hotdram

Ok, so I took the title from Fox News,
But on a serious note, anybody else see what North Korea is up to and wondering how the U.S. will proceed?

~Rob

JKE

Rob - They are being somewhat sneaky about forth coming information. NK is in poor condition at best. However, the nuke card sure changes things. Trying to use them as leverage for money or food or whatever else seems odd to me, but I am a paranoid individual anyway.

I think they (US GOV) should tread lightly. If something goes wrong, NK and China could prove to be very difficult to handle...on top of the mess that we are trying to deal with now. I also think they will play the games as Suddam did. JMO - JKE

BarryG

I saw the news as well. Sort of scary, their PM or whatever he is called is a nut, definitely a brick shy of a full load. No telling what he will do in the future. I suspect that the US will not do much except apply political pressure which they have been for 50 years with no luck. Hopefully the Chinese can exert more pressure but even that will probably be of little value. If he does have (which I dont doubt) them the only way you are going to get them from him is going to be by force. And I dont think too many nations want to war with them and deal with all of the other possible implications IE China. Not to mention the crazy nut might just use them to prove his point. And we certainly cant go in there right now nor anytime too soon as our forces are currently tied up elsewhere. The US might just be waiting for him to die (I think I read that his health is not that great) and deal with I think it is his son who would take over who I have read is not such a nut and more moderate. I wouldnt think that he would use them without being invaded as he surely realizes that would be disaster for him and his country.

AlpineRAM

Over here the newspapers had a cute cartoon:


The caption reads- Who said that I'm small and ugly?

AlpineRAM

IA_James

I'm not so sure it isn't actually more dangerous for him right now with our conventional forces tied up in Iraq. He puts another mushroom cloud over Japan, and we don't have any handy regular forces around, what are the odds we don't respond in kind? It's a pretty well know policy of the United States that attacks with "Weapons of Mass Destruction" will be responded to in kind. And Japan is still an ally of the U.S. I think the main factor in scenario like that would be stuff like prevailing winds in the area, ie "If we nuke him, are we going to poison all of South Korea?"

AlpineRAM

The main problem with nukes IMHO is that the immediate result is less than just the tip of the iceberg. Immediately contaminating south Korea is one point of the equation- long term results would make life really nasty for the whole world. (And it really doesn't matter who lit the fuse)

AlpineRAM

Redleg

Sounds like China is starting to lean on them if I heard correctly. Japan isn' gonna play patty-cake with them either. Wonder what Viet Nam and some of the others think about this. Like to see if N. Korea pushes some of the other countries we've butted heads with over to our side. Wonder if we're designing a self guided, MOAB yet? I'd hate to see it go that far, but what do you tell a suicide bomber? " You can't coerce us, because if you use it your gonna die?" They already decided to die, you just have to help them accomplish that with the least amount of collateral damage you can.

Begle1

We just need to revive that SDI thing...

Doesn't Korth Korea have a million-man army? Still, I do not believe that they affect us much no matter what they do... Even if they have nukes, they wouldn't have any ICBM's, would they?

I mean, heck, if we can get them to take out China, I wouldn't be complaining.

On a side note, with all that extra money going to the USAF for the war in Iraq you KNOW that we got some cool stuff up our sleeves that has yet to be unclassified... There's no way that all of that 90 bajillion dollars or whatever is going to just the war effort, on top of the 90 bajillon dollars they get yearly as it is.

hauliday

Larry the cable guy done a skit callled The Gooks of hazzard