LOOKS LIKE ITS ON...NORTH VS SOUTH

[birdseye.2]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-11-27-korea-attack_N.htm?csp=24

For an update

[Bearman202]

More info from someone who was there: The U.S. and South Korea normally hold an annual exercise in the spring. The reason for that is that the ground is still frozen, and tanks, etc. can get across the rice paddy's without getting bogged down. The reason for the exercise is that it allows the U.S. to temporarily station a LOT more troops there at the most likely time for a North Korean invasion. Now, the ground is becoming frozen as well, so the U.S. and Korea are having an exercise. The pinheads in charge in the North are still desperate. Now that Kim Jung Il is sick, and circling the drain, he sees his son as his only successor. His oldest son realized what a mess the place was and defected. I heard him one time on the tube, and when asked what was going on in North Korea, he replied that the reporter was going to have to ask them. In other words, he didn't want anything to do with North Korea. I forget where he is living now.

Anyway, in any kind of communist regime, the only thing that the people truely respect is strength, usually military strength. North Korea is that way. In order to stay in power, the ruling regime has to have the support of the military. The people in power keep it that way by making sure the military has food to eat. Several years after I left, there was a drought or something, and North Korea had a food shortage. The people were eating the bark off trees to stay alive. When humanitarian aid finally arrived, you want to guess who got the food first? Anyway, in a time of transition, such as now, the people who are going to take over have to show strength. Kim's kid, being a kid, had to show he was willing to do something really dumb, like lobbing artillery shells across the DMZ. Lobbing shells isn't that unusual, actually. What usually happens, though, is that they lob starlight shells back and forth, in order to see anyone sneaking across the border. Occasionally, one of those shells will dud out, and it will land on a land mine, (you gotta know there's a land mine every two feet near the DMZ) and goes bang. When that happens, the other side lobs a few live rounds back, then everyone sits back and holds their breath.

The whole situation there is nuts. The South Koreans know that if the U.S. leaves, they're toast. They just don't have the military to take on the North. Seems they've realized that the U.S. was going to pick up the military side of things, so they've used their resources to build their industry and whatever. The North spends a lot more on their military, and if they wanted to head south, there isn't a lot the south could do about it. That's the main reason the U.S. Second Infantry Division is stationed along the DMZ. To get to Seoul, the North will have to go through the 2nd D. to get there. Once they do that, we're involved. They called it a trip wire when I was there. To pre-empt something totally stupid by the North, the U.S. sends a carrier battle group to the area any time the North starts acting up, which is what they're doing now.

As someone said, North Korea likes to act stupid, rattling swords, etc. and the U.S. usually offers them a boatload of aid to get them to back down. The problem there is that we're broke right now, and don't have any aid to offer them. It's going to be interesting to see what happens when the people in the North are reduced to eating bark again and nobody is going to send them aid. Interesting times indeed....

[rockriver]

thanks bearman. i appreciate the detail.
--
a couple of thoughts.
yes, we are broke, but somehow our checks on an overdrawn account keep getting cashed!
this week china declares they aren't going to use the american dollar for their trade with russia.. $$ is losing value they say.
and this week china's step child starts shooting.
--
both are big events.. any connection?
--
and bottom line--
to bearman or anyone..

"what if" the North Koreans start it..
and don't stop...
they bust through the u.s. lines and are in seoul on a race track to take over korea.
with china sitting there saying something like, this is a peninsula thing and the u.s. and china should not get involved.
what string of events would happen next?

[Lowdown3]

I'm looking at the debt/riots/austerity issues head westward across Europe- Greece, Spain, Portugal, now Ireland and talk of England. Running out of Europe. What's next to the West?

Our gubmint wouldn't get us into a war to sidetrack us from economic problems would they?

Our gubmint wouldn't be fearing the same riots/protests/problems the rest of those European countries faced, would they?

Our gubmint wouldn't know something we don't know and not share it, would they?

Plan accordingly.

[Klayton]

Well, it has been quite sometime since I was stationed in Area 1, and some stuff is still classified, so here is about all I can say.

I believe it is Camp Page that is the Army Post on the DMZ? I do specifically remember the bridge, "freedom bridge". Large span bridge crossing some bog area for ease of vehicle access to the UN Post and Camp Page (again not sure if I am remembering the name correctly). But freedom bridge has two checkpoints (or atleast it did) manned 24/7. All vehicles accessing the bridge are briefly stopped. At the each end of the bridge are barricades.

Bridge is wired for explosives for when SHTF so NK can't just drive straight in unchallenged. Area surrounding bridge has been mined, so when SHTF bridge goes, then area around bridge has to be travelled and it is mined. Now all this sounds like a good plan,and it is better than nothing. BUT, while I was stuck in that armpit of a country for 18 months we discovered two tunnels large enough for human traffic, and one large enough for tank traffic. YES TANK TRAFFIC!! From NK to SK obviously.

Now Camp Page is known throughout Area 1 as the "speed bump", die in place so to speak. There biggest objective as is all US forces, is to act as a deterrent. NK doesn't attack, because if they kill a few US Soldiers they know they are in a world of trouble. That being said, NK has enough old artillery (recently proven still effective even though dated) to wipe out all Area 1 within 30 minutes (that is all military posts and strategic locations)...

