This is an instance where America is right in bringing pressure on a foriegn country.

I sense another campaign in the war on terrorism.

*sigh*

Cold War II!
*ducks and covers

Are you sure that's wise? I think we need to tread lightly with North Korea and come to a peaceful resolution. Their spokesman said they would be willing to eventually dismantle if the U.S. ceases its hostile policy against them. While I am not aware of such a policy, we need to straighten out this misunderstanding. If we have economic sanctions against them, we need to lift them, pronto.

GG Earth

North Korea shakes its fist and the world trembles? No.

I'll laugh at you Mikus after we're all dead...
oh, wait

Not really suprising

Mikus, why not? Honestly think about it and give me an answer, because nukes are serious business. Any nation with nukes vying for international changes should be taken seriously, not with the arrogant attitude of inaction or even worse, military action.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel pretty crappy actually.

Come on, they could at least do a test of one of them to show the world that they aren't bluffing. I want some new video footage of a nuclear explosion, dammit!

You know the US should really think twice about this condescending foriegn policy regarding nukes. We can have 'em, but no one else can. Don't you think that's a little hypocritical? Especially considering we have the highest track record of any nation when it comes to invasions of other countries. We attack more countries than any other country, and when another nation wants to develop nukes, we slap them on the wrist and demand that they dismantle them. Why do we have nukes? So we can protect ourselves from our enemies, right? Well maybe these nations would like to have some bombs just incase uncle sam decides to "liberate their people" one of these days, and they can tell us to get the hell out.

When you see a country as powerful as the USA invading countries on what at times seems like a whim, wouldn't you want to intensify your defenses as well? I'm not saying I think North Korea needs these weapons, actually I think it would be best if they did not have them, but our nerve to tell someone else to dismantle nukes it appalling. If we didn't always have such a hostile attitude toward these other nations, maybe we wouldn't have to worry about the fact that they have nukes.

Hahahaha. On what timeline?

The US doesn't have a "Only we can have nuke policy"

Bill makes sense.

How can the US insist that North Korea shouldn't have nuclear weapons when the US relies on them? North Korea wants them for exactly the same reason the US did 50 years ago: bargaining power. North Korea would gain nothing from simply nuking South Korea or Japan. Unless it was invaded.


But North Korea is not the problem, only the symptom. The problem is the overly arrogant and aggressive foreign policy of the US, resulting in nations such as North Korea feeling intimidated.
If bilateral talks had began sooner, with some give from the US, then progress could have been made. Simply saying "stop your nuclear program, or else" hasn't achieved anything. The biggest mistake was the "Axis of Evil" speech.

Yes, North Korea is a symptom of their own government breaking a pact and demanding they still get the aid that was agreed to in the pact. I love you Mort.

Unfortunately, with bush in power, washington will always have a hostile foreign policy. I mean, the guy's convinced he's been sent by god to wage war on the axis of evil... you really think he'll arrive at a peaceful resolution with north korea? Yeah right.

kekeke press butan ^_^ gl lol keke

im in ur base, killing ur dudes

Jon`C wins

You know how they're going to do launch them, right?

For years now, they've had a secret "Ghost" training mission. Hundreds of thousands of 15-year-old Korean kids will enter the United States and Britain, cloaked.

When we hear an ambient alarmed followed by "Nuclear launch detected," we're all ****ed. And you know why?

Because George Bush wouldn't build his God-damn detectors.

Anyone hear anymore about that supersonic russian cruise missile? I would ask Firefox, but he's gone off to continue the great anti-crusade in other more religious parts of the internet.

Quote for truth (like I even needed to).

This just shows what a complete failure President Bush has been with foreign policy. He's spent effectively the entire US military to remove a petty tyrant (who was obviously going nowhere anyway, as evidence shows) from power, even when he had the chance to prevent the creation of yet another nuclear state. We had the chance to use the upper hand in dealing with Kim-Jong Il, but now he has nukes... And yes, once you have nukes, superpowers are required to appease you (after all, you're now a military world power, too), else you could nuke them. Nuclear weaponry makes conventional military (no matter how many bombers and carriers you have) obsolete. (This is directed at people like Mikus, who apparently do most of their thinking with their "lower" brains)

The 1994 US-NK nuclear pact provided that North Korea would dismantle its nuclear weapons program, and the US, Japan and South Korea would provide aid. But in 1999, when North Korea had sofar carried out everything the pact had demanded, economic sanctions against North Korea were still in place, and full diplomatic relations between the US and NK had not been established. NK warned that they would resume their nuclear research unless the US lifted the sanctions and started diplomatic talks.

The sensible thing here would be for the US to say "okay", lift the sanctions, and start talking with NK. Yes, they would probably want to keep a close eye on what was going on, to make sure the aid wasn't being misused. And they'd have to put a lot of effort into the diplomacy, to get agreements that would benefit everyone. The US could probably prolong the diplomacy, and eventually get what they wanted. Engaging in diplomatic talks would be in the interests of the US and very much in the interests of NK.

But, in 1999, the US simply said "no". The US just demanded that NK must not resume their nuclear weapons program, and repeated that whenever NK said anything.

So NK says "screw you", and construction of the first reactor began in August 2002.

