Archive for January, 2007
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 31, 2007 at 7:44 am · Filed under An Alliance?, Anti-Americanism, Korean Society, China & Korea, U.S. Military, U.S. & Korea
South Korea expressed concern over “undiplomatic” remarks made by the top U.S. military officer here regarding possible delays in the relocation of U.S. military bases, a Foreign Ministry official said yesterday. [link]
Background here. The Foreign Ministry would also like you to know that this is not an “official” warning; it’s really just the diplomatic equivalent of a fix-it ticket. No fine, no court appearance. Guess that “I support the alliance” bumper sticker paid off after all.
“The comment (made by Gen. Bell) could produce unnecessary misunderstandings, so we delivered an indirect message asking him to be cautious about making comments,” the ministry official said on condition of anonymity.
Maybe someone should ask the Chosun Ilbo to ask the South Korean government to clarify some of these statements. Collectively, they’ve caused me to labor under the unnecessary misunderstanding that smarmy Korean cabinet ministers demagogue their people with mendacious cheap shots at their country’s primary benefactor. Personally, I think the best way for South Korea to avoid misunderstandings would be to abide by its agreements instead of doing its North Korea act by reneging on them in the press. If ever there was a time for someone to really tell the MOFAT to self-copulate, this is that time. As I explained here, I’m actually starting to think that we draw this sort of abuse and the anti-Americanism to which it contributes because we’ve been much too obsequious with South Korea.
This, folks, is as quiet as the quiet diplomacy gets when South Korea has differences with the United States. In unrelated news, we still have complete media silence on the Foreign Ministry’s “protest” against China’s repatriation of these nine family members of its Korean War POW’s. After all, it would be counterproductive to allow some unguarded speech that could offend China, given all that China does to contribute to South Korea’s security and prosperity.
ht.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 30, 2007 at 11:15 pm · Filed under UCMJ & SOFA
I started commenting on this thread on The Marmot’s Hole, responding to someone who may or may not have been beaten by Korean police after a drunken “protest.” This drew a few responses, including this one from fellow lawyer Brendan Carr:
To my way of thinking, private lawyer is a waste (and I’m one of the private lawyers) — TDS counsel take great pride in fighting for their clients’ rights and contrary to your expectations, TDS counsel have no fear of reprisals from “the system”. Servicemembers often don’t believe it, but it’s 100% — maybe 110% — true; this is because we lawyers have employment possibilities Military judge advocates, when assigned as defense counsel, are rewarded for sticking it to the command. “A Few Good Men” is a joke in many respects, but it accurately portrays the commitment military defense lawyers have to their clients. So don’t waste your money. Joshua, that’s right, isn’t it?
After writing a long comment about a subject I care about very deeply, it occurred to me that I have a blog of my own, so I opted to post that comment here. I was a JAG lawyer for seven and a half years. I was in Korea for four of those years, which includes two years as a Defense Counsel and one as a Senior Defense Counsel. What follows is mainly aimed at commanders and NCO’s who want to make sure their soldiers get good help when they need it. I have to add the disclaimer that it’s not legal advice; it’s really advice about picking the people who will give the advice, to which I’ve added some common sense.
So, in response to Brendan’s question:
Mostly, yes. I won’t say that there is never command pressure on defense lawyers, but I will say that it’s rare, and that few if any of the TDS (Trial Defense Service) lawyers I’ve known would care anyway, because threatening or even subtly pressuring a defense lawyer is a potential career-ender. I did once have a JAG Colonel make subtle threats against me, but I didn’t give a shit — in fact, I found found a polite way to tell him just that. Like most TDS attorneys, I took great pride in defending my clients, and to this day, I’m proud of the cases I won … and haunted by those I did not. I still know a few of the JAG community at USFK and among them are some truly first-class people who care deeply about their fellow soldiers. I cannot say that I know any of the TDS lawyers, however.