It would be easy to say that NK would walk all over SK if the US was not there.
And our current status with China makes us not so much of a deterrent.

I think it was a mistake the way the SK leader talked to the leader of China. Unless it was lost in translation, he was way to aggressive in his word selection to the world's second (some say first now) superpower.

[Bearman202]

Rockriver, the reason the 2nd Inf. Div. is on the DMZ is just for that purpose. Once the North blows through them, we ARE involved. i.e. we take that as a personal attack and respond. I was stationed about 60 miles from the border, or 30 minutes as the MiG flies. There were several tense situations while I was there. I think the idea would be to try to inflict as much damage as possible while moving troops and supplies into the area. I wondered myself what would happen once we gave up our bases in the Phillipines. We still have a bunch of stuff on Okinawa and Guam. I don't know how many troops we have stationed in mainland Japan though. A lot of it would depend on whether we had a carrier task force off the coast at the time it went down. If we did, we would hammer them pretty good. Some of the Aegis cruisers carry enough missiles to flatten most of the main population centers in North Korea, and I seriously doubt they have the counter-battery stuff to deal with them.

Keep in mind too that the North operates under the communist system, where the military is so tightly controlled it's ludicrous. The average Korean infantry man is disciplined to the extreme, and won't blow their nose without direct orders to do so. The North Korean air force is the same way, requiring direct orders to make any move at all.

What scares me a bit is that all of our technology has never been really tested. We have systems that have never been employed, mainly because of rules of engagement problems. I think those problems may go away if the North heads South. i.e. It could get REAL ugly.

[Bearman202]

Cascade failure in Europe

Lowdown, there was a guy on the radio the other night that talked about this. He said that what was happening was an exact replay of what happened in 1929. First one country needed to be bailed out, so it went to another and asked for help. By providing help, the second country then needed help, and went to a third. By this time, the first one that needed help went down the drain, mostly because they wouldn't address the real problem When they went, they took the second, and when the second went, they took the third, etc.

The talked specifically about Great Britain helping Ireland, then went on to say that the next in line would prob be Portugal, then Italy, and the ball would keep rolling.

My concern right now is that the last extension of unemployment benefits runs out in December. Once that ends, we're going to see a LOT of desperate people right here at home. We still don't have any jobs, (the bailout did not produce ONE single job for this country) and we have a lot more unemployed than they're telling us about. It's getting kinda scary....

[Klayton]

@Bearman202: did you see the youtube video on Ireland's immigration problem? They opened their borders for immigration, and they were flooded with freeloaders who had children on Ireland soil, thus the children are now Ireland native born citizens. Well long story short, these first generation Irish with their immigrant parents are demanding HIGH COST entitlements. Blocking roads and businesses and such. When will people learn that the "I WANT TO BE NICE TO EVERYBODY" is NOT a realistic model to follow? You WILL be taken advantage of, and if left unchecked, WILL financially break YOU!!

[Bearman202]

Klayton, I didn't see that, but I lived in it for nine years in San Antonio. There were fourth-generation welfare families there. I saw 14 year old girls having babies with 17 year old boys. The boy would drop out of school to support his wife, have two or three more kids, then leave. She had three or four kids by the time she was 20, and no job skills whatever. The guys had left because they had no jobs skills either, and couldn't take the pressure of trying to feed 3 or 4 kids. It's one of the main reasons I left there. I just got sick of it. The problem now is that if we do jerk the welfare rug out from under them, there are going to be SERIOUS problems. The pope won't let them use birth control, and the way you prove you're a man in that culture is to make babies. The girls have to do it to "prove" her love, and the end result is a kid that is getting marginal care, being raised by a child who doesn't have much of a clue what she's doing, so the cycle repeats. Actually, in some cases it didn't. There was a routine practice there of taking their kids to the mall, to a toy store, and abandoning them. I would see little kids walking around the toy stores and no mother in sight. I asked the guy working there what was going on, and he told me. He said it happened a couple of times a WEEK.

How do you fix that? Stopping the programs saves us money, but a LOT of children are going to end up in a really bad situation. I have been proposing that we actually HAVE a southern border for over 25 years now, but nothing has changed. The Dems don't want to do it because they're a strong voting block, and the Repubs don't want to do it because they're cheap labor. The people keep coming because they can't afford to live there, but they come with the idea of making a ton of money and then going back. They feel NO obligation to do anything for the U.S. other than strip-mine it. Frankly, I think they need to be encouraged to stay in their own country and clean it up. Whether they can do it now or not, I don't know. The drug cartels are getting as much or more power than the central government, so if they did come to serious blows over it, it would be bloody. Simply put, the govt. there let them get too big. There is already a bit of a civil war going, and it's a toss-up which side is going to win.

[All Talk]

My thought about the geopolitical situation over there is that we need to figure out a finesse to eliminate the state of North Korea. It seems to me, any of the following three options would work for us in the long run.

1) The South takes the north, probably with help, and unifies a la Germany. China would not like this, but would have to be onboard in advance.
2) China occupies and annexes the north, a la Tibet. the south won't like it, but we should. We already have a china problem -- why can't we finesse them into taking NK so that it can no longer act as a "crazy" proxie.
3) china and the south partition NK, for good. Might be the most feasible combination of #1 and #2.