Category: Uncategorized

I think there is going to be a surge in recruiting for the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Korea:

Conscientious objectors for religious reasons will be permitted to perform an alternative service starting 2009 at the earliest. They will serve at social welfare centers. But the Ministry of Defense said it will require conscientious objectors to serve for 36 months, double the time for conscripts, to “ensure fairness.” The decision has sparked heated debate. The Korea Veterans’ Association denounced it saying it will “further encourage many young men to evade active-duty military service." [Chosun Ilbo]

If you are an Army Captain check this out:

Active-duty captains thinking about leaving the Army now have a whole new set of reasons to reconsider: a new program of five incentives, including up to $35,000 in cash, being offered to keep the valuable officers onboard.

But the offers, which the Army announced in a military personnel message Thursday, won’t last long. Some have deadlines as early as Oct. 19, and the last deadline is Dec. 15.

The incentives are limited only to captains with O-3 dates of rank from April 1, 2002, through Nov. 1, 2007, who entered active duty in the following branches: air defense, adjutant general, armor, aviation, chemical engineer, field artillery, finance, infantry, military police, quartermaster, signal and transportation.

Incentives also are available to Nurse Corps officers and select categories of Medical Service Corps officers promoted to captain April 2, 2002, through Nov. 1, 2007.

Reserve officers, warrant officers, members of the special branches and captains who have been primary-zone candidates for promotion to major are not eligible for any of the incentives, the message said.

Captains have five incentives to choose from, with a limit of one option per soldier. Each option has to be “paid for” with a service obligation whose period of time varies, depending on the incentive:

– Cash (Critical Skills Retention Bonus): There are three tiers, depending on branch — $25,000, $30,000 and $35,000. The $35,000 bonus is limited to captains commissioned in military intelligence, infantry, field artillery, aviation and the transportation corps. The service obligation for any bonus is 36 months. The application deadline is Dec. 14.

– Graduate school: The Army will pay for an officer to earn a master’s degree. The service obligation is three days for every day spent in school. The application deadline is Oct. 19.

– Ranger school (requires a 12-month service obligation) and the Defense Language Institute (requires a three-day service obligation for every day of school). The application deadline is Dec. 14 for both schools.

– Switching career branches or functional areas: The service obligation is three years. The application deadline is Nov. 23.

– Extending for assignment to installation of choice: Officers who take this option must have completed 12 months at their current permanent duty stations. If approved, officers will be guaranteed stabilization for at least 24 months. The service obligation is three years. Officers assigned to life-cycle units are not eligible.

For more details on the bonuses, including how to apply, soldiers can review MilPer Message 07-237 at https://perscomnd04.army.mil/milpermsgs.nsf. [Stars & Stripes]

I’m sure more than a few captains will take advantage of this.  Quite a good incentive. 

I think something is fishy about this entire story:

The United States on Tuesday suspended all land travel by U.S. diplomats and other civilian officials in Iraq outside Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, amid mounting public outrage over the alleged killing of civilians by the U.S. Embassy’s security provider Blackwater USA.

The move came even as the Iraqi government appeared to back down from statements Monday that it had permanently revoked Blackwater’s license and would order its 1,000 personnel to leave the country — depriving American diplomats of security protection essential to operating in Baghdad.

"We are not intending to stop them and revoke their license indefinitely but we do need them to respect the law and the regulation here in Iraq," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told CNN.

Details of the weekend shootings haven’t been released, but the New York Times reported late Tuesday that a preliminary review by Iraq’s Ministry of Interior found that violence erupted as Blackwater security guards fired at a car when it did not heed a policeman’s call to stop, killing a couple and their infant.

According to the story on the Times Web site, the report said that Blackwater helicopters had also fired. The Iraqi Ministry of Defense said that 20 Iraqis were killed, higher than the 11 dead reported before.  [Robert Reid & Matthew Lee, AP]

The Interior Ministry’s version of events contradicts with what the Iraqi police and the Blackwater contractors claimed happened at the scene:

The newspaper said the report was presented to the Iraqi cabinet and, though unverified, seemed to contradict an account offered by Blackwater that the guards were responding to militants who had opened fire on State Department personnel. Iraqi police have said a car bomb exploded near a State Department convoy and that Blackwater guards began shooting.

