UPDATE #2: The Stars and Stripes now has an English language report out that clarifies what happened. It was just one soldier involved in the incident and this soldier was in fact and MP and is a 8th Army soldier stationed in Yongsan. The 2ID bashing can stop now.
For some of you non-military types out there that have always wondered what it is like to eat a military MRE (Meal Ready to Eat), here is one person’s guide to eating one that may be of interest to you.Â
Just for the record I really don’t mind eating MRE’s. I think this is something the Army does very well. They are light to carry, can be eaten hot with a heater inside each package, are filling, and most of them do taste decent. If something does not taste good to you, you always have the option of adding Tabasco sauce to it. My all time favorite MRE is chicken & salsa, good stuff as far as Army food goes.
If you haven’t done so already you might want to check out your MyPay account:
Investigators are looking into how some myPay users had their accounts hacked, said Defense Department spokesman Lt. Col. Brian Maka.
Operated by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, or DFAS, myPay allows all servicemembers and Defense Department civilians to check their finances online.
About two dozen myPay users have had their accounts hacked over the past eight months, probably after their personal information was stolen from their home computers using spyware, a DFAS official said in a Wednesday e-mail to Stars and Stripes. There are about 3.7 million myPay users.
Remember when I said the Kurds want less Zaytun and more Hyundai? Well I’m willing to bet that this week may be the beginning of that:
"Roh will make an official visit to Saudi Arabia from Saturday through Monday, a state visit to Kuwait on Monday and Tuesday and an official visit to Qatar from Tuesday through Thursday before returning home Friday," Cheong Wa Dae said in a press release.
"Through the trip, the president will seek to provide an opportunity to expand South Korea’s partnership and cooperation with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in the fields of energy resources, infrastructure construction, defense industry and information technology," said the office.
It noted some 200 South Korean business leaders will accompany the president on his Middle East swing, seeking to support his sales diplomacy and establish human networks through business forums, symposiums and various industrial exhibitions.
Three days in Qatar? I’m willing to bet one of those days is for a surprise trip to Kurdistan, to visit the Zaytun unit. I think it would be a good thing to do, to support the troops there and to unleash those 200 business leaders on Kurdistan. Those 200 business leaders can do more for Kurdistan than Zaytun unit is doing now.Â
UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon had a scare while visiting Iraq today:
A rocket landed near the prime minister’s office Thursday during the first visit to Iraq by the head of the United Nations in nearly a year and a half, sending Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ducking unharmed behind a podium at a news conference.
The attack came as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government said it had been negotiating with Sunni insurgents for months, and the U.S. military said that it had released a senior aide to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on al-Maliki’s request.
The rocket caused no injuries but rattled the building in the heavily guarded Green Zone, sent small chips of debris floating from the ceiling, and left a one-metre-wide crater about 45 metres away outside.
I saw the video on the news and it did appear Ban was quite rattled. You can tell Maliki has gotten used to rockets attacks because he seemed to be quite composed and tried to continue the news conference before ending it on Ban’s request. It is amazing the strategic consequences one rocket can have. That one rocket attack is now being broadcast around the world, which is great propaganda for the terrorists. That is why they continue to radomly fire rockets hoping they can get lucky and get great propaganda news coverage. Notice none of the stories you will read about this attack will mention anything about the random rocket and mortar attacks that by far kill more civilians than any military target.Â
The North Korean nuclear negotiator has confirmed my prior suspicions that the North Koreans have no intention of giving up the nuclear weapons they currently have:
The remarks therefore suggest that the nuclear weapons Pyongyang has already built are not on the agenda at this stage, hinting that separate negotiations from the six-way framework will have to tackle them. That in turn suggests that the five countries — South Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan — have accepted North Korea’s position that the nuclear weapons themselves are not at issue in the talks, a position it has taken since a Sept. 19, 2005 statement of principles.
North Korea reiterated the position when it returned to the six-way talks in December. North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-kwan said in Beijing on Dec. 22 that the North wants to discuss the issue of nuclear weapons when it no longer feels threatened because the U.S. has ended its “hostile†policy toward the North and mutual trust has been built up. “
North Korea has no intent to give up their weapons. They are just trying to get what they can from the international community without giving up the half dozen nukes they now possess. These nuclear weapons ensure regime security from an outside attack; that is something more valuable to a dictator like Kim Jong-il than any incentive the international community could give to him.
While North Korea is trying to get what they can in these negotiations, the US side is trying to maneuver the negotiations to where the perception that is created when these talks ultimately fail, which they will, it will be clear that the North Koreans are the ones to blame. I am very pessimistic about this because I think no matter how these negotiations fail the US both politically and in the media will be blamed even when it is not the US’s fault.
The list of critics to the current policy is growing now with the resignation of Robert Joseph from the State Department who advocated financially strangling the North Korean regime. Keep in mind that John Bolton as well has come out strongly against the current Administration’s North Korea policy.
Only time will tell who is right.
You can read more over at DPRK Studies.
Via OFK, is this fine report from Michael Totten about his trip to Kurdistan in northern Iraq. In his report he mentions this about the ROK Army Zaytun unit serving in Iraq:
Iraqi Kurdistan is technically occupied by a foreign power, but this occupation surely ranks among one of the most absurd in human history. Dr. Ali Sindi, advisor to Prime Minister Nechervan Barzani, told me that South Korea is the official occupier of “Northern Iraq.†Korean soldiers are stationed just outside Erbil in a base near the airport. He laughed when he told me the Kurdish military, the Peshmerga (“those who face deathâ€), surround the South Koreans to make sure they’re safe.
Andy at the Marmot’s Hole feels that Totten is slighting the ROK Army’s contributions in Iraq. I have been posting on the ROK Army deployment since its inception and here is a roundup of my thoughts on this issue.
For background on this posting I highly recommend you read my prior postings here and here. Anyway, today officially marks the day the Appeal for Courage petition has overtaken the Appeal for Redress petition. As of this posting Appeal for Courage has had 1,730 signatures compared to Appeal for Redress’s 1,727 signatures. Courage has overtaken Redress despite Redress being covertly backed by large liberal activist groups and supported by the largest liberal public relations firm in the country, Fenton Communications, which receives George Soros money. Additionally Redress was formed by a former Amnesty International member who was planted into the military in an effort to create a perception of a "grassroots" uprising within the ranks against the President’s policy in Iraq.
Redress was launched last October before the mid-term elections and due to Fenton Communications it has been featured in past few months in hundreds of newspapers, a CBS News 60 Minutes special, and backed by Yahoo to name a few prominent media supporters. Despite all of this, Appeal for Courage has overtaken Redress in just 37 days with very little media publicity. This is a real grassroots effort, much like the Gathering of Eagles this past weekend, that will receive very little media attention despite outnumbering those who the mainstream media is giving all the coverage to.Â
The Asia Sentinel has some a strong view on the latest Macau Bank deal being negotiated between the US and North Korea.Â
