US military warned of S.Korea, Japan cost overruns

AFP/File Jung Yeon-Je

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US government report warned Wednesday that the Pentagon was likely underestimating billions of dollars in costs for a controversial restructuring of bases in South Korea and Japan.

The Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan investigative arm of Congress, pointed in particular to the costs from a plan to allow more US troops in South Korea to bring their families.

The Pentagon "is transforming the facilities and infrastructure that support its posture in Asia without the benefit of comprehensive cost information or an analysis of alternatives," the report said.

US-South Korean FTA Rammed Through

Globalists Expertly & Successfully Wield Terror Against Koreans

South Koreans don't want it, most Americans
don't know about it, and now the US-South Korean
FTA has passed.

Tony Cartalucci, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Under the threat of imminent war, compounded by overtly provocative naval maneuvers, the United States pushed through what was thought to be a tenuous free-trade agreement with South Korea.

Indeed, headlines dominating Korean papers included "Military readies live-fire drills to deter North's provocations" from Yonhap News Agency, and "Defense chief-nominee vows air strikes if attacked" from The Korean Times, as the largest US free-trade agreement since NAFTA silently slipped through.

The free-trade agreement had been shelved during the previous Bush administration three years ago on the heels of massive South Korean street protests and again rebuffed during President Obama's acrimonious visit to Seoul last November. Now signed, the agreement will make it easier for US corporations to enter Korean markets. This includes the US's parasitic banking sector, a prospect that might off-set efforts by Korea's Ministry of Finance to close their markets to the dangerous speculation that has begun a collapse in the West.

Also worth mentioning is that with South Korea locked into the sovereignty-usurping free-trade agreement, bent ever more to the will of the West, reunification of the peninsula under a joint US-South Korean force will have Americans literally on China's doorstep. China may not then be as welcoming or supportive of reunification as the alleged "Wikileaks" suggest.

If the suspicious sinking of the South Korean naval ship Cheonan was linked to America's efforts to rein in the newly assertive Japanese government under Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, then this latest bout of provoked artillery exchange in late November and the subsequent military build-up can be attributed to helping rein in an "overly protective" South Korea.

Hardly unpredictable, America has consistently shored up its position, when tenuous with South Korea and Japan, by provoking North Korea. Respected geopolitical analyst Dr. Webster Tarpley noted during his November 27th radio show that the recent provocations did indeed appear intentional and part of a "classic gambit" designed to drive South Korea and Japan under the protective umbrella of the US.

What is worrying now is whether or not this will send a chill to other nations seeking to protect themselves from the unfolding catastrophic economic collapse taking place in the West, particularly Brazil and Thailand. Both nations have proposed Tobin taxes among other capital flow controls, both have relatively strong economies, but may now be fearing similar "serendipitous" destabilization targeting their respective governments. Already in Thailand the globalist backed "red" color revolution is preparing another round of protests in an attempt to bring back globalist hitman Thaksin Shinwatra.

For the Koreans, their government and media seem to have taken advantage of the perfect smokescreen to hide the passage of this highly unpopular US-FTA behind. It was a smokescreen of such perfect magnitude and timing, of such benefit to the United States, it is painfully obvious that it was yet another reckless and contrived stunt.

For those that question the psychosis of the ruling elite, remember November 2010, when several lives were ended, roughly 73 million lives were threatened, and greater war involving billions risked, so more diseased US beef could be sold and US banks could plant their parasitic proboscis into another thriving, productive economy.

Tony Cartalucci's articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at Land Destroyer.  

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South Korea begins live-fire military drills

BBC

South Korea said the drills were taking place in 29
land and sea locations

South Korea has begun a series of major live-fire exercises despite warnings from the North against conducting them.

The drills are spread off South Korea's east, west and south coasts; the most contentious area - the disputed western sea border - has been largely excluded.

It comes two weeks after North Korea shelled a Southern island in response to previous military exercises there, killing four South Koreans.

North Korea has warned that it viewed any such activity as provocative.

South Korea's new defence minister, installed after the attack on Yeonpyeong island, has said he would use air strikes against the North if it attacks civilians again.

President Barack Obama has urged China to work with the US to send "a clear message" to North Korea that its provocations against South Korea are "unacceptable".

Mr Obama made the appeal in a telephone call to President Hu Jintao.

The US is to host talks on Monday with Japan and South Korea on ways to deal with the North.

