Report: US Special Forces Training to Take Out North Korea’s Leadership

When two warring countries cannot put together a peace treaty after a war has been over for 60 years, you’ve got some serious differences to deal with. North Korea is economically impoverished from decades of failed Marxist policies, and what money the nation has goes into weapons development and the military to feed the paranoia of the family of tyrants who have ruled the unfortunate citizens of the country. As a closed, communist society there is little hope for its people until there is an utter change in leadership — something that seems very unlikely.

That is unless there is more to the annual war exercises that the US and South Korea are currently conducting. It is reported that SEAL Team Six is participating in the war games along with other special forces such as the Green Berets and Delta Force. These are not groups to be messed with as they represent the pinnacle of American military and tactical capabilities. In other words, they are very good at entering a hostile area undetected and decapitating the nation’s leadership.

This will clearly add to Kim Jong-Un’s paranoia, as it is probably intended to do so. Japan’s hinting at conducting a first strike against North Korea won’t calm nerves either.

Here’s a summary of what’s going on:

US special forces – including SEAL Team 6, which killed Osama bin Laden – will take part in a large war drill in South Korea as part of a plan to “decapitate” the leadership in Pyongyang, according to a report.

The SEAL team will join the annual Foal Eagle and Key Resolve exercises between the two allies for the first time, along with the Army’s Rangers, Delta Force and Green Berets, Yonhap News Agency of South Korea reported.

“A bigger number of and more diverse US special operation forces will take part in this year’s Foal Eagle and Key Resolve exercises to practice missions to infiltrate into the North, remove the North’s war command and demolition of its key military facilities,” a military official told Yonhap, asking not to be named.

The Foal Eagle exercise started March 1 and will run through the end of April. On Monday, the Key Resolve computer-simulated command post exercise began and will run through March 24.

No insult to the American or South Korean military is intended, but to claim that this is “purely a defensive” exercise is a bit of a stretch. Especially with the inclusion of units that are trained to take out another nation’s leaders, hardly an undiluted exercise in self-defense.

Perhaps the goal of the exercise is to provoke Mr. Kim. If so, they’re doing a good job. Check this out.

South Korean defense officials have confirmed that the drill will practice taking out the North Korean leadership, the Daily Star reported.

“A bigger number of and more diverse US special operation forces will take part in this year’s Foal Eagle and Key Resolve exercises to practice missions to infiltrate into the North, remove the North’s war command and demolition of its key military facilities,” a South Korean defense official told Yonhap.

The Pentagon has denied reports that SEAL Team 6 is training in South Korea:

Reports that SEAL Team Six is training in South Korea are false, a senior defense official told Fox News on Tuesday.

SEAL Team Six is a direct action and hostage rescue team, part of the national mission force, not the type of unit that would participate in a training exercise in South Korea, a separate U.S. defense official said.

There are U.S. special operations teams — including SEALs — who always conduct training in the region with their South Korean counterparts, according to officials. They say the U.S. forces will continue to do so in the annual Foal Eagle exercise, currently running until the end of April. But SEAL Team Six is not part of this training.

The US and South Korea are not even being the least bit subtle about the mission for which these special forces are preparing. If they wanted to rattle Kim Jong-Un’s cage, this ought to do the job very nicely.

Is Kim a suicidal maniac that would not launch a first-strike nuclear attack? He must realize that even if he were able to survive the inevitable retaliation by burying himself in a cave, he would come out of his cave to a nation without living people. Not much of a country to rule.

The solution would be to deescalate matters and figure out how to make it advantageous for Kim to seek a peaceful solution to a war that has officially been on for over 60 years, although without major hostilities. The problem is if that would imply that Kim would lose any power, the proposal for peace would probably be dead on arrival.

For an interesting perspective on this intractable problem, we offer commentary by the ever helpful champion of liberty, Ron Paul.

Source: New York Post, Fox News

Photo: DVIDSHUB