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North Korea Threatens US With Preemptive Nuclear Strike
jppiiroinen writes "North Korea threatened the United States on Thursday with a preemptive nuclear strike, raising the level of rhetoric while the U.N. Security Council considers new sanctions against the reclusive country."
How long will it take before an 'unfortunate accident' at one of these nuclear sites makes an end to their aspirations?
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Dear Glorious Whatever,
Look, little fella, I know you have something to prove and all, but really hope you didn't buy into your father's bullshit. Believe it or not the U.S. has absolutely no interest in restarting the Korean War. Frankly, we're kind of warred out right now. So please stick to playing basketball with Dennis Rodman and leave us out of your grandstanding and dick waving. We've already got enough of that at home.
We'll be happy to keep sending you D-list celebrities if you'll just STFU.
Yours truly,
The American People
P.S. I would point out the obvious fact that the U.S. will bomb your country back to the stone age if you try to attack anyone with nukes. But, looking at a satellite photo of the Korean peninsula at night, I'm not sure that would amount to much of a threat.
Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
How many children do you know bear a racial hatred for Western culture that is bred and drilled into them, or are armed with nuclear warheads?
It's exactly that arrogance that they are standing up against, however misplaced their aggressions are.
There's no easy solution here; disarming them is impossible, making peace with them is impossible, talking sense into them is impossible, treading lightly and carrying a big stick seems to be the only safe alternative that doesn't cause us to descend into full military operation against them.
Actually, they said that SINCE the US is about to start a nuclear war, they ARE going to make a preemptive strike. That sounds like a threat of action to me, regardless of the fact they make such statements every week or so.
Wow, that's so easy! I hope you become general!
Yeah, that's a great idea. Attack them only when they're threatening with words so they have an excuse to say "YOU ATTACKED FIRST".
Snap out of video game world and think about real life logic, please, when it comes to war.
I assume by "you guys" you mean the United States.
1) The USA was not the one that invaded in 1950, the North did.
2) The USA ain't the one that is maintaining tensions. We've had lots of problems with countries since 1950 and most of them haven't lasted this long.
I know you think its chic to be critical of the USA for everything. But given that neither South Korea nor China can bring North Korea up to even basic levels of decency like feeding their own population, maybe this isn't the best example case. By and large North Korea has acted provocatively trying to create military conflict in the years since the Korean war, to which the USA has not responded forcibly. North Korea is a good example of what the world would look like when the USA does not "bomb everyone".
"Defending" yourself by striking first whenever you fabricate arbitrary threats is not defense, that is offense.
how ironic that NK has adopted the Bush Doctrine.
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
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The problem is that NK has an army of mostly soldiers, even HORSES still. That means they will be spread all over the field, so bombs and drones won't be very effective.
They don't stand a chance of WINNING, but they will make a terrible mess of the South because the South has 100x more value of factories, industry, business, people than the North does. Any war is just going to be a slugfest the North trying to break as much as they can, while the South defends and bombs "dirt" because that's all the Norths got.
The biggest problem is that the North will assuredly try to provoke China... That could put US and China troops accidentally shooting at each other...
Seems the FUD on oil and the Iraq war has proven to be quite sticky. Fact is, there are many other oil-rich countries that would have been a hell of a lot easier and convenient to take over than Iraq. Seeing as how the accusation is that the U.S. fabricated a case, it would have been just as easy to fabricate a case against any of them. If I had to plan such a thing, Venezuela would be the first to come to mind, but it's not the only one I would consider.
The war in Iraq was about one thing; Iran. Stabilizing the Middle East by reducing the amount of megalomaniacs by one. By calling Saddam's bluff (which was aimed more at Iran than the U.S.) the coalition slowed down a Middle-East arms race that was just getting started, but was going to speed up quickly once Iraq rebuilt its military capacity. One of the stated goals of the first Gulf War was to reduce their military capability for 10 years. Did the U.S. go about it the right time? Not optimal, but necessary, since it had been roughly 10 years since the first Gulf War. Did the U.S. go about it the right way? Definitely not. Rumsfeld screwed up the war strategy big time, starting with using half the troops that would have been needed for securing the borders. Nation-building and long-term occupation? No thanks; trying to quit.
North Korea presents a decent enough military threat overall, only because they've starved their people in order to pay for their military capability and have thoroughly indoctrinated them into fighting to the death to stay enslaved, but their tension with Japan and South Korea still does not amount to megalomaniac A vs megalomaniac B.
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do not underestimate the motivation, determination and creativity of those who intend you harm
false alarmism is a well understood concept here on slashdot
unfortunately, false complacency, equally dangerous, is not
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Oh, you mean 70 years ago, five years before North Korea started the Korean War?
Please tell the Germans they'd better announce the right for pre-emptive strikes on France in case that pesky Napoleon comes over the border again.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Don't know many Asians or do you mean to escalate? Ignoring them is good enough.
For decades now, the US troops in the DMZ have been there to keep the south from going north. As someone else pointed out, N.Korea is a fucking mess.
This could take another 40 years to work itself out without nuking anybody. N. Korea will eventually return to sanity.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Not likely. China is growing tired of Peyongyang's shenanigans. It was cute when China was a fervent marxist state and a major exporter of revolutionary insurgence. But China's come of age, is a major world power. They're finding N. Korea's crap annoying lately. China and the US' s economic futures are entwined for the near term, going to war over N. Korean nonsense doesn't seem likely to me. What's far more likely is the US getting involved in a dust up between Japan and China.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
MAD also only works when both sides can actually destroy eachother. A NK nuclear strike could at best kill a few million people, after which their entire nation would go up in smoke(or by invaded on every front at the very least, nuking NK might not be a very popular option as fallout would drift out over japan(ironic isn't it that everything nuclear somehow end up affecting japan) and south korea.
Well, you're right that it's an uneven match-up, but no device that the DPRK has tested has been very powerful -- not even to the level of the US nuclear armaments in the 40s -- and what they've managed to put together has been inefficient (even the most recent one) and dirty. Depending on the location of a detonation, casualties could be heavy, but nowhere near a million people. Truth be told, while they ramble on about what they'd do to DC, they could never get a device near it. I think that they'd probably hit a US base near Seoul, if they could. That said, they'd be kicking a hornets nest. Their greatest tactical threat comes from several hundred artillery positions they have spread along the DMZ, and those can easily strike Seoul, even for the ones that are positioned furthest back. The US has bombs, tested in Iraq against tank divisions, that would render most of those artillery pieces unusable within hours. Logistically, the DPRK would run out of fuel for trucks in a matter of months (perhaps weeks) and run out of food in about the same timeframe. Assuming that the US would leave Pyongyang untouched for the first few weeks (unlikely) they'd be trying to support a front line with starving soldiers and prisoners with pack-bikes by then, and that would not last for long. At the same time, the DPRK has created lots of dug-in defenses, and there will be a ton of dead-enders to deal with. At the longest, I think the DPRK might last six months. The US would never have to retaliate with nukes. Even if we did, our arsenal has pretty clean weaponry, so the impact of drifting fallout would not be that big. Still, there's no need for the US to use nukes. China, if they played their cards correctly, could seal their border with the DPRK, flood the place with humanitarian aid to prevent a mass exodus of refugees, and wait for the US to eliminate resistance. I wonder what kind of weirdos would step into the vacuum left by a KJ-U defeat, though.
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