There are also a few medal-hunting TDS lawyers out there who worry a lot more about MCM’s, OER’s, ORB’s, and shiny boots than their clients. It almost takes another lawyer to spot them, but these tend to have lots of high-speed tabs and wings and a burning desire to get the soldier to plead guilty before they really know if there’s enough to convict him on. No question, fessing up is often the right thing to do and the smart way to go, but if your lawyer doesn’t even want to hear the soldier’s story and question the evidence before telling you to “sign here,” you probably got the wrong lawyer.
It used to be that TDS lawyers had all been prosecutors. Recently, that rule has slipped. I think prosecutorial experience is irreplaceable, and if it was me on the line, or one of my soldiers, I’d definitely want a lawyer who had it. Yes, it’s OK to ask. If the lawyer is a 1LT, he probably does not have prosecutorial experience. Also, if they give your soldier a total dishrag for a lawyer, the soldier can respectfully ask CPT Dishrag or his Senior Defense Counsel for another lawyer. But then, keep reading, because having the right lawyer matters much more in some cases than in others.
In those cases where there’s clearly enough evidence to prove guilt, the lawyer ought to ask the soldier nosy questions about drinking and family issues and Juicy that may bear on his potential for rehabilitation (if you’re the NCO, you should already know all of those answers, although I found that some did not). The best lawyers actually talk to the NCO’s about those things, although there’s not always time if it’s just a company grade.
If the soldier is facing a court-martial or a board and there’s a particular lawyer he’d rather have, ask about “individual military counsel.” As for civilian defense counsel, most of the ones I knew did not add value to the client’s defense. I have known some to do truly bone-headed things that turned their clients into one-meter targets for JAG prosecutors. I did work with one who was top-notch, but you’d need to be in a lot of trouble before it would be worth paying him.
Of course, the more the soldier runs his mouth, the less a lawyer can do for him at any price. And there are times when even the best lawyer just can’t win with the evidence he has.
The question that follows this is just how much the right lawyer matters. That depends on the evidence and stakes. In my experience, most commanders go into an Article 15 having pretty much made up their minds. The best lawyers are always probing for that rare case when they can get a commander to consider suspending a bust, or not reducing the soldier in rank, or even considering a bar to reenlistment instead. Generally, however, there’s limited room for maneuver in an Article 15. In a court-martial, having the right lawyer makes all the difference. It will very often make the difference between jail and freedom, or determine whether the soldier faces a lifetime of telling prospective employers about a prior criminal conviction. Given identical cases, different lawyers often achieve remarkably different results. Some lawyers always go for a guilty plea; some will fix bayonets and win cases that others won’t fight. After a while, that becomes apparent in a lawyer’s success record, and those records vary dramatically.
I do have great confidence in the Army’s Trial Defense Service generally, but unfortunately, I cannot express the same confidence in the Korean civilian attorneys who defend soldiers in Korean courts. Maybe things have improved recently, but not one of my clients ever breathed a single good word about his Korean lawyer, which is disgraceful. Most of them seemed to be in it to collect their flat fees for the minimum amount of work. We are supposed to have Trial Observers, but I don’t personally feel that the Trial Observers always feel free to speak their minds. This is where caring officers and NCO’s make all the difference. If your soldier doesn’t get good representation, I recommend you keep careful notes of your experience and ask for another lawyer. Here is a major weakeness the system needs to improve.
More advice for commanders and NCO’s: make sure your designated SOFA observer actually knows the SOFA and the rights it affords. While Korean language skills are obviously very useful when dealing with Korean police, it’s better to have an assertive SOFA observer who will intervene to protect the soldier’s SOFA rights than one who understands the questions being asked.
All in all, however, a soldier accused in a Korean court is still better off following his Korean lawyer’s advice very strictly, because that’s the only alternative you have, and their system is just very different from ours. I have found that in Korean society, an apology is often the right thing and the smart thing to do. I wish more JAG attorneys and commanders would learn this. I would never do it, or force a soldier to do it, unless the soldier has seen a lawyer first.
Another good tip for a Korean trial would be to bring some No-Doz for the judge. I had two cases where very reliable witnesses swore under oath that their judges were asleep during the trials.
