If North Korea lashed out by launching a surprise attack on South Korea, the United States would face hard decisions on multiple war fronts. Soldiers and Marines getting ready to rotate into Iraq would have to be diverted to Korea, requiring the troops in Iraq to stay much longer than planned.

These issues arise as the U.N. Security Council considers imposing tougher sanctions on North Korea in response to its announced nuclear test.

Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., a close observer of military issues, said in an interview Tuesday that he worries that should a major military crisis erupt in North Korea, the Army and Marines would be over-stretched.

Skelton said the Army has only two fully ready combat brigades available - one in Germany, the other in Kuwait. The rest are either in Iraq or Afghanistan, are getting ready to deploy there, or have just returned.

The U.S. military has about 140,000 troops in Iraq and about 20,000 in Afghanistan, mainly soldiers and Marines.

One Army combat brigade is based in South Korea as part of a U.S. force numbering 28,000. That force has been pared down from 32,500 over the past few years and is scheduled to drop to 25,000 by 2008.

There are about 50,000 U.S. troops in Japan; of those, about 8,000 Marines are scheduled to move from Okinawa to Guam.

Michael Green, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a private research group, said in an interview Tuesday that short of a total collapse of North Korea, the U.S. military has what it needs to handle the problem.

"The South Korean ground forces are strong enough to handle and deter a North Korean attack on the ground," said Green, who was senior director for Asia on President Bush's National Security Council. "What they need is help with air forces and naval forces, and that is not what we're using in Iraq right now."

He sees no shortage of U.S. air and naval power.

Skelton agrees that "we're in pretty good shape" in terms of air and naval forces available for Korean duty. He added that he does not see an immediate need to send more U.S. ground troops to South Korea.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others argue that even with smaller numbers of U.S. ground troops in South Korea, recent technological advances and improvements in the South Korean army have actually increased the overall level of military power facing North Korea.

The U.S. Air Force has a range of fighter planes, surveillance aircraft and support planes at two major bases in South Korea - Osan and Kunsan - and at three bases in Japan, including Kadena air base on Okinawa. It also has begun in recent years to rotate continuously a fleet of long-range bombers to Anderson Air Force Base on the Pacific island of Guam, well within range of any target on the Korean peninsula.

There are six B-52 bombers on Guam, where B-2 stealth bombers recently did a rotation.

The Air Force also has begun basing C-17 long-range transport planes in Hawaii. As part of a broader strategy for focusing more on Asia, the Navy is considering shifting one of its aircraft carriers from the Atlantic region to the Pacific, possibly to Guam or Hawaii. The Navy has added two Los Angeles-class attack submarines to its forces on Guam.

The Navy also is installing missile-tracking radar and interceptor missiles on 18 Pacific Fleet ships.

Next week Rumsfeld is scheduled to meet at the Pentagon with his South Korean counterpart to discuss progress in reducing U.S. forces in South Korea, consolidating the remaining troops on fewer bases farther from the North Korean border, and shifting more command authority to the South Korean government.

The Pentagon wants to restore wartime control of South Korean forces to the Seoul government as early as 2009, but the South Koreans say they need more time, at least until 2012, to create a new command structure.

Since the end of the Korean War in July 1953, a U.S. commander has had wartime command of South Korean troops. In the proposed arrangement, U.S. troops in Korea would remain under U.S. command.

The changes started about a year ago, as defense officials looked for ways to make drillmasters more effective, said Lt. Col. Mike Jones, head of Army National Guard recruiting.

He said the old way was to "talk loud, talk often, get their attention" - shock treatment to teach discipline and mold the newly recruited civilian into a soldier.

But trainers found today's generation responded better to instructors who took "a more counseling" type role, Jones said, using strong tactics when needed but keeping them the exception instead of the rule.

The approach has had two positive results, he said: It has lowered attrition among those who go through training each year and has eased one of the greatest fears of recruits - their fear over whether they can make it through basic training.

Other changes aimed at improving graduation rates include such things as letting recruits with injuries or minor medical problems remain in the service, heal, and then go back to training. Before, an injury would have meant discharge, training officials said.