What I think is going on is a disinformation campaign just like what happened with the Marines in Afghanistan and as usual the media is falling for it.   The Iraqi Interior Ministry is well known for its corruption and infiltration by the Mahdi Army.  So does anyone think it is any coincidence that this controversy happens and Al-Sadr is prepared to capitalize on it?:

Al-Sadr’s office in Najaf said the government should nullify contracts of all foreign security companies, branding them "criminal and intelligence firms."

"This aggression would not have happened had it not been for the presence of the occupiers who brought these companies, most of whose members are criminals and ex-convicts in American and Western prisons," the firebrand cleric said in a statement.

Al-Sadr insisted that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki prosecute those involved and ensure that families of the victims receive compensation.

The loss of Blackwater would be a huge set back because the State Department contractors would have no security to monitor the reconstruction projects going on around Iraq.  The delay of reconstruction projects would be a loss of creditability to the US and the Iraqi government.  Thus the US military may have to guard the reconstruction teams which may effect the scheduled redeployment of some of the "surge" troops back to America.  That is why it is critical for the US government to get Blackwater’s license to operate in Iraq renewed.    

Al-Sadr is whipping up nationalist sentiment over this manufactured incident which will make it difficult for the Iraqi government to side with the US and the Blackwater contractors over what happened.  Remember, perception is often reality, especially in Iraq, and Sadr and his Interior Ministry goons have already created the perception with the help of the biased and uncritical media.  This manufactured incident will be played over and over again in the media because the media has long been suspicious of the role of security contractors in Iraq and this manufactured incident only plays to those suspicions.  You can see by reading this that the media feeding frenzy over security contractors is about to go into overdrive.

In short brilliant move by Al-Sadr and his Iranian puppet masters to undermine US reconstructions efforts and create a wedge between the coalition and the Iraqi government over this issue that has all been aided by the more than willing US media.

Is anyone besides David Albright surprised by this admission by North Korea?:

North Korea told the United States earlier this month that it procured materials related to centrifuges used for uranium enrichment from a third country, diplomatic sources said Monday.

North Korea’s revelation regarding aluminum pipes marks the first time that Pyongyang has admitted to allegations about a secret uranium enrichment program which sparked the current North Korean nuclear standoff.

But North Korea did not go as far as to say that it had begun uranium enrichment…

During the Geneva talks, North Korea’s chief delegate to the six-party talks, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, admitted to his U.S. counterpart Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, that North Korea had procured aluminum pipes from a third country, the sources said. [Kyodo News]

Kyodo is wrong in one part of this article, Richardson points out, this is not the first time North Korea has admitted to a secret uranium program.  I highly recommend everyone read the rest of Richardson’s analysis of this latest admission of a secret North Korean uranium program over at DRPK Studies.

I hope the news doesn’t get any worse from Typhoon Nari:

Six South Koreans died and four were missing in South Korea on Sunday after a typhoon hit the country’s southern coast, an official from the government emergency agency said.

Five were killed and four were missing in the resort island of Cheju as it was battered by typhoon Nari, whose name means a lily in Korean language, an official at South Korea’s National Emergency Management Agency told Reuters by telephone.

One woman was also found dead as a house collapsed in Jangheung, a coast county southwest of Seoul, added the official who asked not to be identified.

He said the death toll may rise and South Korea’s Yonhap news agency was already reporting 10 people confirmed dead and six reported missing because of the typhoon.

Local television stations were showing images of overturned trucks and uprooted trees in areas hit by the typhoon. [Reuters]

There has some speculation recently that the Stars & Stripes have been intentionally covering up, not reporting, ignoring, or whatever other phrase you want to use to describe not publishing stories about GI misbehavior in Korea which is giving the appearance of a drop in GI incidents. I don’t believe it, but I decided to e-mail the Stars & Stripes and get a response to such claims anyway.

As I expected there was a logical explanation for the spike in incidents earlier this year along with the drop off this summer and it has nothing to do with the Stars & Stripes intentionally not reporting incidents. Many people working in the JAG office were PCSing in May and front loaded the cases to get them completed before they left. This contributed to the apparent spike in incidents earlier this year. With so many cases tried before the summer started this caused the apparent drop in incidents this summer.

