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The ROK military wants to develop their own missile defense system by 2008.  Does that mean 35th ADA BDE can go home?

UPDATE: I just saw a report on this on Anderson Cooper 360 today and of course they slanted and twisted the facts as well.  For one the suicide rate of 19.9 per 100,000 soldiers in Iraq, CNN said was higher than the average civilian suicide rate.  Yes it is higher than the average suicide rate, but it is not higher than average suicide rate of the civilains of the same age group and gender of those who committed suicide as General Kiley pointed out in the below Reuters article, but CNN conveniently left this information out of their Anderson Cooper piece.  They did make sure to harp on how they believe the suicide rate is going up due to increased deployments even though General Kiley in the below Reuters piece says the statistics don’t support it, especially when the average suicide rate of the last two years when combined is lower than the 2003 level, which of course CNN conveniently didn’t mention at all either.

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The media is running big headlines like this recently, US Soldiers’ Suicide Rate in Iraq Doubles in 2005.  Sounds pretty grim right?  Well let’s look at the actual facts:

Twenty-two U.S. soldiers in Iraq took their own lives in 2005, a rate of 19.9 per 100,000 soldiers. In 2004, the rate was 10.5 per 100,000 and in 2003, the year of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the figure was 18.8 per 100,000.

The figures cover U.S. Army soldiers only. They do not include members of other U.S. military services in Iraq such as the Marine Corps.

Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the Army’s surgeon general, cautioned against overinterpreting the figures, saying suicide rates tended to fluctuate from year to year.

“We think that the numbers are so rare to begin with that it’s very hard to make any kind of interpretation,” he said at a news conference to present a study on the mental health of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

“We have not made a connection between the stress on the force and some massive or even significant increase in suicides,” he said.

While every suicide was one too many, Kiley said, the suicide rate among soldiers was lower than the average among civilians of the same age and gender.

So the truth comes out at the very end of the article.  Basically the minute number of soldiers who did commit suicide this year in the Army while stationed in Iraq is actually near identical to the 2003 number and if you take an average of the suicide rate from the last year than the overall number is actually much lower than the 2003 number.  Then the article concludes with the information that if your kid joins the military and goes to Iraq he/she is less likely to commit suicide compared to if he/she just stayed at home where the civilian percentage is higher.  Yet, the big headline is the rise in suicides in the military.

Why doesn’t the MSM come up with a fairer headline of, US Army Suicide Rate Rises, But Still Lower than Civilian Rate.  Aren’t these fairer headlines?  However, the MSM is not about fairness, it is about framing left/right issues and the military suicide rate is something they are trying to frame as soldiers committing suicide because of too many deployments because that is what the left wants you to believe even though the statistics do not support it.  I can guarantee you one thing, if the suicide rate goes down next year, you will hear nothing about it.  It is just like with recruiting numbers, as long as the military continues to make it’s recruiting numbers you will hear nothing about it, but if the military misses it’s recruiting mark for one month than it will be front page news.

The forum AAFES Sucks is looking for feedback from soldiers stationed in Asia.  So if you have a gripe with AAFES they want to hear from you.  One of my favorite gripes with AAFES in Korea was with a Class VI store that always had products that I could see in its back store room that for some reason would never make it out on to the store’s shelves.

We have yet to hear anything from the Pentagon yet on the South Korean government power play to delay the Camp Humphreys expansion to 2013, but a USFK spokesman says things are going to continue as planned:

Workers will proceed as scheduled in getting land ready for the expansion of Camp Humphreys despite reports of a possible five-year delay in the move of U.S. forces there, the U.S. military said Friday.

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Nevertheless, work will start soon on the first section of a 2,328-acre tract outside Humphreys onto which the post will expand its boundaries, said Lawrence M. Monaco, deputy director of the Project Integration Office at U.S. Forces Korea (Advance Element) headquarters on the camp.

The first section, or Parcel 1, occupies about 200 acres. Workers are to cover it with an estimated 3 million cubic yards of landfill and put in roads and a drainage system.

“There’s absolutely no delay in progress on Parcel 1,” Monaco said, noting that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded a $29.7 million contract to Seohee Construction Co. Ltd. of Seoul in November.

“The contractor has been selected, the contract’s awarded, the notice to proceed was given in November,” Monaco said. “We don’t yet have the contractor’s full work schedule, but we know that by mid-January he will be establishing his office on Parcel 1 and will be mobilizing equipment and personnel to begin work.

“In short…” Monaco said, “it’s working as advertised.”

What USFK says it is going to do doesn’t really matter.  What is going to matter is what the Pentagon says about this and apparently as the Korean government probably expected, the Pentagon appears to be more concerned with transition between the outgoing and incoming Defense Secretaries followed by the Christmas holidays to respond to the South Korean announcement.  It looks like this will probably drag on past the holidays before the Pentagon responds.