Numbers differ from service to service and depend on what the recruit is being trained for. Those training to be Navy SEALS or other special forces may wash out at the rate of 70 percent. Those training to be truck drivers may have an 80 percent graduation rate.

But Chu said that across all services, generally, some two-thirds of recruits finish their enlistment period - typically three or four years.

Of the third who don't make it, half bomb out in the first six to 12 months, Chu said, adding that the attrition rate is better than most private sector firms.

Keeping a balance in the number flushed out of the service is important. Too many dropouts and you lose people you really want to keep. Too few dropouts, and you are keeping people you should have let go, Chu said.

Both the military and police academies are moving away from harder-edged approaches to training, he said.

"However much it may be satisfying from the shouter's perspective, it really isn't the best way to shape young people for the future," Chu said.

He made the comments as he announced that all active duty services had met their recruiting goals for the budget year ended Sept. 30. The Marine Corps Reserve met its goal and the Air Force Reserve exceeded its goal, but they were exceptions among guard and reserve forces, some of which have seen "heavy use" due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Chu said.

Touching, it truly is, when a man steps forward to defend a woman's honor. This time, the gallant knight is none other than Daniel Senor, while the honor of damsel in distress goes to one of D.C.'s favorite power children, Simone Ledeen.

The Oct. 10 edition of the Washington Post includes a thought-provoking essay by Mr. Senor entitled, "The Realities of Trying to Rebuild Iraq." Mr. Senor targeted Washington Post staffer Rajiv Chandrasekaran's new book, "Imperial Life in the Emerald City." Like National Review Online soldier Ramesh Ponnuru before him, Mr. Senor maintained that the book is biased, skewed against the Bush Administration, and, in particular, offered an inaccurate look at the hiring practices of Jim O'Beirne - husband of valuable National Review property Kate O'Beirne - and the role of the staunchly Neoconservative Heritage Foundation in determining just who landed those resume-building spots on the CPA in Baghdad.

Mr. Senor's position was quite simple:

Bush Administration good.

Clinton Administration bad.

Mr. Senor claimed that the Clinton Administration should be held responsible for George W. Bush's Rumsfeldian Follies in post-Mission Accomplished Iraq. Mr. Senor postulated that the Clinton Administration originally appointed a number of senior CPA officials to their various positions in the federal government. As such, Mr. Senor argued, the valiant Bush Administration had only these Clinton types with whom to work and the entire effort was doomed from the start. While Mr. Senor grudgingly admitted that the CPA staff members, both senior and junior aides, made mistakes, he attributed these gaffes to the Clinton Administration.

Further, Mr. Senor declined to address Mr. Chandrasekaran's claims that Jim O'Beirne had a key role in hiring CPA staffers. Also, Mr. Senor made no mention of Mr. Chandrasekaran's assertion that the Heritage Foundation, one of the most powerful Neoconservative think tanks in Washington, served as a hiring conduit for the CPA. In addition, Mr. Senor never mentioned CPA staff member Simone Ledeen, her prior qualifications as the co-founder of a cooking school, or the powerful position and questionable behavior - during the Iran-Contra affair and, according to Vanity Fair magazine, in Italy leading up to the Iraqi War - of her father, Neoconservative power boss Michael Ledeen.

Understand, of course, that Mr. Senor spent time in Iraq. Mr. Senor, according to his Bush Administration-approved official White House biography, served as senior advisor to then-Coalition Provisional Authority Administrator L. Paul Bremer III. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, Mr. Senor acted as director of the Coalition Information Center at Centcom Headquarters in Qatar. Mr. Senor had been a member of one of the first civilian convoys to enter Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Of course, the White House's official biography left out a few items about Mr. Bremer. For example, Mr. Senor's former boss was the man who disbanded the Iraqi Army. In a Jan. 30, 2005 report, Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraqi Reconstruction, alleged that some $9 billion in Iraqi reconstruction aid had disappeared due to fraud, corruption, and other misbehavior under Mr. Bremer's watch.

Away from the White House and its manufactured biographies, one wonders exactly what duties Mr. Senor performed during his stints in Baghdad and Qatar.

