Gen. Tolley replaced

| June 6, 2012

I don’t really know what to make of this but the Associated Press is reporting that the general we discussed the other day, Army Brigadier General Neil Tolley, commander of US special forces in South Korea, who had supposedly told reporters that we were conducting operations in North Korea has been “replaced”.

The U.S. military command in Seoul said Tuesday the departure of Tolley is a routine personnel change.

Tolley started his job as chief of U.S. special forces in South Korea in October 2010, and officials say the posting usually lasts about two years.

So he’s leaving the position a few months early, despite the fact that the reporter who supposedly misquoted the general admitted he may have made up the quote and no one else in the room heard him say it and the military denies that they are involved in special operations inside Korea.

Thanks to someone who sent me the link before I lost their email.

Category: Big Army

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Vance

I know we’re pro-military here and I’m a vet, too, but David Axe, the reporter, never admitted to fabricating that quote and there were witnesses.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:y7CNtVq3cNAJ:http://m.npr.org/news/front/103943429%3FsinglePage%3Dfalse%26textSize%3Dmedium%2Bgeneral+tolley+quote+reporter&rls=com.microsoft:*:IE-SearchBox&oe=&hl=en&ct=clnk

The General himself admits as much.

Best anyone can figure is that he “misspoke” and revealed too much, then they tried to cover it up because they knew they’d let the cat out of the bag.

David Axe’s website has much more detailed info:

http://www.warisboring.com/

Anonymous

Im just gonna go ahead and say that IF we EVER sent special forces into north korea, they would be promptly mutilated and mailed back to us in pieces. Im not sure how familiar others are on the subject, but I am reasonably knowledgeable about this and will simply point out the fact that the north korean special forces training makes ours look like day care, and they have brigades on top of brigades full of the guys who do nothing but roam around and shoot anything suspicious. Add to that the fact that they went completely psychotic on their defensive measures along both borders and what you have is equal to intruders = mailed back in pieces. I don’t know if the general did or did not say it, i wasn’t there. But even if he did, i would not put much stock in it being true. Just my reasonably educated opinion, that is all.

The Dead Man

#2 I’m… sorry, but starving troops aren’t elite troops. Or are these the same Ninjas driving super boats that the Iranians field?

harp1034

The North Korean troops are not starving. Some of the North Korean people are but not the military as they are needed to keep the gov’t in power.

CavFSO

Somebody (#2 and #4) has been watching too much “Deadliest Warrior” and has lost touch with reality.

PintoNag

Anybody know what happened to the General? Where was he sent?

NSOM

re #2

“Just my reasonably educated opinion”

That’s hilarious.

Anonymous

my reasonably educated opinion = I was a Korean Linguist and studied North Korea dick. And as it happens most of their troops DON’T have a lot of food, but last I checked no other special forces schools include things like “sneak into a random persons house and live in their attic for a month without being detected.” So bite me FSO and NSOM. Im not trying to take anything away from our own special forces, im just trying to shed a little light on the fact that nobody would order our special forces guys into that mess of shit without serious cause. Im pretty sure that in this day and age we have other ways of detecting their tunnel infrastructure.

Anonymous

@8 I think that some North Korean propaganda got mixed up in your studies. While the North has a lot of special forces in their ranks. They’re to busy protecting the leadership to be a threat.

Anonymous

possibly, it WAS somewhere in the neighborhood of 9 years ago when it was forcibly inserted into my brain, although i seem to remember that at the time quite a lot of them were being stationed around the border to quell defectors into china. However, my point remains that A) They are scary as hell. And B) Even though higher ups like to get bugs in their collective asses every now and then and send down bat shit crazy orders, sneaking into north korean tunnels to map them out is incredibly improbable, and borders on insane. Especially when im pretty sure i saw an ipad app that does that already, lol.

The Dead Man

#8 Out of morbid curiosity are you the analyst they used to try and claim Homefront was a ‘possible’ story because you share similar delusions of the North Koreans. Seriously though, we probably don’t have troops in North Korea. Not for any reasons you’re citing though.

With all that said, are you sure you’re not confusing the starved troops with some of the more infamous SOUTH Korean units?

DaveO

Hmm, the Press claims another GO scalp, and we’re concerned about Nork Special Forces.

Another Pulitzer, and possible Nobel Prize for Journalism has been won.

Anonymous

lol, i dont think so. Are the south koreans starving? Pretty sure i never heard them talking about grass soup, just ice coffee. And i never was, nor will be an analyst my friend, that was a nice try though. way to reach for it.

Anonymous

But in truth i WAS just trying to spitball some legitimate reasons why we would never send sf guys into North Korea to map their ridiculous tunnels. All this other crap has just kinda rolled up around that DaveO. Not trying to put a hurt on your blog reading experience.

NSOM

re #8

“my reasonably educated opinion = I was a Korean Linguist and studied North Korea dick.”

Keep those gems coming.

The DMZ is over 150 miles long and most of the country’s thousands of miles of coastline is sparsely populated and remote. If you think South Korean/American SOF and intel haven’t put actual eyes on anything north of the 36th parallel in the past 60 years then it’s probably best you’re not in that line of work anymore.