[the_doc]

I fully agree that the number 690,000 is ridiculous. Maybe the authors of the white paper thought that's the way we would wage war with a small country in a small area, but it doesn't make any sense in 2003.

[fogarty]

690000 is not ridiculous at all. Do you know how many troops it took just to halt the North Koreans by Pusan. It was a helluva lot more than the 35000 troops we have now.

Another poster mentioned artillery. The truth of the matter is the North Koreans have some 12,000-14,000 tubes (that's right, those numbers have three zeros) of artillery fixed in on South Korean and American positions. Some American outposts have 10 battalions worth of artillery targetted on them.

We're going to need to re-institute the draft, and big time. The Army barely has 8 combat divisions, and the Marine Corps 3. Anybody here who thinks we have enough forces to handle Iraq and North Korea both frankly don't know what the hell they are talking about.