Well, Mr. Senor served as sort of the Tony Snow of the CPA in his role as civilian spokesman during press conferences. Mr. Senor often worked in unison with Brig. Gen. Mark T. Kimmitt, military spokesman at CPA briefings and the son of retired Army Col. Joseph "Stan" Kimmitt, partner in the powerful D.C. public relations and lobbying firm of Kimmitt, Senter, Coates & Weinferter.

Mr. Senor also seems to have worked as a ghostwriter for the Bush Administration. In September 2004, the White House directed Mr. Senor to craft speeches and act as something of an oratorical coach for Dr. Iyad Allawi, the CIA-backed Shiite Muslim politician that the Iraqi Governing Council appointed to act as interim prime minister on June 1, 2004. Mr. Senor guided Dr. Allawi on a whirlwind tour of Washington to coincide with the then-ongoing U.S. presidential election. Mr. Bush, of course, retained the White House. Dr. Allawi had far less luck. The purple-thumbed Iraqis apparently had little use for the Bush Administration's boy. On April 7, 2005, Islamic Dawa Party leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari became the newly elected prime minister of the Iraqi National Assembly, thus ending Dr. Allawi's 10-month stint in office.

It also appears that Mr. Senor, column or no column in the Post, brings a rather sharply partisan view to the activities of the Bush Administration and, in particular, to the efforts of the CPA in Iraq.

In 1993, Mr. Senor did an internship with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, considered by many to be the most powerful lobbying force in the world. Mr. Senor's sister, Wendy Senor Singer, now leads the AIPAC office in Jerusalem. Mr. Senor's brother-in-law, noted Conservative Saul Singer, serves as the opinion editor of the Jerusalem Post.

Mr. Senor, after earning his bachelor's degree at the University of Western Ontario and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, worked as a staffer for then-Senator Spencer Abraham, a renowned Conservative from Michigan. Abraham went on to serve as U.S. Secretary of Energy in the Bush Administration from Jan. 20, 2001 until Feb. 1, 2005.

From 1999-2001, Mr. Senor gained his MBA at the Harvard Business School. Like Mr. Senor, Simone Ledeen is a graduate of the Harvard Business School. President Bush holds a Harvard MBA. So, too, does Mr. Bush's classmate, Thomas C. Foley. Mr. Foley headed up the CPA's efforts to privatize state-owned enterprises in Iraq. In his spare time, Mr. Foley is one of the leading donors to the Republican Party.

After Harvard, Mr. Senor worked from 2001-2003 as a senior associate at the Carlyle Group, the highly secretive, Washington, D.C.-based private investment firm with strong ties to the Bush family. For 10 years, George H.W. Bush served as a consultant to the Carlyle Group. In 2004, Le Monde reported that during the elder Bush's presidency, the Carlyle Group found George W. Bush a job in 1990 as administrator of Caterair, a Texas-based firm that specializes in aerial catering. Perhaps our current president trained in how to prepare fresh Maine lobster at 25,000 feet. Maybe that explains the CPA's decision to hire Simone Ledeen, culinary artists stick together and all. Mr. Senor then moved to the Bush Administration, where he briefly served as deputy to then-White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.

However, since the Dr, Allawi debacle, Mr. Senor seems to be struggling a bit. In 2005, Google announced that Mr. Senor would become a top lobbyist for the high-powered firm. That appointment failed to materialize. In August 2006, Mr. Senor's AIPAC ties seemed to reemerge when the Wall Street Journal quoted Mr. Senor as a representative of Vets for Freedom, a sharply Conservative 527 political group that is among the chief backers of Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman's reelection campaign.

In all, Mr. Senor's resume offers an extensive network of connections, direct and indirect, to the Bush Administration and to the Neoconservative movement. Combine this with Mr. Senor apparent need for employment, and this writer is surprised only that it took Mr. Senor so long to come to the defense of Simone Ledeen, Jim O'Beirne, the Heritage Foundation, and the CPA's struggles in Iraq.

Of course, Mr. Senor is married to NBC news anchor Campbell Brown. Television news, in general, has been extremely slow in its coverage of the debacle that is Iraq.