If you remember nothing else, remember this: five percent of the soldiers cause 80% of the trouble. A 19 year-old ASAP failure with two prior Article 15’s and a string of negative counselings probably should not have off-post pass privileges. They call it a “privilege” because you can’t sue someone for taking it away from you. Some people can behave off post; for everyone else, there’s Playstation III and the video rental at the Shopette. Of course, this is very general, common-sense stuff. For more specific disciplinary issues, the command’s advisor is the Trial Counsel.
If you’re interested, you can read more information on SOFA issues and the law in Korea in my testimony.
I hope this is of some use to NCO’s who truly take to heart the creed about taking care of soldiers, because in my experience, a good squad leader or platoon sergeant is worth more to a soldier in trouble than a whole team of lawyers. When I think back on the people I truly respected in the Army, it was really the E-6’s and E-7’s who actually tried to help good soldiers straighten themselves out.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 30, 2007 at 6:02 pm · Filed under NK Economics, Six-Party Talks, Diplomacy, Counterfeiting, Money Laundering
President George Bush has told the Treasury Department, which has been handling financial sanctions regarding North Korea, to cooperate with the State Department regarding the six-party talks, sources in Washington said. Nevertheless, the cooperation comes with a catch. Washington has said the Treasury Department should cooperate only when Pyongyang promises at the next round of the six-party talks to take measures to “disable” its Yongbyon nuclear reactor. [link]
Later, the article specifies that “disable” means something irreversible that falls short of “dismantlement,” the “D” in “CVID.” Pyongyang wants us to settle for IAEA inspections, which would assuredly be as meaningless and inconsequential as they’ve recently proven to be in Iran. Brian Lee co-reported the story, which makes this pretty much the gold standard of Korean journalism. So consider my skepticism about this statement a reflection solely on our own government:
Washington is keen not to repeat the mistakes of the Clinton administration, which brokered the Agreed Framework in 1994.
If you say so.
Meanwhile, Treasury’s Daniel Glaser is meeting with the North Koreans to discuss the investigation and the PATRIOT 311 designation on Banco Delta Asia. State and Treasury seem to have been living in separate universes in their North Korea policies, and as bungled as that sounds, Treasury’s dry and businesslike approach to its concerns is a thing to behold. I’d love to see that approach continue, if only as a controlled diplomatic experiment.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 30, 2007 at 5:50 pm · Filed under Anti-Americanism, Korean Society, U.S. Military, U.S. & Korea
The Joongang Ilbo (among others) writes about discontented foreigners, but disappoints by limiting itself to the financial issues faced by a limited cross-section of foreigners:
Let’s think about what it will be like if they return to their mother countries with mistrust and hate in their hearts. It will have a boomerang effect on Korean businessmen and students who are abroad. In this globalizing world, must we cut ourselves off through this exclusive attitude? [link]
Yes, and this recognition is a step in the right direction, but the papers that are picking up this story forget that the same happens at a much faster rate with U.S. military personnel, particulary the 97% who are behaving like soldiers. What I often sense about Korea’s flashes of social introspection is that they don’t account for the soldier’s view, perhaps because the U.S. military presence is now so laden with political baggage, but just as possibly out of some Rangelian assumption that soldiers are persons of low social status, meaning they can be mistreated without fear of consequence. The same could just as well apply to a laborer from Bangladesh who is mistreated at work or cheated out of his wages.
It is defensible — though obviously self-defeating – to respond to an expat’s complaints about the difficulty of getting a credit card by saying, “Then go somewhere else.” I’m sure plenty have done just that, and many Koreans can see that this bears a cost in global connectivity. But that’s the wrong answer to give to a soldier who never wanted to be assigned to Korea, and who then comes face-to-face with this. Believe me: that bears a cost, too.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 29, 2007 at 8:35 pm · Filed under Defectors, Kremlinology
“People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.”
