9/11 Changed Everything

Didn't it?

The American colonel, troubled by what he was hearing, tried to stall at first. But the declassified record shows he finally told his South Korean counterpart it "would be permitted" to machine-gun 3,500 political prisoners, to keep them from joining approaching enemy forces.

In the early days of the Korean War, other American officers observed, photographed and confidentially reported on such wholesale executions by their South Korean ally, a secretive slaughter believed to have killed 100,000 or more leftists and supposed sympathizers, usually without charge or trial, in a few weeks in mid-1950.

[...]

Now, a half-century later, the South Korean government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission is investigating what happened in that summer of terror, a political bloodbath largely hidden from history, unlike the communist invaders' executions of southern rightists, which were widely publicized and denounced at the time.

[...]

The brutal, hurried elimination of tens of thousands of their countrymen, subject of a May 19 AP report, was the climax to a years-long campaign by South Korea's right-wing leaders.

[...]

Journalist Alan Winnington … wrote that his witnesses claimed jeeploads of American officers "supervised the butchery." Secret CIA and Army intelligence communications reported on the Daejeon and Suwon killings as early as July 3, but said nothing about the U.S. presence or about any U.S. oversight.

[...]

Although MacArthur had command of South Korean forces from early in the war, he took no action on [a July report of mass killings], other than to refer it to John J. Muccio, U.S. ambassador in South Korea. Muccio later wrote that he urged South Korean officials to stage executions humanely and only after due process of law.

[...]

It was the British who took action, according to news reports at the time. On Dec. 7, in occupied North Korea, British officers saved 21 civilians lined up to be shot, by threatening to shoot the South Korean officer responsible. Later that month, British troops seized "Execution Hill," outside Seoul, to block further mass killings there.

To quiet the protests, the South Koreans barred journalists from execution sites and the State Department told diplomats to avoid commenting on atrocity reports.

  Raw Story

See also No Gun Ri.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Forgotten War

On my travels along the Eastern Seaboard in the early months of talk about invading Iraq, I came across an aging man in the hills of Maryland whom I expected to be right conservative. I got a nice surprise when he struck up a short conversation, saying, "I sure hope that asshole doesn't get us into another war." He told me that he'd served in Korea and bitterly complained that nobody even mentions that war. As if it never happened, he said.

And, since it never ended, it really does seem as though it's been forgotten. But not by Korean victims of US war policy. And not by South Korea. Bush got into a verbal tussle with South Korean leader Roh at the APEC summit in Australia when Roh asked him to make a declaration to end the war in Korea. Bush replied that the war would be declared at an end when North Korea gave up its nuclear weapons (and nuclear weapons programs). Roh said he didn't hear what he was expecting in that response, and Bush repeated it. Roh asked him to be a little clearer, and Bush repeated it. Obviously, Roh was politely trying to get the answer he asked for, but the White House has chosen to blame it on the interpreter, who they say must not have translated Bush's remarks clearly. Because, why wouldn't Roh just roll over, take that answer, and go home quietly if he actually understood it? We wouldn't have you thinking the little unimportant man might stand up to the POTUS.

Bush wants Roh to go back and talk to North Korea's leader Kim to pressure him into giving up those nukes. (Maybe if he does, he can at least get another entertaining joke.)

Is taking North Korea off the list of terrorist supporting countries a ploy to force it to give up its nukes? How about allowing Ethiopia to make a secret arms deal with North Korea?

Finishing off the summit, Bush took aim at Vladimir Putin.

"We'll continue to work with nations like Russia to advance our shared interests while encouraging Russia's leaders to respect the checks and balances that are essential to democracy," Bush said in a speech to business leaders at the summit.

  Yahoo

Pot. Kettle.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Update

Axis of Evil Shrinks

The U.S. is taking North Korea off its list of terror sponsors.

The move came after North Korea agreed to take "practical measures to neutralize" its existing nuclear facilities this year, the spokesman said.

  Yahoo

Wanting nuclear weapons facilities is punishable by sanctions and invasion. Having them is a different matter.

And, actually, the North Koreans say getting off the list is part of the deal.

[U.S. negotiator Christopher] Hill avoided discussing details in response to a question from reporters on the issue of the terrorism list.

"I don't want to get into some of the specific things that we're prepared to do," he said. "Obviously we had a considerable discussion about these, but I need to consult within my government and also among the six parties before I consult with the press on that."

His government might have a different way of parsing it for publication.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Korean Comedy

Where was this story in the mainstream?

Military talks between North and South Korea needed an ice-breaker, I guess, so a general from North Korea started the proceedings with a joke.

The joke was this:

Bush is out jogging one morning and, having his mind on presidential matters, fails to notice a car heading straight at him. A group of schoolchildren run out and pull him away just in time, saving his life.

Bush tells them that, being the president, he can do whatever he wants, so whatever they desire, he'll give it to them. The kids ask for cemetery plots at Arlington National.

"Why would you ask for such a thing?" Bush wonders, and the kids say, "Because when our parents find out what we've done, they're gonna kill us."

"Clientitis at the State Department"

Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea [banning the purchase of weapons from that country] because of the country’s nuclear test, Bush administration officials allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from the North, in what appears to be a violation of the restrictions, according to senior American officials.

The United States allowed the arms delivery to go through in January in part because Ethiopia was in the midst of a military offensive against Islamic militias inside Somalia, a campaign that aided the American policy of combating religious extremists in the Horn of Africa.

[...]

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, as the administration has made counterterrorism its top foreign policy concern, the White House has sometimes shown a willingness to tolerate misconduct by allies that it might otherwise criticize, like human rights violations in Central Asia and antidemocratic crackdowns in a number of Arab nations.

[...]

North Korea conducted its first nuclear test on Oct. 9, and the Security Council resolution, adopted less than a week later, was hailed by President Bush as “swift and tough,” and a “clear message to the leader of North Korea regarding his weapons programs.”

  NY Times article

And now he gives the nod to a deal that violates the resolution he pressed the UN to make. Seems more like a mixed message than a clear one.

We make the rules; we can break them. Good is good when we say it's good. And evil is evil when we say it's evil.

Because, we own the world.

And by we, we mean Bush and Cheney.