All three nations have so far failed to back China's call for a resumption of stalled six-party talks on ending North Korea's nuclear activities.

China is North Korea's most important ally and has been pressured by the US and others to use its influence to rein in Pyongyang.

Washington, Seoul and Tokyo oppose a return to the negotiations until the North shows it is serious about nuclear disarmament.

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South Korea: despatch from the frontline of World War Three

This week's bombardment from their volatile northern neighbours has left South Koreans tired of turning the other cheek

S.K. Soldier training with U.S. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Andrew Gilligan
Telegraph

Jang Gee-Yeon, a tanker-driver on the island of Yeonpyeong, wasn’t scared at first when the North Korean shells started landing. “We’d been told there were going to be exercises, so I thought it was just a misfire,” he said. “Then I got a call saying it was real. I was in shock. I ran up to the village and it was burning in at least thirty places. There could have been more. The smoke was so thick, I couldn’t see everywhere.”

The island only has one small fire engine, so Jang and his colleagues decided to convert their tanker into a lashed-up pump. “We fixed it up so we could spray water from it,” he said. “I drove. There was nobody else. We got a hose and we put out five house fires and three fires on the mountain above the village. We were looking up the whole time, worried that another bomb would land on top of us.”


If Hollywood ever needs somewhere to start World War Three, Yeonpyeong would be a good choice. North Korea is in plain view, about as far away as Portsmouth is from Ryde. A notice at the ferry terminal warns you to call a hotline number if you see enemy frogmen. On Tuesday afternoon, from an artillery base close enough to be visible through binoculars, the North Koreans launched a rather more direct assault.

A whole street of houses and shops in the village stands charred and ruined. Blackened bar-stools and twisted bicycles show the force of the blast, and even three days later the smell of burning remained. Dogs, some of them wounded, run or limp through the streets, abandoned by their owners in the panic to get away. The village is empty of all but journalists. On the boat back, I spoke to a policeman who collected the bodies of the two civilians killed. “One of them was just a totally burnt-out shell, a skeleton,” he said. “The other was scattered, blown apart.”

According to local media, the North Koreans used “hyperbaric,” or fuel-air, explosives – rare and unusually destructive weapons, only just this side of breaching international law. But then the attack itself, Pyongyang’s first, in its own words, “precisely aimed” land assault on South Korea's civilians since the end of the war in 1953, broke wholly new and dangerous ground.

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Expats recalled as North Korea prepares for war

North Korean Workers - Reuters image

Shaun Walker
The Independent

A mass exodus of North Korean workers from the Far East of Russia is under way, according to reports coming out of the region. As the two Koreas edged towards the brink of war this week, it appears that the workers in Russia have been called back to aid potential military operations.

Vladnews agency, based in Vladivostok, reported that North Korean workers had left the town of Nakhodka en masse shortly after the escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula earlier this week. "Traders have left the kiosks and markets, workers have abandoned building sites, and North Korean secret service employees working in the region have joined them and left," the agency reported.

Russia's migration service said that there were over 20,000 North Koreans in Russia at the beginning of 2010, of which the vast majority worked in construction. The workers are usually chaperoned by agents from Kim Jong-il's security services and have little contact with the world around them. Defectors have suggested that the labourers work 13-hour days and that most of their pay is sent back to the government in Pyongyang. Hundreds of workers have fled the harsh conditions and live in hiding in Russia, constantly in fear of being deported back to North Korea.

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International calls for calm after North Korea fires barrage at South Korean island

guardian.co.uk

China, Japan and Germany express their concern about Pyongyang's attack on the island of Yeonpyeong, and call on both parties to resolve their differences peacefully



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China Warns U.S. On Naval Exercises as North Korea Promises Retaliation

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars

China has warned the United States against engaging in military activity on its coastline.

“We oppose any military act by any party conducted in China’s exclusive economic zone without approval,” China’s Foreign Ministry replied in response to a question about the inclusion of a U.S. Aircraft carrier strike group participating in the joint exercise.

The exclusive economic zone is a maritime zone up to 200 nautical miles from a country’s coast.
It was reported today that Obama would be speaking with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao in coming days. China has refused to condemn North Korea’s attack.

The Chinese statement arrives ahead of U.S.-South Korean naval exercises, according to Reuters. Earlier in the week, the Pentagon sent the USS George Washington and four other Navy ships to the Yellow Sea after North Korea shelled South Korean soldiers and civilians in response to South Korean military exercises.