That's three years of the US refusing to have anything to do with NK, and threatening them with military action. Three years that they could have spent in diplomatic talks, sorting out the situation, the US spent repeating violent rhettoric that only intimidated and aggrivated NK, declaring them part of an "axis of evil".

China has done a good job of negociating with NK, and they've probably calmed the situation considerably, but NK wanted diplomatic talks with the US and they were ignored.


And this isn't just an issue with Bush, Clinton is just as much to blame, as is Bush Snr.


Also...
I don't think there's any way NK could attack the US mainland, not unless they smuggle the nuclear weapon into Europe and launch it from there. They might be able to smuggle it into eastern Europe, Czech Republic perhaps, but I don't know if that's close enough. It probably isn't.
No, the intended target would probably be American allies, South Korea or Japan.

But like I said, North Korea wouldn't benefit at all from a nuclear attack. They'd lose one very expensive missile, and they'd also lose all bargaining power.
There's no way North Korea could hold up against the US in a conventional war, they would be overthrown. It would be far more violent than Iraq, but it'd happen eventually.

However, with the introduction of nuclear weapons, the US can no longer do that. As soon as North Korea feels threatened, as soon as they see the planes, or the boats, they just have to press the button, and boom there goes Tokyo or Seoul. They know they're going to be overthrown, so they have nothing left to lose.
I don't think Japan or South Korea will accept that as 'collateral damage'.

Thankfully we have Nukes too, and something called the Star Wars program that every one thought was so stupid.

And still is so stupid.

Spending all that money on shooting down missiles, instead of spending time and effort in engaging in diplomatic talks that would have yielded far more results.

And anyway, NK isn't going to have the ability to launch the nuclear missiles long distances, like the Soviets did, so the Star Wars program is unlikely to be able to stop any nuclear attack from North Korea.

And it isn't even done yet, is it?

Yes it is. The program is extremely expensive (final costs, as I recall, will exceed US$1trillion), and it will only block ICBMs, only one of three vectors nukes could come from. While this may have worked in protection against the USSR (where some 90% of all nukes were in ICBMs), this will do nothign for protection against nuclear terrorists, which will not be able to afford an ICBM. Instead, they may use an aircraft as a bomber (or perhaps an old soviet craft). More likely, they will simply smuggle it trhough the US border, and detonate it inside (after all, the terrorists like suicide bombings).


Agreed. The "Star Wars" program is largely just government pork for military contractors like Lockheed Martin (which wouldn't exist today were it not for extremely lucrative US federal contracts). The money would be better spent on ensuring that "the enemy" never has the weapons to begin with. Prevention is far better than cure.


It may be possible for them to launch such attacks to the US... The missiles sopposedly nearing completion there would be able to reach the western coast, though that may be an over-estimate on the part of any faction.


No, it would take at least 5-8 more years at the least; W. Bush will not be in office (under any circumstance) when, and if, it becomes operational.

Maybe he forgot to station marines around the missile turrents. Those turrents can't shoot things on the ground remember.

Everyone knows seige tanks own nukes anyway though.

N'gah! Times like this make me wish I was Protoss! Bush has failed to place adequate marines in his bunkers, instead opting to send the entire force to a friggin' desert.

The SS-N-22 and SS-N-26. They've been on the international market for a few years now, and have been sold to a handful of other nations along with supercavitating weapons (both supersonic cruise missiles and supercavitating weapons have no counterpart or defense in the U.S. military).

"Star Wars" ended in the early '90's. There are newer programs to replace it, but none of them consist (primarially) of space-based platforms. Such programs are needed. Sure, a terrorist group may not be able to afford ICBMs, but guess what? We don't live in a vaccuum. Terrorists aren't our only threat. Standing nations with standing militaries still exist.

Mort, it wasn't until 1999 that the N. Koreans even began considering allowing inspectors to access the underground nuclear site at Kumchang-ni. Until then they had simply denied that their nuclear program was continuing. After inspecting the site, the U.S. agreed to begin negotiations with N. Korea, and then became aware that N. Korea was still processing uranium for their nuclear program.

How nice of them!



"a traget of preemptive nuclear strikes." WTF are they talking about!?

nottheking, nuclear weapons don't just make millitary's obsolete, they make humanity obsolete.

Good greif, Kim Jong Il is insane.

ANARCHY SHALL RULE ALL!
<.<
>.>
*goes back to hide in the corner*

The Cold War was such a cop out. Where are the gigantic space battles we were promised?

Yes. We all know Bush is the sole reason North Korea is developing nuclear weapons. Clinton and his foreign policy had nothing to do with it

The difference is, clinton wouldn't have let it escalate to this point without lifting a finger. Clinton wouldn't have classified NK as being "evil", cause you know, that's never good for diplomatic relations.

"Walk softly and carry a big stick." But don't be afraid to smack someone with it if you have to.

Good old protoss and their photo cannons. You don't have to fill a photon cannon with dragoons to make it shoot. And it doesn't take 10,000 shots from a photon cannon to kill something.

Terran suck! (except for seige tanks)

But even the mighty seige tank is outclassed by the Guardian, or as I like to call them, flying seige tanks.

Zerg > *

And when they explode into a ball of nuclear hellfire after being smacked with the stick, it doesn't really matter anymore.

No balls.