President Bush Comments on Wartime Control Issue

It looks like even President Bush has agreed that South Korea needs to take war time control from US forces:

U.S. President George W. Bush told his military commanders that he agrees South Korea is capable of exercising wartime control of its own forces, diplomatic sources here said Thursday.

In a meeting Aug. 14 of senior military leaders at the Pentagon that the president sat in on, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) commander Gen. Burwell Bell reported that South Korea has the needed capability, according to the sources.

“I agree,” Bush was quoted as saying.

I love this paragraph that Yonhap, the official government news agency made sure to throw into the article:

The realignment reflects Seoul’s growing stature in the international community and Washington’s need to have its troops readily available for speedy redeployment for contingencies around the world.

“Seoul’s growing stature in the international community”?  What does war time control have anything to do with this?  The war time control is happening due to the combination of freeing up US troops for deployments elsewhere and the state sponsored anti-Americanism in Korea by the Korean government.  If anything, Seoul’s international stature is going to drastically decrease without a close cooperative relationship with the United States.

Anyway the words from President Bush seems to go along with the timeline that October is going to be the month that big changes may be announced for the US-Korea relationship.  For reasons I have stated before, the timing of this all is what the real news is going to be because we have all long suspected that changes in the US-ROK alliance were coming.  I for one hope it happens sooner rather than later.