No one in his extended family is on active duty in Iraq. My wild guess is that within all of his elitist group of staff members and friends, NONE have family members involved. Most are invested in military industrial complex corporations and are profiteering from the war.
So it is peachy keen OK that we stay the course for the next half century, no matter how many peasants have to sacrifice their lives for his quagmire.
This is just one more example, of a bull headed, brain dead idiot in our White House. We did not invade South Korea, North Korea invaded S.K. and we, along with several other nations, assisted the South Koreans in drivining the North Koreans back to the 38th parallel. There is absolutely no comparison with Korea and Iraq. NONE!!!
Now, we will have troops in Iraq for many more years if King Bush or some other idiot has their way; that could be a comparision. And if it ever comes to pass it will be another horrible, unbelievable error on our part.
I swear, the president is wildly grasping at straws to prove his points. How much longer do we have to put up with such utter stupidity? He is breaking our nation, both morally and financially.
I said I would not vote Republican the next time, but if Thompson runs I probably will. That man has the brains, courage and will to straighten up a lot of messes in DC.
It's not that he can't see.
He does see profits going into the coffers of the military-industrial complex; namely Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, Halliburton, The Carlyle Group, Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon, and dozens of other weapons manufacturers and energy comapnies; the right wing has been desirous of another long war since the end of the Cold War. How else to enrich the kingmakers? He also does see leverage to limit the ascendency of China as a super power by starving it of the energy that their economic expansion will require.
What he doesn't see or doesn't care to see is that the American people do not want another long war. What he doesn't see or doesn't care to see is that the Muslim world will never accept us as occupiers in their lands. If it takes a thousand years of guerilla warfare to push us out, they will keep fighting.
What galls me the most is that he and others of his ilk are stuck in their desire to apply a 20th century paradigm to this occupation. If he and his neocon allies get their way, Iraq is just the beginning. Our nation may never recover.
I know sheep travel in flocks, but for some reason it won't let me edit!
This plan will go about as well as Bush's plan to invade in the first place. Bush reminds me of Yeltsin. Every few months he would reshuffle his cabinate and claim that now he's serious. He's going to turn this mess around and this time it's going to work. Forget it. Incompetence can only breed disaster.
There is just no comparison between S. Korea and Iraq. If only somebody in this mis-administration would look at high school history texts. But, then again, why should they put themselves out that way? They'll just repeat this mantra long enough for those of us who did stay awake in school to start to believe there is some viable comparison here and we'll baaaa baaaa baaaa along with the rest of the flock of lambs to the slaughter.....
Bush can't see. He was born blind. It's not his fault but he will still always be blind. A bug may be excused for being a bug and not a man--but it nevertheless must needs be a bug. George will always be a fool. We are the dopes for allowing blind men, bugs, and fools to be our leaders.