– George Orwell, 1984
Today, the Dong-A Ilbo reports a surprising defection, and an unsurprising, yet on some level, rather remarkable result:
Recently, rumors have been spreading in North Korea that Jeong Ha Cheol (74-year-old), the propaganda secretary of the Workers’ Party, has defected from North Korea, stirring public sentiment.
Party officials have been going door-to-door to remove traces of Jeong from publications without giving any reason. Officials are painting over Jeong’s face with black ink on any pictures that show Jeong accompanying North Korean leader Kim Jong Il or its former leader Kim Il Sung. They are also censuring his name with black ink if there are any passages that include his name and sealing the book. Moreover, writings by Jeong have been torn to pieces. All households which have a few dozens of those books now are required to get rid of them since most North Korea publications are propaganda books.
The Daily NK adds this eerie pic:
The Ken Gause Guide to North Korean Apparatchiks does not list Jeong (or Jung) as having been on all of the main funeral committees, although the Dong-A makes it sound as if he had a long and distinguished career spooning out the official pablum. Among other jobs he held were Editor in Chief of the Rodong Sinmun and at least one job Kim Jong Il himself once held. He was apparently a close confidant of Kim until last seen in 2005. Then, nothing but a few rumors:
Some sources said that he was imprisoned at a concentration camp in North Pyongan Province because his faults were revealed during an intensive investigation into the staff of Central Broadcasting who was caught drinking during the daytime.
According to the sources, Jeong was sentenced as “a traitor against the party and revolution,” and was ordered to be erased from all the records, including publications. In short, he is unlikely to regain his power since he has been completely shunned by North Korean society.
This being North Korea, the vaporization process naturally has its own Confucian characteristic:
All these people were involved in the so-called, “August Clan Incident.” The names of the children of Kim Sung Ae, Kim Il Sung’s third wife, who fell from political power and Seo Gwan-hee, former agricultural secretary of the Workers’ Party, who was shot to death on charges of espionage, were also removed from publications. You can see black marks quite often on North Korean political books. In North Korea, it is a principle that if one is accused of a serious crime, his or her family members and relatives (father’s side: up to second cousins, mother’s side: up to first cousins) are also sent to concentration camps or deep in the mountains, as it happened in the feudal age.
The remainder of the article speculates on the possible reasons for Jeong’s defection, including rumors of corruption, and notes other cases where senior officials were reportedly vaporized the same way. As with all reports on North Korean Kremlinology, it would be pretty interesting if actually true. It would mean that Hwang Jang Yop was no aberration, and that even within the regime’s ideological core, doublethink has become disillusionment and dissent.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 29, 2007 at 7:19 am · Filed under China & Korea, Censorship, History
Update: Yup — called it. The netizens’ charge of the ChiCom lines was repulsed, and the South Korean government leads the panicky flight … like 1951 all over again. North Korea, whose physical boundaries are at the center of the dispute (more), is no doubt preparing its latest draft North-South statement on Tokdo. So what do the Chinese know that we don’t?
=========================
It’s pretty thin gruel if you read the report, but on the other hand, China is in a much better position to grab Paektusan than Japan is to grab Tokdo, and much more likely to actually do it. Plus, if Korea lost Paektusan, it might actually miss it.
Seoul and Beijing have been at odds in the past over Chinese claims to about 400,000 square kilometers (154,440 square miles) of territory that is roughly centered on Mount Paekdu. Beijing has claimed the area is “historically Chinese,” but this assertion has irked Seoul as it includes ancient Manchurian kingdoms, such as Goguryeo and a successor state called Balhae, as being part of China’s history.
I wonder how many VANKers will go to MOPP-4 and bounding overwatch over this one. Prediction: few. For one thing, the fact that Paektu is split between China and North Korea undermines the North’s claim as the authentic bearer of Korea’s nationalist standard. For another, no one believes China would just sit by quietly and allow itself to become the object of netizen “cyberterrorism,” which is a creative pretext for censorship if I’ve ever seen one. South Koreans may attack the United States and Japan freely, but China would do what it did when the Dalai Lama asked for a visa: it would exercise its veto.
