Has this become a political board?
RTR
LC
--- Joel Perry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Strapped for troops, the Pentagon wants to redeploy
> U.S. troops in South
> Korea to Iraq
> By Robert Burns, Associated Press, 5/17/2004 01:22
> WASHINGTON (AP) In a sign of the Iraq war's
> increasing strain on the U.S.
> Army, the Pentagon is considering an extraordinary
> shift of troops to Iraq
> from their garrisons in South Korea, where they have
> stood guard for decades
> against a feared invasion by forces of communist
> North Korea, official say.
> The move reflects not only the Army's difficulty in
> finding enough soldiers
> for the next rotation of forces into Iraq later this
> year but also Defense
> Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's push for greater
> flexibility in deploying
> troops based anywhere in the world, including the
> Korean peninsula.
> The U.S. commitment to defending South Korea is the
> most enduring of its
> kind, after the collapse of the former Soviet Union
> and the Warsaw Pact that
> threatened Europe until it dissolved in 1991. U.S.
> forces saved South Korea
> after the North invaded without warning in June
> 1950.
> South Korean officials offered the first word Sunday
> that the United States
> wanted to move some of the 37,000 U.S. troops
> stationed there to Iraq, and
> Pentagon officials confirmed that talks were under
> way.
> The issue is politically sensitive because of the
> concern about a potential
> North Korean attack across the Demilitarized Zone
> that has separated the
> North and South since the Korean War ended in a
> truce in July 1953. U.S. and
> South Korean forces remain on a war footing because
> the truce has never been
> converted to a peace treaty, and the two Koreas are
> technically still at
> war.
> ''The U.S. government has told us that it needs to
> select some U.S. troops
> in South Korea and send them to Iraq to cope with
> the worsening situation in
> Iraq,'' said Kim Sook, head of the South Korean
> Foreign Ministry's North
> American Bureau.
> Tapping into the U.S. force on the Korean peninsula,
> the Cold War's last
> remaining flash point, would be a historic move by
> the Pentagon. It
> underscores the degree to which the military is
> stretched to provide enough
> forces for Iraq while also meeting its other
> commitments.
> The Pentagon had planned to reduce the number of
> troops in Iraq to about
> 115,000 this spring, but an increasingly bloody
> insurgency forced a change
> in plans. The Pentagon announced this month that it
> now plans to keep about
> 135,000 troops in Iraq for at least the next year
> and a half.
> Kim said the two allies are working out details,
> including the size and
> timing of the redeployment of U.S. troops from South
> Korea. The forces have
> traditionally served as a deterrent against North
> Korea's 1.1-million-member
> military, which is the world's fifth largest
> although severely hampered in
> its equipping and training by the communist nation's
> chronic economic
> problems.
> In Washington, a senior defense official confirmed
> that the Pentagon is in
> discussions with the South Korean government about
> using some Korea-based
> U.S. forces in Iraq. The official, who spoke on
> condition of anonymity, said
> the shift was not imminent but would be part of the
> next rotation of
> American troops in Iraq, which is scheduled to begin
> this summer. He offered
> no other details.
> South Korea's mass-circulation JoongAng Ilbo
> newspaper, quoting unnamed
> government sources, reported that a brigade of 4,000
> U.S. troops belonging
> to the 2nd Infantry Division will move to Iraq
> ''within several weeks.''
> The division, based at Camp Red Cloud, is deployed
> along the tense border
> with North Korea, the world's most heavily armed. It
> has a formidable array
> of combat power, including two combat maneuver
> brigades, an aviation
> brigade, a combat engineer brigade, an air defense
> artillery regiment and a
> military police company. It has been stationed in
> South Korea since 1965.
> The division's 3rd Brigade, known as the Arrowhead
> Brigade, is based at Fort
> Lewis, Wash., as a reserve force for Korea. That
> brigade, which was the
> first in the Army to transition from tanks to the
> new Stryker wheeled
> vehicle, has been operating in northern Iraq since
> late last fall.
> Kim, the South Korean official, said it was too
> early to speculate on
> whether the troops will return to South Korea after
> their Iraq mission. The
> Bush administration wants to reduce the number of
> troops stationed
> permanently in South Korea, but no decisions have
> been made.
> South Korea has feared that a cut in U.S. military
> presence might weaken the
> two allies' combined defense readiness against North
> Korea amid tension over
> the communist state's nuclear weapons program.
> At the administration's urging, South Korea has
> agreed to send more than
> 3,000 of its troops to Iraq to help stabilize and
> rebuild the country. They
> are expected to arrive this summer.
> ( I bet those 3,000 South Korean troops are excited
> about going to Iraq.)
>
>
>
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