For those that are wondering even if the USFK command wanted to censor the Stars & Stripes they can’t due to DOD Directive 5122.11:

Stars and Stripes is a Department of Defense-authorized daily newspaper distributed overseas for the U.S. military community. Editorially independent of interference from outside its editorial chain-of-command, it provides commercially available U.S. and world news and objective staff-produced stories relevant to the military community in a balanced, fair, and accurate manner. By keeping its audience informed, Stars and Stripes enhances military readiness and better enables U.S. military personnel and their families stationed overseas to exercise their responsibilities of citizenship.

Now I know many of you reading this are wondering why the Stars & Stripes are not reporting on developments in some of the USFK corruption cases or the killing of SPC Vang Her by a Korean taxi driver. I would like to know more as well, but just because the Stars & Stripes hasn’t published any more follow up articles doesn’t mean they are covering anything up. A legitimate newspaper like the Stars & Stripes needs facts to report something not innuendo and rumor. Innuendo and rumor is what my comments section is for. 🙂

I think the Stars & Stripes has done a very good job of publishing incidents along with other articles of interest for USFK, especially in the last two years. I have said before that the perception of the increase in GI crimes is because the Stars & Stripes along with the Korean media does a much better job of reporting incidents compared to in the past and then these reports are picked up on blogs like this one thus making people more aware of them. When I first came to Korea eight years ago the villes were much more crazy and filled with many more incidents than now. It was just that the media and people in general did not pay as much attention to it as they do now in this post June 13, 2002 period.

I for one am glad the court martial and civilian court results are published because it creates better awareness of the penalties in store for those who violate either Korean Law or the UCMJ. I used to take the newspaper clippings and hang them on the barracks bulletin board for the soldiers walking out to read. I have always been a big believer that informed soldiers make better decisions and the Stars & Stripes in my opinion has done a good job of this.

I guess this is one way to promote your nation:

A friend has sent me an internet video clip, featuring some extremely attractive Israeli women on the beach.

Two young men are struggling with their emotions watching them. "Holy Jesus," they say, as one bikini-clad woman parades in front of them.

"Holy Mother of God" as another bends over to pick up a ball at their feet.  The payoff at the end of the clip? "Israel: No wonder they call it the Holy Land."

What do you think of when you think of Israel? Bombs and bullets or babes and bikinis? You may not have noticed but recently there’s been a concerted effort to sway you towards the latter.

The video is a viral ad. Not for television, but for people to pass round the internet – like my friend did to me. 

Keta Keta, a viral ad agency based in Tel Aviv made it for free. They say they wanted to beautify their country’s image. [Dominic Waghorn, SKY News]

You can view the video below:

What is especially interesting about this is that all of these girls recently completed their mandatory military service for the Israeli Defense Force. 

This video may not have been produced by the Israeli government but the government has learned that sex sells and has allowed former Israeli Defence Force women to appear in a Maxim magazine photo shoot:

It may be controversial but I’m willing to bet it will work. 

Last week an Israeli strike on Syria that destroyed nuclear material acquired from North Korea were first reported.  Now the likelihood of this story has grown substantially with more details of the strike becoming known:

IT was just after midnight when the 69th Squadron of Israeli F15Is crossed the Syrian coast-line. On the ground, Syria’s formidable air defences went dead. An audacious raid on a Syrian target 50 miles from the Iraqi border was under way.

At a rendezvous point on the ground, a Shaldag air force commando team was waiting to direct their laser beams at the target for the approaching jets. The team had arrived a day earlier, taking up position near a large underground depot. Soon the bunkers were in flames.

Ten days after the jets reached home, their mission was the focus of intense speculation this weekend amid claims that Israel believed it had destroyed a cache of nuclear materials from North Korea. [Uzi Mahnaimi, Sarah Baxter, and Michael Sheridan, Times of London]

You have to read this entire article because it offers fascinating details about the Israeli strike and the Syrian acquisition of North Korean nuclear technology.  The article claims the strike happened 50 miles up the Euphrates River from Iraq.  I went ahead and scouted 50 miles up the Euphrates River using Google Earth.  The line below represents exactly 50 miles up the Euphrates River from the Syrian-Iraqi border:

Here is a close up of the area:

If you look around the area you can find a few structures along the hill sides such as this that is similar to nuclear sites found in Iran that the North Koreans have been working on:

Google Earth has detailed imagery of the Iranian nuclear sites but since I can’t get the same level of clarity over Syria it makes it difficult to narrow down possible nuclear sites.  Fellow amateur imagery analysts out there feel free to look around and see if you can locate the Syrian nuclear site.  