(pic)
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 29, 2007 at 1:36 am · Filed under Korean Politics, Korean Society, The Fifth Column
The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), one of Korea’s two umbrella labor unions, elected Lee Seok-haeng, its former general secretary, as the new president in a vote of representatives. Lee garnered 482 votes from 919 representatives, or 52 percent. [link]
With that overwhelming mandate, expect courageous and decisive reforms.
“With all my strength, I will do what should be done and won’t do what shouldn’t. I will restore our organization by studying situations on the spot, and from that ground I will start work for a strike or negotiation,” Lee said in his acceptance speech at Seoul’s Olympic Park stadium.
Sounds … meaningless. Anything more specific?
Under his guidance, the KCTU’s main agenda item will be improving conditions for irregular workers and forestalling the proposed free trade agreement with the United States, he said.
On second thought, I liked meaningless better that counterproductive. On the positive side, he did not pledge eternal loyalty to our lodestar and the father of our great race, Marshal Kim Jong Il. Not publicly, anyway.
Lee entered the labor movement after he was fired from Daedong Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. and served as the KCTU’s general secretary until recently. He was jailed in 2002 for his labor struggle on behalf of an electronics parts manufacturing company.
A warrant was also issued for his arrest in 1999, when a group of 15,000 KCTU protestors got into a street brawl with riot police and blocked traffic. Interesting stats for the archive here:
The KCTU has a membership of 760,000 workers from 743 labor unions nationwide. It leads the country’s labor movement along with the Federation of Korean Trade Unions.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 29, 2007 at 1:22 am · Filed under NK Economics, Six-Party Talks, WMD, Counterfeiting, Money Laundering
You don’t get self-fisking journalism very often, but here’s one that just falls off the bone like an overcooked roast (mmm, roooast). Here’s the headline:
U.S. must choose between sanctioning N.K. and compromising for denuclearization: report
Well, what are we supposed to take from that, I wonder? It could only be that inexplicable American obsession with people counterfeiting its currency that’s preventing us from denuclearizing North Korea.Until you read the actual quote, which says:
“Currently the (George W.) Bush administration and Congress face a dilemma,” said the report, authored by Raphael Perl and Dick Nanto.
….
“The trade-off seems to be between imposing a current real financial burden on the DPRK but making no progress in halting that country’s nuclear weapons program, or lifting the financial sanctions in exchange for a verifiable halt to North Korea’s alleged counterfeiting activities and a dim prospect that progress might be made in the six-party talks,” said the report dated Jan. 17 but yet to be posted on the CRS website for public view.
You’d suspect that something was lost in translation … except that there was no translation. So once you get to the money quote, the odds of actually denuclearizing anything is somewhere between “dim” and “no.” The choices that remain are (1) a freeze, which would never last through the New Hampshire primary, and (2) the “current real financial burden.”
Well, if they’re still not willing to denuclearize, the choice ought to be pretty damn obvious, unless you view the security interests of the United States as an inconvenience. And believe me, there are plenty of things we could do to increase that pressure dramatically, and very quickly.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 27, 2007 at 11:05 am · Filed under NK Economics, "United" Nations
You’ve heard about the publication of the U.S. Commerce Department’s final notice of the ban, which you can read here. Although I suspect we don’t export many of these items to North Korea anyway, I hope that this will instead spur nations that do — notably, France, Germany, and Switzerland — to move quickly to adopt similar lists.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 27, 2007 at 10:51 am · Filed under Blogs & Blogging, Terrorism/Iraq, Islam
… transform himself from a principled defender of liberal values to someone who is willing to deceive to make his points?
The video shows Iraqi troops beating three men who’d been caught with a bag full of mortars in their car. I don’t defend the beatings, which at least one American tries fecklessly to stop, but calling people captured with mortars “civilians” is a bit of a distortion, no?
I noticed it at the precise moment Bush declared his support for the anti-gay marriage amendment (which I also oppose). I guess the Dorian Gray analogy is too easy, but it saddens you to see it. Plenty of people love to enjoy the benefits of life in a liberal society, and they’re even willing to defend that society … as long as doing so remains easy and politically popular.
