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Mushroom Cloud Reported Over North Korea
cbrocious writes "Yahoo! News is reporting a mushroom cloud over North Korea that occured on Thursday in Yanggang province near the border with China. 'The explosion in Kim Hyong Jik county blasted a crater big enough to be noticed by a satellite, the source said.'"
the US needs a lot more planes-in-buildings(tm) to sort out its foreign policy.
hint: the cold war is over. terrorist do not have a central country and do not fear your attacks. making everyone hate you will not work.
If you count having the keystone kops on patrol as being "safely contained".
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
It's not humbling. It's just an indication at how grotesquely incompetent the mainstream media has become at reporting anything more significant than who got voted off the island.
Clinton and the democrats safely contained these crazy dictators.
So when North Korea unilaterally backed out of the bilateral freeze agreement Clinton got, that was safely contained? And when Clinton got a second agreement, during which apparently Pakistan was selling secrets to North Korea, that was safely contained?
What we had under Clinton was an agreement framework that a. did not have any lasting effects since it only froze and did not permanently dismantle, b. had no significant means for enforcement. These are not really mere opinions, since we know that North Korea is now picking up where it left off before, and that we were unable to enforce the decade-long freeze.
That is not safe containment, by any definition I can think of. And it is why Bush and Powell have insisted on changing "bilateral" to "multilateral" (which makes the agreement far more enforcable), and "freeze" to "CVID" (complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement).
Iraq was believed (by everyone, even France & Germany) to be headed in the same direction. The disagreement was in how to head it off. One approach favoured continuation of the containment policy which worked so well with NK; the other approach called for destroying Hussein while he was still easily destroyable.
Now, it currently appears that the consensus of the world's intelligence agencies was incorrect, and that Hussein's WMD programmes were illusory, or at most far less advanced than any serious analysts believed. Still, IMHO the Iraq action was defensible based on what we knew at the time.
Regarding NK, there's just not much we can do. If we make the first move, they can annihilate a few million South Koreans. If we let them make the first move, they'll probably annihilate a few million South Koreans. It's a nasty situation.
I vote number 3 and I am a liberal democrat. I would like to see the US have bilateral talks with north korea, however. The current multilateral talks aren't working because north korea wants bilateral ones. We should agree to their demand of a non-agression pact if they get rid of their nuclear weapons and program. Its not like we want to attack them anyway. We might as well meet a demand we were always going to meet officially or not in exchange for them getting rid of their nuclear weapons.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
This is VERY bad news indeed. This is one of those things that could start a World War. WWI was started with an assasination, image what one nuke could do. The North Koreans could use it, which honestly I doubt since Korea would be united agien by it, there would be no north. What could happen is since they are depirate for money is they could sell it to someone and then they use it. The other is that moron president of ours does his stupid "preemptive" war, though they dont have oil. Lets just hope Keary wins.
Do we have any choice but to play ball with the N Koreans?
Sure we have another choice. We can blow them to hell, and make a point to any other rogue regimes that think about playing with nuclear weapons. The Iranians will certainly pay attention in such a case.
Let's see how the Minuteman IIIs perform when the warheads are live. A first strike, without the warning and posturing that would make the strike less effective and create unnecessary politics before the fact, would settle the issue permanently.
Yes: Nuke 'em till they glow and shoot 'em in the dark.
Not saying it's a good idea, but it's definitely a choice that our current idiot-in-chief would consider. Yes, it would piss off the Chinese. Do I think he's bright enough to not piss off a billion Commies armed with nukes and a superiority complex? Do I think he's bright enough to pour piss out of a boot?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Sure, it's a bit drastic, but it would work.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
So, whom did NATO fight during WWII?
I read NK's stance as pretty much defensive. If you were suddenly part of 'The Axis of Evil', and you just watched one of your axis members get invaded, you'ld probably want some detterent also. This implies that they can probably be negotiated with.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Technically, the Korean War is not over.
This is what happens when you let the UN negotiate ceasefires with psychopathic dictators. Any bets on how many months until NK does test a real atomic bomb?
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fuck korea thy're puppets
The reason that years of diplomacy didn't get rid of Saddam Hussein is because that was not the aim of the diplomacy. The aim was to contain Iraq militarily - and it worked! That is why there are no weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq. Containment was working and the region was stable, until that idiot Bush came along and screwed the whole thing up.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Right and Left aside, I'm more afraid Bush/Cheney will start/commence a full nuclear war than Kerry/Edwards.
What a great choice to make; nuclear war or learning Spanish as a new national language.
Hmmmmm, what's that half life again?