Bushspeak: North Korea.

From the transcript of the Presidential news conference.

Do you feel, as you're confronting these problems, the number of troops you've left tied up in Iraq is limiting your options to go beyond the diplomatic solutions that you've described for North Korea, Iran?
BUSH: I appreciate that question.
The person I asked that to -- the person I asked that to, at least, is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, my top military adviser.
I said, Do you feel that we've limited our capacity to deal with other problems because of our troop levels in Iraq? And the answer is no, he doesn't feel we're limited. He feels like we've got plenty of capacity. You mentioned the Korean Peninsula. We've got good capacity in Korea.
We've traded troops for new equipment, as you know. We've brought some troops -- our troop levels down in South Korea, but replaced those troops with more capacity.

What exactly does that mean, that the US has replaced troops in South Korea with more capacity? And is the US military over-stretched as many outwith the administration have been saying since at least 2003? Is the ability of US armed might to deter a possible enemy seriously eroded by heavy committments of manpower and resources in Iraq and Afghanistan?

The US currently has around 37,000 troops in South Korea and was supposed to reduce that number by 12,500 or roughly one third by the end of this year. However, in 2003 the two countries agreed instead to a phased withdrawal that means only 8,000 of those troops will have left by the end of 2005, with the remaining 5,500 not completely gone until 2008. South Korea has increasingly wanted to manage it's own defence and has a stated objective of being totally able to do so by 2010. At that time it is increasingly likely that US troops will be withdrawn from the Peninsula entirely.

The "more capacity" that Bush mentioned refers to an increase of heavy B-1 and B-52 bombers based in the Pacific theatre, as well as units of artillery missiles in Korea itself. However, there is a serious shortfall in air and sealift capacity, with up to 90% of both committed to the Iraqi occupation and it's resupply. If general hostilities were to break out in Korea, then the most the US could do would be to assist the existing forces it has there with airstrikes - until the Iraq occupation is concluded it cannot effectively resupply or heavily reinforce it's Korean forces in event of war.

One 2003 study on the Bush administration's possible responses to North Korea's nuclear program noted:

[The] Pentagon estimates that the casualties of a three month war on the Korean Peninsula would be 50,000 US military casualties, 100,000 South Korean military casualties, untold North Korean casualties, and perhaps more than a million civilian casualties. We do no know how China, Japan, or Russia (or even South Korea, for that matter) will react to such a possibility. China still has a mutual defense treaty with North Korea, after all. Moreover, we cannot eliminate the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons on both sides, or of missile attack on Japan. For these reasons, threatening war on the Korean peninsula, in my opinion, shows reckless disregard for the lives of US troops and those of important US allies.

The possibility of a North Korean nuclear strike on Tokyo or even the US itself has become more real than previously thought, with the admission on Thursday by the Director of Defense Intelligence (DIA) Agency Admiral Lowell Jacoby that "they have the capability" to arm a long range missile with a nuclear device. This revalation has been something the US has been telling it's allies in secret briefings since 2003, but never admitting to the US media and public until now. Now the DIA is trying to pass it's Director's admission of as a slip of the tongue, but what he told Senators was quite clear.

Bush and his administration are walking a tightrope. On the one hand they must downplay the very real danger enough that the American people do not demand direct action that has no chance of happening successfully - certainly not by the almost bloodless standards of the two invasions of Iraq. On the other they must keep the sense of threat alive enough that America will continue to back their diplomatic measures and provide money for programs such as the ballistic missile shield which Bush placed such huge reliance on in his press conference.

I have instructed Secretary Rumsfeld, and I have worked with Congress, Secretary Rumsfeld has worked with Congress to set up a missile defense system. And we're in the process of getting that missile defense system up and running.
One of the reasons why I thought it was important to have a missile defense system is for precisely the reason that you brought up: Perhaps Kim Jong Il has got the capacity to launch a weapon; wouldn't it be nice to be able to shoot it down?
And so, we've got a comprehensive strategy in dealing with him

The trouble is, the nuclear threat is real now - the missile defence system is still some years away from being reality. Not only have most of the tests of key parts of the system been such utter failures that that "the command that is responsible for drawing up the ground-based system’s operating plans and procedures doesn’t yet know exactly what the missile shield can do," the military officials responsible for operating the system are far from clear about who will do what, when and how.

In other words, Bush's "comprehensive strategy" is empty of real options other than to keep US citizen's as much in the dark as possible while hoping diplomacy works.

It's hardly surprising then that promises of "all options" being all the table rang hollow during his press conference. Contrast:
QUESTION: I want to make sure I understand your answer to Mike about North Korea. He asked you how long you were prepared to let the multiparty talks proceed in the face of what might be a gathering threat of North Korea. And you said, How long -- I'm paraphrasing -- How long we let it go on is dependent on our consensus among ourselves.
BUSH: Yes.
QUESTION: Did you mean to say that you will neither refer North Korea to the U.N. nor take military action unless you have the agreement of all the other partners in the process?
BUSH: No, I didn't speak about military -- I was speaking about diplomatically.

with this, a few sentences later:

Are you going to -- you know, when are you going to -- when will there be consequences? And what we want to do is to work with our allies on this issue and develop a consensus, a common approach, to the consequences of Kim Jong Il.
I mean, it seems counterproductive to have five of us working together and then all of a sudden one of us say, Well, we're not going to work together.


Since it is obvious that military action could only follow after the US said "Well, we're not going to work together", it also seems obvious that US threats of military action are as empty as the "comprehensive strategy" Bush calims to have.

Yet the only people he is trying to hoodwink are common Americans. You can be sure that other nation's militaries, including North Korea's, are as aware of the realities as the Pentagon is.