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dead IT would be grotesque indeed if Kim Jong-Il, the weird ruler of North Kor ea, became the second dictator to bluff his way into catastrophic war wi th the US on the basis of nuclear weapons that do not exist. North Korea's bizarre statement that it already has nuclear weapons and w ill now develop more is impossible to interpret confidently. US intelligence has long believed North Korea probably does have one or p erhaps two crude nuclear devices. However, there is intense debate within the US intelligence community ove r the extent and nature of Pyongyang's nuclear program. There has always been a minority view in Western intelligence that North Korea is engaged in a great bluff. In this scenario, Kim Jong-Il is beha ving like Saddam Hussein - deriving status and power from the aura of we apons of mass destruction. Certainly, North Korea has two separate nuclear programs - both of which can yield weapons-grade material. One is a plutonium program based on the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. The other is a highly enriched uranium program dispersed at different locati ons in North Korea. Two years ago The Australian revealed extensive Pentagon contingency plan s to attack North Korea's nuclear facilities. The Bush administration, while wishing to solve the problem diplomaticall y, has never taken the military option off the table. But there are three devastating road blocks to such action. One, Washingt on could not be sure it had got all North Korea's nuclear facilities in any attack. Thre e, North Korea has vast batteries of artillery, deeply embedded in rugge d mountainside, all trained on the South Korean capital, Seoul. Nonetheless it is difficult to imagine Washington would do nothing if, as the North Korean official statement claims, the rogue Communist state n ow embarks on producing new nuclear weapons. North Korea has a history of crazy statements, which often turn out to be false. But you wouldn't bet your life on this statement being untrue.
View Replies To: Conspiracy Guy Or the fact that we have Ohio-class submarines roaming the Pacific armed with 24 Trident II missiles per submarine, each missile with up to 10 wa rheads per missile.
View Replies To: dead This loon is unpredictable, but his neighbors may reign him in. Japan has said that if North Korea goes nuclear, they will too, in self d efense. China goes into meltdown at the thought of a nuclear Japan. China has complete control of North Korea if they chose to use it. If Chi na closes the border, The lights go off in North Korea, the vehicles sto p moving, and everyone starves to death within a few weeks. I think China likes to see the West squirm as long as possible, but in th e end, they will squash Kim one way or the other.
View Replies To: RockinRight If NK weren't so close to South Korea's population centers... Nuking North Korea could result in radioa ctive fallout that could de-populate whole parts of any one of those cou ntries.
View Replies To: dead Since there is no one for them to use nuclear weapons against but South K orea maybe the time has come for the South Koreans to start their own nu clear weapons program... The NK nuclear blackma il gambit might then be neutered...
View Replies To: USS Alaska One can only hope that our subs are safe. After the massive technology tr ansfer to China by the CLintons and other new inventions by Russia it's only a matter of time before our subs lose their invisiblity.
View Replies To: RedEyeJack Since there is no one for them to use nuclear weapons against but South K orea A Chinese general once said he could send missiles to LA. Maybe the Chine se are giving ballistic technology to the PRK.
View Replies To: dead It appears to me that the DPRK has played a weak hand (desperate privatio n, a potential timebomb of dissent) extremely well. First, the interests of the US and the ROK are no longer congruent. The R OK cares mostly about not getting invaded or overrun with refugees, and the US cares about nuclear exports. The DPRK has allowed itself to be bo ught off by the ROK via the special economic zones, limited trade and th e like in exchange for an implied promise not to invade, and so the ROK policy is now to urge restraint on the US. Meanwhile, it is clear that t he DPRK cannot be bought off by the US on nuclear exports, because of th e Clinton experience. It also appears that the DPRK is gambling on the Chinese model - economic reform in a few special zones plus continued tight political control - as a way to stay in power. The chances of it working are probably less t han 50/50 (especially if reports about the refugee tide across the Yalu are true), but it's the best shot they have. By providing the ROK and th e PRC with opportunities to make money they have neutralized them even f urther as US partners. I suspect the Chinese are quite willing to string the DPRK along as is, and are not that concerned about nuclear exports to the jihad crowd. The ongoing ef forts to throw Kim Jong-Il under the bus are probably part of this effor t to make the DPRK regime more stable. I don't know much about such matters, but it appears to me that the best play for the US has is to encourage a rapid overthrow of the DPRK regime via some sort of uprising.
View Replies To: Non-Sequitur And Japan and Russia and China. Nuking North Korea could result in radioa ctive fallout that could de-populate whole parts of any one of those cou ntries. How much of Japan was depopulated after they were nuked?
View Replies To: Brian Allen but isn't China being foolish to allow Jihadists to get their hands on nu kes (thought the rumour is al Queda tried to buy nukes from the Chinese and the only reason the Chinese said no was the fact their nukes could b e traced back) a stable world economy is in their own best interests and while they are not No.
View Replies To: FreedomPoster Japan was not really defensible in the 1940s and it most certainly isn't defensible today. It's too densely populated and easy to attack so Japan would be insane to fight an offensive war that threatened the United St ates (it was insane in 1940, too). So long as the United States is the d efensive umbrella for Japan, the North Korean Chia-Dictator could threat en Japan and that would give Americans the hard choice of going to war t o save Japan. I'd rather let the Japanese decide when nukes are warrante d for their own defense.
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