In the future, all wars will be won by the side with the best propaganda, not the best weapons. For how long can a free society whose information is dominated by self-hating intellectuals survive? Just watch the Caliphate slowly digest the Soft Reich.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 26, 2007 at 11:11 pm · Filed under Abductions, Defectors, U.S. Military
Sixty Minutes will broadast a long-anticipated interview with traitor Joe Dresnok this Sunday, and one thing’s apparent: he’s eating well enough. From the CBS promo story:
The last American defector still living in North Korea says a billion dollars in gold couldn’t entice him to leave the country he ran to 44 years ago. In the first communication from Joe Dresnok since he defected in 1962, the former G.I. also says his fellow defector, Charles Jenkins, who was permitted to leave North Korea, lied about him. Bob Simon’s report will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Jan. 28 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
I believe I speak for most Americans when I express my gratitude to North Korea for keeping him, and for carrying out what must be the most severe punishment for desertion in the last seven decades.
Dresnok told his story to two British filmmakers, Dan Gordon and Nick Bonner, who have made a documentary based on it called “Crossing the Line.” Gordon and Bonner, in addition to portions of their interview with Dresnok, also appear on 60 MINUTES.
“I don’t have intentions of leaving, could give a s*&% if you put a billion damn dollars of gold on the table,” Dresnok says about leaving North Korea. “I feel at home. I really feel at home. I wouldn’t trade it for nothing,” he says.
Dresnok became fed up with his life one summer day four decades ago. His wife had left him and he was in line for a court martial for sneaking off base to visit a Korean woman, so he deserted. “I was finished. There’s only one place to go. Yes, I was afraid. Am I going to live or die? And when I stepped into the minefield and I seen [North Korea] with my own eyes, I started sweating,” he recalls. “I crossed over, looking for my new life,” says Dresnok.
By every account I’ve heard, discipline was much more lax in those days, so it comes as a surprise to me that Dresnok reasonably feared that he’d have been shot at dawn for going AWOL.
In the North, Dresnok eventually met three other American deserters and all of them participated in propaganda activities, including films that depicted the U.S. as evil. He accuses one of those Americans, Charles Jenkins, a former Army sergeant, with lying about their time together. Jenkins was permitted to leave the country two years ago to join his Japanese wife. He said Dresnok had beaten him on the orders of North Korean authorities in a 60 MINUTES interview. Says Dresnok: “He’s a liar. One day he tried to push me around with his so-called rank and there was two blows. I hit him and he hit the ground. I think you know Alice in Wonderland. Well, I just wonder if it’s not Jenkins in Wonderland.”
Jenkins’s side of the story, here. Anyway, it’s apparent that life in North Korea was considerably less pleasant than he might admit in the presence of his minders.
Dresnok didn’t always feel at home; after fours years, he and the others sought asylum in the Soviet embassy. They were turned away. Faced with no other option, he succumbed to the North Korean indoctrination process, believe Gordon and Bonner. Dresnok told them, “They might be a different race…color, but God damn it, I’m going to sit down and learn their way of life….I did everything I could, learning the language…customs…greetings…life. I got to think like this…act like this. I’ve studied their revolutionary history, their lofty virtues about the great leader.”
Uh huh. Slobo Milosebvic and Josef Stalin died peacefully in their sleep, Saddam Hussein died much too easily, and Paris Hilton has yet to stricken from the public eye by some disfiguring but non-life-threatening skin condition. The injustice of these things may bother you, as they bother me, but in Dresnok, we have an example of a man who has made his own misery in this life. He is living the life he has earned.
Thanks to a friend for sending.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 26, 2007 at 10:43 pm · Filed under Censorship, Deprogramming
North Korea said on Friday the South Korean government was violating the public’s basic right to information by blocking access to Web sites sympathetic to the North.