And, despite record-breaking numbers on the Dow, good help - Neoconservative connections or not - remains especially hard to find.

Writer's Note: Please read BarbinMD's excellent piece, "Dan Senor: WA Post Op-Ed Distorting Reality," at ePluribus Media. Rajiv Chandrasekaran informed me of the piece, which offers further insight into the full backgrounds of the various high-level CPA administrators that Mr. Senor tried to paint as partisan Clinton hacks. With this information, it's easy to see why Mr. Senor struggles to regain his standing in the D.C. community.

The row over Callil's book is the latest element in a dispute about restrictions on freedom of speech in the US in relation to comments on Israel.

A British-born academic based at New York University has had two speaking engagements called off after criticism of his views. Tony Judt, an American Jew who was brought up in Britain, was due to speak on the subject of the influence of the pro-Israeli lobby on US foreign policy and at a separate location under the title War and Genocide in European Memory Today. The first lecture was cancelled by the Polish consulate in New York, which owned the venue, while Mr Judt pulled out of the second after he was asked by the organisers to refrain from direct references to Israel. In both cases pro-Israeli organisations and individuals had raised objections to Mr Judt's views on Israel.

Mr Judt was one of six people who took part in a debate in New York last month organised by the London Review of Books on the controversy sparked by its article on The Israel Lobby. During that debate Mr Judt argued that pro-Israeli groups acted "to silence debate on the subject", adding that criticism of Israel had come to be thought of as un-American.

His talk last week on a similar theme at a venue owned by the Polish consulate was cancelled by the consul, Krzysztof Kasprzyk, after inquiries from two Jewish organisations. Mr Kasprzyk told the Washington Post that he had been subjected to "delicate pressure".

Abraham Foxman, director of one of the groups, the Anti-Defamation League, denied any pressurising. "All we did was to ask the consulate whether Tony Judt was speaking on its property. The decision to cancel was the Polish consulate's alone." Mr Judt riposted: "If all Mr Foxman was doing was making an inquiry, then he does an awful lot of inquiring. People are frequently being scared off."

Mr Judt said his views had been misrepresented. "The only thing I have ever said is that Israel as it is currently constituted, as a Jewish state with different rights for different groups, is an anachronism in the modern age of democracies."

In the second incident Mr Judt pulled out from a talk on the Holocaust at Manhattan College after a Jewish leader, Rabbi Avi Weiss, warned he would hold a protest of Holocaust survivors outside the event. "This speech would have been a desecration," Rabbi Weiss told the Guardian.

Mr Judt countered that to threaten to stage a protest of survivors was "obscene, close to pornography".

As an economic model for the rest of the world to follow - in particular the rapidly developing economies of China and India - it is unsustainable, they say.

On a global scale the average US citizen uses far more than his or her fair share of the planet's resources - consuming more than four times the worldwide average of energy, almost three times as much water and producing more than twice the average amount of rubbish and five times the amount of carbon dioxide, a major contributor to global warming. The US - with five per cent of the world's population - uses 23 per cent of its energy, 15 per cent of its meat and 28 per cent of its paper. Additional population will mean more people seeking a share of those often-limited resources.

It may be that America's citizen number 300,000,000 will be an undocumented migrant, born to undocumented parents somewhere in the South or the West, where population growth is the fastest. Almost one-third of America's annual population growth of between 0.9 per cent and 1 per cent is the result of immigration - much of it illegal.

"America is the only industrialised nation in the world experiencing significant population growth," Victoria Markham, the director of the Centre for Environment and Population (CEP), says in a new report. "The nation's relatively high rates of population growth, natural resource consumption and pollution combine to create the largest environmental impact, felt both within the nation and around the world." She adds: " The US has become a 'super-size' nation, with lifestyles reflected in super-sized appetites for food, houses, land and resource consumption. 'More of more' seems to characterise modern-day America - more people than any generation before us experienced, more natural resources being utilised to support everyday life and more major impacts on the natural systems that support life on earth."

Some commentators believe this growth has a modest impact on the nation's resources and can bring many benefits. Greg Easterbrook, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based, independent research and policy institute, recently wrote: "What should not worry us about continuing US population growth ... is the question of whether we can handle it - we can," he said.