In a statement from the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, the military exercises are described as a measure to show the United States’ “commitment to regional stability through deterrence.” Joint military exercises with the South Koreans begin on Sunday. North Korea has promised “waves of retaliation” if provoked.


Asian experts and political commentators warn the provocative military exercises near the North Korean and Chinese borders may result in war on the Korean Peninsula. North and South Korea have engaged in heightened saber-rattling since the incident earlier in the week.

On Friday, North Korea engaged in artillery drills within sight of the island bombed last week. The attack killed two soldiers and two civilians. Gen. Walter Sharp, the U.S. commander in South Korea, was on the island touring the damage at the time. “None of the latest rounds hit the South’s territory, and U.S. military officials said Sharp did not even hear the concussions, though residents on other parts of the island panicked and ran back to the air raid shelters where they huddled earlier in the week as white smoke rose from North Korean territory,” reports the Associated Press.

“The situation on the Korean peninsula is inching closer to the brink of war,” a report issued by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said. Pyongyang’s military “precisely aimed and hit the enemy artillery base” on the island as punishment for South Korean military drills, said a North Korean official, who also warned of a “shower of dreadful fire” in response to the joint U.S.-South Korean exercises. “Gone are the days when verbal warnings are served only.”

North Korea has the largest artillery force in the world. It maintains 80,000 special forces and is believed to have some 13,000 artillery pieces deployed along the border.

In South Korea, the situation has resulted in political chaos.

Following the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, South Korean president Lee Myung-bak accepted the resignation of his defense minister and ordered more troops and advanced weaponry to the maritime border with North Korea. “We should not ease our sense of crisis in preparation for the possibility of another provocation by North Korea,” spokesman Hong Sang-pyo said, quoting the South Korean president. “A provocation like this can recur any time.” Myung-bak appointed his security adviser Lee Hee-Won as his new defense minister.

“The South Korean media is baying for blood (or at least air strikes), the South Korean defense minister has fallen on his sword, and extra troops have been posted on the outlying islands,” writes Peter Foster for the Telegraph.

“If the North Koreans continue to act in this provocative way, it’s fair to ask the question, where does that all end in terms of South Korea’s ability to simply continue to turn the other cheek,” said Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd. “This question goes to the heart of the political and security order of the world, [and] it’s important, I believe, for China to step up to the plate,” said Rudd after talking to the U.S. secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.

“The pressing task now is to put the situation under control and prevent a recurrence of similar incidents,” said Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi today after talking with Clinton by phone. Yang Jiechi also spoke with the South Korean foreign minister and the North Korean ambassador to China. 

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North Korea Warns: 'Brink Of War'

Lee Jin-man and Foster Klug
Associated Press

YEONPYEONG ISLAND, South Korea — North Korea warned Friday that U.S.-South Korean plans for military maneuvers put the peninsula on the brink of war, and appeared to launch its own artillery drills within sight of an island it showered with a deadly barrage this week.

The fresh artillery blasts were especially defiant because they came as the U.S. commander in South Korea, Gen. Walter Sharp, toured the South Korean island to survey damage from Tuesday's hail of North Korean artillery fire that killed four people.

None of the latest rounds hit the South's territory, and U.S. military officials said Sharp did not even hear the concussions, though residents on other parts of the island panicked and ran back to the air raid shelters where they huddled earlier in the week as white smoke rose from North Korean territory.


Tensions have soared between the Koreas since the North's strike Tuesday destroyed large parts of this island, killing two civilians as well as two marines in a major escalation of their sporadic skirmishes along the sea border.

The attack – eight months after a torpedo sank a South Korean warship further west, killing 46 sailors – has also laid bare weaknesses in South Korea's defense 60 years after the Korean War. The skirmish forced South Korea's beleaguered defense minister to resign Thursday, and President Lee Myung-bak on Friday named a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the post.

The heightened animosity between the Koreas is taking place as the North undergoes a delicate transition of power from leader Kim Jong Il to his young, inexperienced son Kim Jong Un, who is in his late 20s and is expected to eventually succeed his ailing father.

As Washington and Seoul pressed China to use its influence on Pyongyang to ease tensions amid worries of all-out war, the U.S. prepared to send a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to South Korean waters for joint military drills in the Yellow Sea starting Sunday.

The North, which sees the drills as a major military provocation, unleashed its anger over the planned exercises in a dispatch earlier Friday.