Don’t you just love how the Korean media finds anyone with any connection to Korea to glorify their Korean mother or in this case, this astronaut’s Korean grandmother.

Korea’s first Playboy model, Lee Sabi has new nude pictures coming to a mobile phone near you. Only in Korea is this national news.

Japan Probe has an interesting posting about a letter sent by a Japanese General on Iwo Jima to President Roosevelt. This General’s views about WWII are almost word for word what is taught at Yasukuni.

What you won’t see on the front page of your newspaper. US Military meets recruiting goals yet again. US Army leads the way with a 105% recruiting total.

UPDATE: Nomad is absolutely “shocked” by the Camp Humphreys delay announcement.

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Will this be the straw that broke the camel’s back of the US-ROK Alliance? From the Marmot’s Hole:

A government source told Yonhap that it looks like transfer of the U.S. garrison at Yongsan to Pyeongtaek, originally scheduled to take place in 2007, would be delayed by five years to late 2013.

A source from one of the related government ministries said the possibility of completing the transfer by 2008 as scheduled was currently low, and that Korean government ministries handling the move were actively discussing a plan to delay the transfer from Yongsan and the competition of new base facilities in Pyeongtaek to 2013.

The government will reportedly announce this plan sometime next week.

The source said the change in schedule was necessary due to delays in discussions between authorities connected to the move and setbacks caused by protests from residents and civic groups.

I agree with Robert’s analysis that the Korean government is trying to stop the relocation since Secretary Rumsfeld has been removed from the Pentagon. They are testing the new Defense Secretary Robert Gates who is scheduled to be sworn in on December 18th.

Those of us who have served in Korea for awhile knew the 2008 timeline wasn’t going to happen, but 2013 give me a break? The Korean government has never wanted to allow the USFK relocation to Camp Humphreys just like they have never really wanted to take operational control from USFK either. Both the Yongsan and the operational control issues have long served as great cannonfodder by South Korean politicians looking to demagoge the issue to their own political advantage. Plus the Koreans have never wanted to fully fund the move despite all the prime real estate they are gaining from the closed out USFK facilities. Heck they won’t even properly fund the US-ROK Alliance while giving over a billion dollars to North Korea a year!
You also have the Fifth Column in South Korea, organized by North Korean agents that want to stop the move because North Korea wants to keep 2ID and USFK locked into their current locations that are well within artillery range of North Korea which would mean their easy destruction during war time. Additionally the locations of the bases, particularly Yongsan have been completely surrounded by urban cities which has led to accidents and incidents with the Korean public that gets demagoged by the North Korean sponsored anti-US activists groups in order to draw a wedge between USFK and the general Korean public. The consolidation of US forces would remove all US forces out of North Korean artillery range and additionally under the ballistic missile protection of US Army PATRIOT missile batteries. This would create better force protection for USFK forces along with giving USFK commanders more flexibility during war time.

It will be interesting to see the Pentagon’s reaction if this 2013 timeline is true. I tend to think that the Pentagon would accept a 2009 relocation time line that would coincide with a 2009 handover of operational control. A 2013 timeline is just an effort to further push this issue down the road and hope the Pentagon gives up on it just like what the Korean government is doing with the operational control issue.
I think it may be close to ultimatum time. Is it too late to bring General Trexler out of retirement?

Nomad has the latest on a survey taken about the attitudes of Pyeongtaek residents on the USFK relocation to Camp Humphreys:

 Out of 1,000 people surveyed in the Pyeongtaek area by the Gyeonggi Research Institute, 41.9 percent said they had a positive perception of the planned Camp Humphreys expansion, 38.3 percent said they disliked or strongly disliked the addition of more troops, and 19.8 percent didn’t care one way or the other.  When asked how they feel about the proposed relocation of 2ID to their area, one in four people said they strongly disliked the move – mainly because unlike Yongsan, 2ID is made up of mostly single personnel.

First of all let me say I am always skeptical of polls taken in Korea, but the results on this one sound about right.  Basically you have over 60% of the population who either support or don’t care one way or the other about the relocation of USFK to Camp Humphreys.  I actually find these numbers encouraging because for the last year the USFK relocation to Camp Humphreys has been hit with constant anti-US demonstrations organized by North Korean agents and the issue has been demagoged continuously by Korean activists and politicians to advance their own agendas.  Heck the demagoging of the Camp Humphreys issue was even picked up by American leftist Cindy Sheehan.  Despite all of this the leftists and spies still couldn’t sway the majority of public opinion in Pyeongtaek against the relocation.  It is an encouraging sign that the South Korean love affair with leftism and anti-Americanism is slowly waning.