South Korea Draws Up Iraq Pullout Plan As US Army Extends Iraq Tours To 15 Months

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/04/13/ap3609777.html

South Korea, one of the closest U.S. allies in Iraq, is preparing a plan to pull its 1,300 troops out of the country, a Defense Ministry official said Friday.

The South Korean presence in Iraq began in 2003 with a 600-strong contingent. The country sent 3,000 more troops the following year at Washington's request, making it the United States' biggest coalition partner after Britain.

However, the troop levels have since gradually declined amid rising public opposition to the mission. Calls for withdrawing the troops reached their peak when Islamic insurgents beheaded a South Korean civilian working in Iraq in June 2004, after Seoul rejected demands to withdraw its forces. South Korea now has about 1,300 troops in Iraq.

"We're drawing up a mission termination plan and will submit it to the National Assembly in June," the official said on condition of anonymity, citing policy. The official declined to give details.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/04/11/national/w144905D46.DTL&type=politics

Stretched thin by four years of war, the Army is adding three months to the standard yearlong tour for all active-duty soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, an extraordinary step aimed at maintaining the troop buildup in Baghdad.

The change, announced Wednesday by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, is the latest blow to an all-volunteer Army that has been given ever-shorter periods of rest and retraining at home between overseas deployments.

Rather than continue to shrink the at-home intervals to a point that might compromise soldiers' preparedness for combat, Gates chose to lengthen combat tours to buy time for units newly returned from battle. The longer tours will affect about 100,000 soldiers currently in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus untold thousands more who deploy later. It does not affect the Marine Corps or the National Guard or Reserve.

"Our forces are stretched, there's no question about that," Gates said.

[whistle]

1. Didn't the Czarist Russian Army mutiny over similar circumstances

...in July 1917? How much longer will the U.S. Army stay loyal and obedient to Bush?

[NNN0LHI]

2. Not positive of the percentage but I think most of them were conscripts?

I would imagine that would make a difference. It did happen during Vietnam. I remember seeing film of an entire company mutinying on the 6:00 PM news. Happened on some naval ships back then too.

Don

[whistle]

3. An amazing statistic I read was that between the beginning of the war

....in August 17 1914 until Russia finally withdrew from the eastern front in late July 1917, Russia's Czarist army suffered some 8.0 million casualties and countless desertions. The country's incompetent and corrupt system could not supply the necessary equipment to enable the Russian Army to fight a modern war.

By 1917 over 1,300,000 men had been killed in battle, 4,200,000 wounded and 2,417,000 had been captured by the enemy. As the Russian revolution expanded in Petrograd that March of 1917 over 80,000 troops mutinied on the eastern front. The provisional democratic government of Alexander Kerensky did little to ease the conditions on the eastern front as troops were thrown into battle without ammunition, adequate clothing and little of nothing to eat. Kerensky himself lead one final offensive by the Russian forces in July 1917 which failed completely, bringing the Russian participation in WW I to a close, which lead to the beginning of the communist experiment. Communism was to continue for the next 75 years in the USSR, spreading to the European Eastern block countries after WW II, mainland China and other parts of Eastern and Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America and South America.

I wonder how vulnerable Bush's War in South West Asia (Iraq, Afghanistan, perhaps Iran, Syria and North Africa) will make the world again for totalitarian governments to spread and dominate the world?