"The situation on the Korean peninsula is inching closer to the brink of war," the report in the North's official Korean Central News Agency said.

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Ron Paul: Korea Conflict May Be Orchestrated Crisis To Boost Dollar

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
November 23, 2010

Congressman Ron Paul speculated on the Alex Jones Show today that the war footing between North and South Korea could be an orchestrated crisis to boost the dollar and reverse the US economy, paralleling the RAND Corporation’s call two years ago for the United States to become embroiled in a major war as a means of preventing a double dip recession.

South Korea admitted that it fired the first shots prompting a North Korean retaliation that killed two South Korean Marines and set ablaze many homes on the Yellow Sea border island of Yeonpyeong.

Tensions are running dangerously high after North Korea’s military vowed a “merciless military strike” and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak ordered his military to strike North Korea’s missile base around its coastline artillery positions if the North made any further moves. Japan announced that it was preparing for “any eventuality” while Russia said the events represented a “colossal danger” to peace in the region.

Stock markets sank worldwide while the dollar and gold bullion rallied in response to the news.

Speaking to the Alex Jones Show, Congressman Paul said it was frightening that people in the Obama administration were advocating war as a means of escaping the economic crisis, saying that North Korea stood no chance whatsoever of successfully defeating South Korea in any conflict.

Paul speculated that the US military-industrial complex was, “Doing it deliberately, and sort of orchestrating this in order to have the military-industrial complex benefit and the dollar temporarily benefit.”

As we highlighted two years ago when the story first broke, the RAND Corporation has been aggressively lobbying the Pentagon to become embroiled in a major new war to jump-start a recovery of the US economy and boost profits for the military-industrial complex after the scaling down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Chinese media sources reported that RAND had presented a proposal to the Pentagon that revolved around fostering a conflict with a major foreign power in order to stimulate the American economy and prevent a double dip recession.

Although at the time RAND considered North Korea on its own to be too small a target, any full scale confrontation between the Koreas would embroil the United States on the side of the South and China on the side of the North. If North Korea were to tap its arsenal of nuclear weapons, the entire international community would quickly rubber stamp a US-led military assault on the rogue nation.

Given the fact that North Korea’s nuclear belligerency has its foundations in the best efforts of people like Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush administration, through the AQ Khan weapons trading network, to provide Communist agitator Kim Jong-Il and his hereditary successor with nuclear weapons, the fact that we are now seeing tensions reach boiling point represents a huge opportunity for the US military-industrial complex to manipulate into being the massive war that they have been seeking for years.

—

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.

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North Korea Attack Part Of RAND Plan For Total War?

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
November 23, 2010

The exchange of artillery fire between North and South Korea, which the North says was started by South Korea firing shells during a military drill, could act as the catalyst for a huge new conflict that the RAND Corporation has been lobbying for over the past two years.

The clash, which took place on the Yellow Sea border island of Yeonpyeong, killed two South Korean soldiers and wounded 18 others. North Korea has reportedly fired some 200 shells, setting numerous buildings on fire on the island. Both countries have elevated their threat status and are preparing for potential full out warfare.

As we warned two years ago, the military-industrial complex has been yearning for a new conflict since the invasion of Iraq some seven and a half years ago.

Back in October 2008, we reported on how the RAND Corporation was lobbying for a war to be started with a major foreign power in order to stimulate the American economy and prevent a double dip recession.

The RAND Corporation is a notoriously powerful NGO with deep ties to the U.S. military-industrial complex as well as interlocking connections with the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations.

The RAND proposal, which was reported on by Chinese media sources, brazenly urged that a new war could be launched to benefit the economy, but stressed that the target country would have to be a major influential power, and not a smaller country on the scale of Afghanistan or Iraq.

Although at the time RAND considered North Korea on its own to be too small a target, any full scale confrontation between the Koreas would embroil the United States on the side of the South and China on the side of the North. If North Korea were to tap its arsenal of nuclear weapons, the entire international community would quickly rubber stamp a US-led military assault on the rogue nation.

Given the fact that North Korea’s nuclear belligerency has its foundations in the best efforts of people like Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush administration, through the AQ Khan weapons trading network, to provide Communist agitator Kim Jong-Il and his hereditary successor with nuclear weapons, the fact that we are now seeing tensions reach boiling point represents a huge opportunity for the US military-industrial complex to manipulate into being the massive war that they have been seeking for years.

—

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.

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