South Korea has denied access to more than 30 Web sites that it has designated “pro-North Korea” since 2004, including the North’s official KCNA news agency’s Web service and sites operated outside.
“This is a fascist action against democracy and human rights as it infringes upon the South Koreans’ freedom of speech and deprives them of even their right to enjoy the civilization offered by the IT age,” the North’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper said.
“The above-said actions are as rude as blindfolding people’s eyes and stopping their ears and mouths,” Rodong Sinmun said in a commentary carried by KCNA news agency. [link]
The reporters did their very best to stifle the irony:
Most North Koreans have limited or no access to computers let alone the Internet, refugees from the North and human rights activists in Seoul have said.
South Korea is one of the world’s most wired countries. Three-quarters of the population have access to the Internet.
For what it’s worth, I think it should be perfectly legal for South Koreans to read information both from and about North Korea. I also favor the use of non-permissive means to get “unofficial” information into North Korea, although I suspect that the North Korean attitude toward free speech might be less principled in that case.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 26, 2007 at 11:03 am · Filed under Terrorism/Iraq, Iran
Why on earth has it taken this long to let our soldiers kill the people who are killing them? Micromanaging their fight against a hostile force transforms the rules of engagement into a suicide pact.
The Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran’s influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program, according to government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the effort.
For more than a year, U.S. forces in Iraq have secretly detained dozens of suspected Iranian agents, holding them for three to four days at a time. The “catch and release” policy was designed to avoid escalating tensions with Iran and yet intimidate its emissaries. U.S. forces collected DNA samples from some of the Iranians without their knowledge, subjected others to retina scans, and fingerprinted and photographed all of them before letting them go.
Expect the ACLU to file for an injunction by next Wednesday.
Notwithstanding the fact that Dafna Lizner wrote it, the entire story is a must-read. Iranian intel agents are already at war against us, and their goal is to trigger the world’s next great mass slaughter — an all-out mass slaughter that will vividly clarify that the current violence is not a civil war, as terrible as it is. The Iranians will never cooperate with us, because they believe that this mass slaughter serves their interests. They with either fear us or hold us in predatory contempt. It’s about damn time: terminate with extreme prejudice. ht
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 26, 2007 at 10:46 am · Filed under Media Criticism, UCMJ & SOFA
Here. I’m linking this because you’ll never hear the American or Korean press, other than the Stripes, breathe a word about it or project its significance upon thousands of other people.
(Those of you (a) have no irony gene, or (b) who don’t get the reference, click here before you spit fire in my comments.)
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 26, 2007 at 10:31 am · Filed under Human Rights, China & Korea, Refugees, Activism
LiNK sends:
Hello Friends,
….
It feels strange to be back here in Washington at LiNK headquarters, typing away at a computer. For those of you who have been following the news, the past few weeks have not been calm and restful- they have been rather dramatic and urgent.
On December 21, 2006, myself, two LiNK field workers and 6 North Korean refugees were caught and imprisoned by Chinese authorities. I was taken into custody in Beijing, and the others en route to Beijing from Shenyang.
We were placed in prison outside of Shenyang after interrogation. The three LiNK workers were released after 10 days. Our 6 North Korean friends remain in Chinese custody.
However, we remain hopeful. The fact that the Chinese have not yet repatriated the North Koreans (they had said they would send them back immediately following our capture) is a very positive sign. We are currently engaged in discussions with the Chinese government regarding their release, and we are hopeful of a positive resolution to the event.
There is of course much more to the story and what transpired, and we will be sharing more with you all as time goes. We know how agonizing it is to think of the possible fate of the Shenyang Six if things do not go well in negotiations with the People’s Republic of China. Please rest assured that we are doing all that we can. The instant there is a role for us all in the grassroots to play, you will hear about it, and we will mobilize internationally for the six. At the moment, we are waiting on high-level discussions and working quietly to secure their release.
Final thoughts: “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Accepting Nobel Peace Prize
December 10, 1964
Stay tuned for updates, and thank you for your consistent support and conviction for this cause. Thank you!
Adrian Hong
Executive Director
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