Lester Brown, the director of the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental group also based in Washington, said: "In times past, reaching such a demographic milestone might have been a cause for celebration - in 2006 it is not. Population growth is the ever-expanding denominator that gives each person a shrinking share of the resource pie. It contributes to water shortages, cropland conversion to non-farm uses, traffic congestion, more garbage, overfishing, crowding in national parks, a growing dependence on imported oil and other conditions that diminish the quality of our daily lives."

Mr Brown said there was also a global perspective to America's rapacious model of consumption. In addition to foreign policy decisions at least influenced by a desire to secure diminishing resources, he said the US was setting an example to the developing world that was unsustainable. "We used to think of the developing countries as places that did not consume very much ... But it is starting to change and they are beginning to behave like us and heading for income levels like us," he said.

If China's economy continued to grow at 8 per cent a year, Mr Brown said, income levels in that country would equal the 2004 US level by 2031, by which time China's population would stand at 1.45 billion.

If current consumption rates were multiplied to take into account its population growth, China's paper consumption would be double the current total world production of paper and its vehicle fleet would be 1.1 billion; the world's current total fleet is 800 million.

"What China is teaching us is that the Western economic model is not going to work for China and if it will not work for China it will not work for India and in the long-term ... it will not work for us as well," he said.

It was in 1915 that the US population reached 100 million. Fifty-two years later, in 1967, it reached 200 million. It has taken just 39 more years for the milestone of 300 million to be achieved.

1915: US population reaches 100 million

The population of America hit the 100-million mark in 1915, two years before President Woodrow Wilson would enter the First World War. Americans were stunned by the sinking of the British liner, 'Lusitania', enthralled by Charlie Chaplin and arguing about immigration. "There is here a great melting pot in which we must compound a precious metal," said Wilson, as a million European immigrants poured into the US each year.

The 'great white hope' Jess Willard beat black boxing champion Jack Johnson in a dubious bout in Havana; Marines were dispatched to Haiti after a mob killed its president and the Ku Klux Klan was reestablished as a 'benevolent' organisation.

1967: US passes 200 million

By 1967, when the US population hit 200m, the US was up to its neck in the Vietnam War, Muhammad Ali was stripped of his world heavyweight title for refusing the draft, dozens were killed in race riots in Detroit, and San Francisco was beguiled by the Summer of Love.

Eugene McCarthy said he would run for president, the 25th Amendment to the Constitution was passed allowing for a transfer of power to the vice-president if the president was incapacitated and three Apollo astronauts burned to death during a simulation at Cape Canaveral. The millionth telephone was installed in the US. Hit films included The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night and Bonnie and Clyde.

Supersize nation: how America is eating the world

300m Expected population of the United States by the end of this week

75 Life expectancy for men in the US. Women are expected to live until 80

63 Life expectancy for men in the developing world. Women are expected to live until 67

395m Projected population of the US by 2050

1,682m3 US annual water consumption per capita

633m3 The world's annual water consumption per capita

545m3 The developing world's annual water withdrawals per capita

5lbs Amount of waste each US resident produces per day. That compares with about 3lbs per person per day in Europe, and about 0.9-1.3lbs per person a day in the developing world

$39,710 US Gross National Income per head, 2004

$8,540 World's GNI per head

$4,450 Developing world's GNI per head

19.8 US carbon dioxide emissions per capita, in metric tonnes

3.9 World's carbon dioxide emissions per head, in tonnes

1.8 Developing world's carbon dioxide emissions per head, in tonnes

58bn Number of burgers consumed by Americans every year

54m Number of Americans who are obese

300,000 Deaths per year related to obesity

678lbs US annual paper consumption per head

115lbs The corresponding figure for the world

44lbs The figure for the developing world

204m number of vehicles on US roads

37% Percentage of the total cars in the world on America's roads

1 in 7 Barrels of world oil supply used by US drivers

24m Number of Americans who drive SUVs

7,921 US energy consumption per capita, 2001, expressed in kilograms of oil

1,631 World's energy consumption per capita, in kilograms of oil

828 Corresponding figure for the developing world