Anyway beside the details of the strike, here is what I found most interesting in the Times article:

An expert on the Middle East, who has spoken to Israeli participants in the raid, told yesterday’s Washington Post that the timing of the raid on September 6 appeared to be linked to the arrival three days earlier of a ship carrying North Korean material labelled as cement but suspected of concealing nuclear equipment.

Why do I find this interesting?  Well because back in August look what South Korea sent to North Korea:

"North Korea is having difficulties recovering from the floods because of the shortage of construction equipment and materials," he said at a briefing.

Ministers had decided to send cement, iron bars, trucks, fuel and road restoration equipment to North Korea at the earliest possible time, he said.

On Thursday, South Korea delivered its first consignment of emergency relief aid to its northern neighbour. [BBC]

North Korea so desperately needs cement for reconstruction from the floods yet they send a ship loaded with concrete to Syria?  Was the cement sent to North Korea in August by South Korea the same cement popping up in Syria in September?  Also was this cement intended to make the same type of tunnels and bunker systems that the North Koreans have been making for the Iranians?  I maintained last month that the North Koreans were playing up the flood damage for increased aid for a reason and now we may have found what that reason is. 

I just have to wonder if that boat loaded with cement disguising North Korean nuclear materials was in fact South Korean cement does that make Seoul complicit in nuclear proliferation?  This is the result that unconditional and unmonitored aid to North Korea has resulted in for the South Korean government, being accomplices to nuclear proliferation. 

This story is gaining enough traction that even the US State Department has come out on the record claiming it is possible that Syria acquired nuclear material:

Andrew Semmel, a senior US State Department official, said Syria might have obtained nuclear equipment from “secret suppliers”, and added that there were a “number of foreign technicians” in the country.

Asked if they could be North Korean, he replied: “There are North Korean people there. There’s no question about that.” He said a network run by AQ Khan, the disgraced creator of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, could be involved.

This is a huge admission considering the State Department tends to not want to offend anyone in the name of diplomacy.  The audacity of the Syrians and the North Koreans to pull off such a proliferation stunt just goes to show that these two countries think that President Bush is so politically weak that he would take no action against them if found out.  Such arrogance may end up being the down fall of these two nations. 

If it is proven that North Korea has proliferated nuclear technology severe consequences should be enacted.  Hasn’t the US given Kim Jong-il enough rope to hang himself with?  If this doesn’t justify a naval blockade of North Korea and inspections of all cargo than I don’t know what will.   

Via Coming Anarchy comes news that a US military C-130 has been attacked in the country of Mali of all places:

Gunmen hit a United States military cargo plane flying food to Malian troops fighting rebels in the far north of the country, say officials. No one was injured in the attack and the plane, which had minor damage, landed safely.

US Major Pam Cook, a spokesperson for the American military command in Stuttgart, Germany, that covered Africa, said the C-130 plane was shot at late on Tuesday or early Wednesday over Tin-Zawatine, a desert village on Mali’s border with Algeria.

The US had provided military training and support to Mali and other African nations for years as part of its counterterrorism campaign.

Cook said the Malian troops were "pinned down" in Tin-Zawatine – but it was not clear if their movements were restricted by rebel fire or because the area was heavily mined.

She said the aircraft was struck by gunfire and suffered "minor damage", but landed safely. It did not return fire.

According to a senior Malian military official, the gunmen used Kalashnikov automatic rifles during the attack, which he said occurred just after the plane finished its final food drop early Wednesday. [News24]

Some of you reading this may be surprised that the US has military forces forward deployed in Mali, but the US has actually had forces engaged in the area since 2003 and is currently participating in a major training exercise with the countries in the region:

U.S. military officials are conducting an anti-terrorism training exercise called Flintlock in the Saharan desert with hundreds of military officers from mostly Africa. Some analysts say the U.S. Trans-Saharan Counter-terrorism Initiative is misguided and a waste of millions of dollars. Phuong Tran brings us this report from VOA’s Central and West Africa Bureau in Dakar.

