Getting the Details

A point that I admit did not occur to me when I created the post about South Korea's Roh asking for Bush to declare an end to the Korean war was made on NPR last night. A declaration would technically have to come from the UN, because the war was waged as a UN venture led by the US.

And while I'm admitting ignorance, I'll add that when I posted, it was a surprise to me that the war had never been declared over.

....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

American War Policy

I don't remember when I first heard of this incident, but it was within the last year or so, aand it was back in the news yesterday.

Six years after declaring the U.S. killing of Korean War refugees at No Gun Ri was "not deliberate," the Army has acknowledged it found but did not divulge that a high-level document said the U.S. military had a policy of shooting approaching civilians in South Korea.

The document, a letter from the U.S. ambassador in South Korea to the State Department in Washington, is dated the day in 1950 when U.S. troops began the No Gun Ri shootings, in which survivors say hundreds, mostly women and children, were killed.

Exclusion of the embassy letter from the Army's 2001 investigative report is the most significant among numerous omissions of documents and testimony pointing to a policy of firing on refugee groups — undisclosed evidence uncovered by Associated Press archival research and Freedom of Information Act requests.

South Korean petitioners say hundreds more refugees died later in 1950 as a result of the U.S. practice. The Seoul government is investigating one such large-scale killing, of refugees stranded on a beach, newly confirmed via U.S. archives.

[...]

Muccio's message to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk states unambiguously that "decisions made" at a high-level U.S.-South Korean meeting in Taegu, South Korea, on July 25, 1950, included a policy to shoot approaching refugees. The reason: American commanders feared that disguised North Korean enemy troops were infiltrating their lines via refugee groups.

[...]

No Gun Ri survivors said U.S. soldiers first forced them from nearby villages on July 25, 1950, and then stopped them in front of U.S. lines the next day, when they were attacked without warning by aircraft as hundreds sat atop a railroad embankment near No Gun Ri, a village in central South Korea. Troops of the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment followed with ground fire as survivors took shelter in twin underpasses of a concrete railroad bridge.

[...]

The Army veterans' estimates of dead ranged from under 100 to "hundreds." Korean survivors say they believe about 400 were killed.

[...]

No Gun Ri, where no evidence emerged of enemy infiltrators, was not the only such incident. As 1950 wore on, U.S. commanders repeatedly ordered refugees shot, according to declassified documents obtained by the AP.

[...]

Deliberately attacking noncombatants is a war crime.

  Yahoo AP article

Via Josh Marshall, here's a link to a website devoted to the story.