Clarification/Follow-up by excon on 05/16/05 10:01 am:

Hello tom:

It's true; our Navy and Air Force AREN'T bogged down in Iraq - only the Army.

But ANY attack will likely bring a sever shelling of the South Korean capital, Seol. Unless we wipe them out right away, we're going to need more ground forces. And, they're busy.

excon

Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 05/16/05 10:10 am:
ex ;

We will not be able to save Seoul unless we pre-emptively take out their batteries of 240–mm MRL (mobile rocket launcher)system which are considerable and make Seoul easily in range (experts estimate that 10,000 missles per minute could hit Seoul initially ).These launchers can fire a first strike of thousands of missiles (22 rounds per salvo in 44 seconds) and return in a few minutes to protected caves or to alternate firing positions.The US army in Korea is equipped with Paladin anti-artillery guns that can trace enemy shells back to the guns and fire shells at the enemy guns . However, it takes the Paladins about 10 min to locate the enemy guns ;too late to be effective against mobile launchers .Perhaps that is why S.Korea is less than anxious for an engagement. That is almost assuredly why Rumsfeld's plan is for the US to redeploy further South from the DMV soon .

We have a standing army there to provide ground troops ;it's callled the South Korean Army (725,000 strong with a 4.5 million man reserve(who's readiness is debatable ).) .Our ground troops will not make a difference . Even if we had all our forces available we would be mismatched man for man . N.Korea has a 4 million man standing army with 1 million in reserve.They are the 4th largest army in the world and they spend $5.2 billion a staggering 23 % of their GDP per year on their military . They make their own weapons ;so to execute a war against them would require a crippling of their military industry which means we could not be shy about targetting civilian target areas.

I suspect without any real proof that N Korea already has successfully manufactured nukes ,and would be prepared to mount them onto short and medium range missles ;and if not ;they definitely have WMD of some kind. I think the loony there is prepared to wage total war . They would lose ,but we should not delude ourselves about the potential costs . I just think that right now he is Hitler in 1938 and it is better to deal with him now rather than later .