Word: koreas
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Johnson wholeheartedly concurred. Said he: "I don't want another war." One participant recalls that there was little debate. "On this one," he says, "there were no hawks, there were no doves. It was unanimous. Apart from the danger of starting another war with North Korea, it was obvious to the President and his advisers that the rescue attempt would almost certainly result in the immediate death of Pueblo's crew...
...plans had an almost surrealistic quality, as if Pueblo were on a paper mission while the military played an elaborate game. Air Force jets were kept "on call" on Okinawa, 900 air miles from Wonsan, North Korea. However, it would have taken 21 hours to scramble the fighters and fly them to Pueblo's aid. Four fighter-bombers were supposed to be ready in South Korea, but they were armed with nuclear warheads and useless for such a mission. Air Force jets stationed in Japan were unavailable because a status-of-forces agreement prevented their use in any combat...
...been lulled into complacency by many factors. His principal argument was wholly unrelated to strategy or circumstance. No U.S. Navy ship, declared Johnson, had been captured in peacetime in 150 years. Thus, in his view, Pueblo's seizure was "highly improbable"-regardless of the belligerent mood of North Korea. "I would suggest," said Johnson, "that a bookmaker would give you such fantastic odds [against the possibility of capture] that someone as rich as Howard Hughes could not pay it off." Admitting that the spy ships were impotent against attack, the admiral maintained that they were "dependent to a large...
...Navy is obviously groping for a standard. The Judge Advocate General ruled that the Pueblo crewmen were not prisoners of war since the U.S. is not at war with North Korea; instead, they are "illegal detainees." Paul Warnke, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, finds it "unthinkable that these men will be court-martialed for signing a false statement. All the confession shows is the bestiality of the treatment they received. The harm done to the national interest is next...
Defenders of the code insisted it was necessary to discipline P.O.W.s, whose stamina had supposedly declined so sadly since World War II. But as Defense Department researchers continued to look into the matter, the truth turned out to be otherwise. Prisoners in Korea held up no better and no worse than P.O.W.s in other wars. In World War II, so many U.S. prisoners in German and Japanese camps talked so freely that a Defense Department report concluded: "It is virtually impossible for anyone to resist a determined interrogator." In addition to revealing military facts, U.S. prisoners in World...