American Colonel Mark Rosenguard has been leading what he calls military theatre exercises in Mali’s capital, Bamako. The participants decide on common problems they face, like drugs and weapons smuggling.

They then work out how they would deal with a regional blowup of those problems.

Colonel Rosenguard says it does not matter who the enemy is. What matters, he says, is that they learn how to work together to solve regional problems

The colonel has been with the counter-terrorism program since it began as the Pan Sahel Initiative in 2003 to prevent terrorism in West Africa’s desert regions, working first with Chad, Mali, Niger and Mauritania.

Two years ago, the program added Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal, and Nigeria. [Phuong Tran, VOA]

Guess who isn’t happy about US involvement in the area?  Can you believe it, the French:

But French criminologist Xavier Raufer with the University of Paris says the program’s biggest problem is that Americans do not understand criminality in the Sahel desert stretching from Senegal to Sudan.

"You have guys arriving in an office and they have pages with questions and answers. They want answers that can fit into a computer," he said. "Such a thing as a 100-percent pure unadulterated bandit or terrorist does not exist in Africa."

Raufer says American attempts to single out potential terrorists from drug and weapons smugglers is ineffective, and potentially dangerous if it builds up to the point of retaliatory U.S. strikes.

"When a cousin is killed fighting for whatever reason, you have got two other cousins replacing him because the basis of a tribal society are the notions of honor and vengeance," he said.  [Phuong Tran, VOA]

No 100 percent terrorists in Africa?  I guess all those terrorists in Morrocco are just misunderstood "smugglers" then?  I guess the Algerian terrorist group which Al Qaida #2 man, Ayman al Zawahiri claimed has allied with Al Qaida are just misunderstood as well?

Other critics claim US involvment in the Sahara is of course all about the oil:

Washington appears to have based its notion on some unpublished sources and Algerian press reports on the banditry and smuggling activities of the outlaw Mokhtar ben Mokhtar. It also misconstrued the Tablighi Jama`at movement, whose 200 or so members in Mali are nicknamed “the Pakistanis” because the sect’s headquarters are in Pakistan. Finally, local government agents told U.S. officials what they wanted to hear.

Notwithstanding the lack of evidence, Washington saw a Saharan Front as the linchpin for the militarization of Africa, greater access to its oil resources (Africa will supply 25% of U.S. hydrocarbons by 2015), and the sustained involvement of Europe in America’s counterterrorism program. More significantly, a Saharan front reinforced the intelligence cherry-picked by top Pentagon brass to justify the invasion of Iraq by demonstrating that al-Qaida’s influence had spread to North Africa. [Jeremy Keenan, Malaysia Today] F

Just like Afghanistan was all about oil as well.  I’m still waiting for Michael Moore’s pipeline there.  The threat of terrorism in the Sahara is probably overstated but to suggest it doesn’t exist and it is all about the oil is ridiculous. 

Two NCOs who signed an opinion article in the NY Times last month have unfortunately died in a tragic vehicle accident:

Two U.S. soldiers whose signatures appeared on an op-ed piece in The New York Times critical of the war in Iraq were among seven Americans killed in a truck accident outside of Baghdad, family members said Wednesday.

Staff Sgt. Yance Gray and Sgt. Omar Mora were members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Gray, Mora and five other soldiers died Monday when their truck overturned near the Iraqi capital, U.S. officials said.

Gray and Mora were among seven soldiers, mostly sergeants, who wrote the op-ed piece that appeared in the Times on August 19. It called the prospects of U.S. success "far-fetched" and said the progress being reported was being "offset by failures elsewhere." [CNN]

Though I fully debunked their article that was used as a hit piece to discredit General Petraeus before he testified, I am saddened that such men who had sacrificed much by serving for an extended period of time and in difficult circumstances in Iraq, would die in a senseless traffic accident.  My thoughts go out to their friends and family along with the friends and family of the other soldiers who died in the accident.  

Of course the commenters from the left are claiming the military intentionally killed them.  Why am I not surprised.