Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com Wires
Monday, Nov. 26, 2001

Retired general John K. Singlaub told NewsMax this weekend that he believes the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ) is the most likely place another war could break out, as U.S. forces are focused in the Middle East.

Soon after Gen. Singlaub raised concerns about North Korean intentions in the aftermath of Sept. 11, the Pentagon sent additional fighter aircraft to South Korea as both U.S. and South Korean forces raised their alert status.

These moves angered the North Koreans, who have demanded that U.S. and South Korean forces go off the alert.

But Singlaub believes the current alert status is not as high as it should be. He believes additional U.S. reserves should be mobilized and sent to Korea now.

Singlaub thinks that North Korea's Stalinist regime is trying to scare the U.S. and its non-communist ally, South Korea, by making war threats.

This form of saber-rattling stems from a perception of U.S. weakness, the general said. He traces North Korea's renewed arrogance to Clinton administration policies, which weakened the U.S. military as North Korean demands were acceded to.

Chemical Weapons

Singlaub says the longtime communist dictatorship in North Korea "certainly" has chemical weapons and would use them.

Rockets "containing persistent chemical agents" could render U.S. air bases in South Korea unusable.

Either that, he says, or they would use their "very, very large" special operations force to "deliver these by surface means or by airborne operations."

The general has been studying Korea for decades, beginning with two tours of duty during the 1950-53 Korean War, which included running the CIA's covert operations behind enemy lines in North Korea.

Now he believes the communist state might also use rockets containing chemical agents to threaten U.S. bases in Japan, including squadrons on Okinawa.

Watching the U.S. ability "to kill tanks from the air" in the 1991 Gulf War has probably caused North Korea to change its own strategy accordingly.

The Pentagon has long surmised that North Korea was planning a massive invasion of the South using armored tank divisions.

But the North Koreans may be thinking of alternatives now.

One plan may be to hit U.S. bases in the South with chemical or biological weapons first, as North Korean tanks tried to "break through and seize the port of Pusan" – before the U.S. could send reinforcements.

Such a scenario, Singlaub says, could set the stage for a second Korean War.

North Korean Demands

Singlaub further believes that recent demands from North Korea's communist news agency that the U.S. and South Korea immediately suspend military exercises or face war is "a bluff."

The communists now believe President Bush can be bluffed because of his current preoccupation with the war on terrorism, and also because "our armed forces have been weakened during the eight years of the Clinton administration."

Bush "ought to place our armed forces in Korea on a higher level of alert and ... mobilize more of our reserve components, [National] Guard and our reserve," the general says.

The perceived U.S. vulnerability are a result of Clinton's policies, Singlaub alleges, and involve a reduced number of forces and equipment, including planes, tanks and ships.

Also, "our readiness has been degraded by the excess in numbers of non-military missions" as well as "by the feminization of the armed forces." Women have been taken into the armed forces "in numbers that suggest that we're going to put them in combat positions," Singlaub fears. That, he says, "adds to the perception that the United States is weak."

Further, as "any military scholar knows," the tolerance of homosexuals in military ranks "is very, very destructive to the readiness and the efficiency of a combat force.

"When we're deeply involved in one conflict and announce to the world that we're not going to be prepared to engage [simultaneously] in [a second one], the irrational Kim Jong-il is willing to take a chance and make threats [hoping] that he will be able to gain some prestige among his own people and among the other communist countries with whom he has continuous liaison.

"The aim is to create a worldwide impression that the U.S. is frightened of the North Korean ruler." That in turn solidifies his grip on his own people, "who are being starved" and remain under the thumb of a police state.

Singlaub notes that Kim Jong-il's regime has diverted most of the food the U.S. sent to feed starving civilians and used it to feed the military, which has left that country's fighting forces "in pretty good shape."

However, the highly decorated retired military officer believes, "their morale is not good enough for them to launch a major attack and be successful."

The recent breakdown in negotiations between Kim Jong-il and South Korean leader Kim Dae-jung indicates the communist ruler "was not prepared from the very beginning to live up to the promises he made" when the South Korean leader visited him in June 2000.

Although those promises won Kim Jong-il the Nobel Peace Prize (his "primary goal" for making them in the first place, says Singlaub), they have not been fulfilled.

The unrealized promises included clearing the area in the DMZ for the restoration of the railroad between South and North Korea and allowing Korean citizens in the North to visit their long-lost relatives in the South and vice versa.

The South lived up to its end of the agreement. But the only Koreans the North would allow to cross the border were those who had already defected from the South.

The defectors, of course, "would have a certain sense of loyalty to the North that the average citizen in North Korea would not have," Singlaub notes.

Get NewsMax.com's exclusive audiotape of Adm. Thomas Moorer and Gen. Jack Singlaub's briefing: America on the Brink of Global War.

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