WaPo:
North Korea has tested the engine mechanism for an intercontinental missile that might be able to hit major cities on the U.S. West Coast, according to an account published Tuesday in the South Korean press.
A previously unknown missile launch site on the west coast of North Korea was identified last week by Jane’s Defense Weekly, which cited commercial satellite images. The facility has a mobile launch pad and a 10-story tower that would support the North’s largest ballistic missiles, Jane’s reported.
Appearing before a parliamentary committee in Seoul on Thursday, South Korean Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee said the launch site is about 80 percent complete. His remarks added to the growing body of information about the site in recent media reports.
If accurate, the reports indicate that while North Korea has pursued on-again, off-again negotiations with the United States and four other countries on abandoning its nuclear weapons program, it has continued to work on developing a long-range ballistic missile and is diverting scarce resources from a collapsing economy that has brought about chronic food shortages.
ad_iconA 2006 U.N. Security Council resolution demands that North Korea “suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile program.” The North must abandon its program in a “complete, verifiable and irreversible manner,” the resolution says.
Well, then. Good thing Democratic candidate Barack Obama is for doing away with that silly missile shield of ours — and for taking us toward nuclear disarmament.
Because otherwise, North Korea wouldn’t stand a chance, militarily. And that’s just not fair.
At any rate, the UN Security Council has made the proper demands. And, sorry, NK, but you simply cannot get a ballistic missile to pierce through stacks of very fine paper and roll upon roll of red tape.
(h/t Cuffy, who has more, including bitchin’ graphics that I’m far too lazy to supply.)
OK, I can’t resist…another man who may save California is…Kim Jong-il.
How so? Consider the electoral maps. California is NOT as hopeless if you look at county by county voting (and precinct by precinct voting if you can find those maps). And the real political messes are concentrated in rather compact areas of the state.
Two atomic bombs–detonated in San Francisco and that creep Maxine Water’s district in South Central LA–would change the state for the better.
Four atomic bombs–SF, South Central LA, The Oakland-Berkeley area, and West Hollywood (Waxman’s district)–would permanently realign the state.
Then again, Oakland / Berkeley might be fine with “the holy fallout” from an SF bomb, given prevailing westerly winds. (Remember “Beneath the Planet of the Apes”?)
(Yes, I keed, I keed…)
Enclaves of insanity like downtown Sacramento, Davis, Marin or Humboldt would remain, but they would be insignificant on the larger California political scene, quaint museums to a quasi-Soviet hippie era past. They could even become nostalgic tourist traps for leftists throughout the USA, even the world. “Turning rebellion into money,” as the song goes.
Ideally, this would happen on some mass demonstration weekend in San Francisco or West Hollywood, with all the working people out of the downtown SF and Wilshire Boulevard financial districts. The last weekend in June (Gay Pride) would be ideal. Note: It’s not the sexuality as much as it it the insane politics. If they were all like J. Edgar Hoover or Roy Cohn (America’s first gay patriots?), they would be just fine as far as I am concerned!
OK, I know this is bad joke hyperbole, but are you up to it, you pudgy pygmy, Krazy Kim?
This is exactly why we keep up with military research, whether or not it seems immediately warranted. I suspect we found out about this before Jane’s, but what ifwe didn’t?
Ifwe, my new favorite word.
Lalala. It’s all George Bush’s fault that North Korea hates us. They’ll will be our best friend once Obama gets elected. Kim Jong-Il and President Obama will go riding around Camp David on glowing white unicorns, conjuring rainbows, healing the sick, and making the seas recede.
Pah.
Is this missile called Big Dong?
Which makes their “nuclear disarmament” claims laughable. ICBMs and their like are all but useless without nuclear payloads.
Not worried. Obama will save us!
We in the missile defense community liked to, in (ahem) private moments, refer to the No Dong as “Dongless”.
You can bet a paycheck, though, that all of this is just going to stir up assertions of how utterly worthless our missile defenses are, after having sunk so much money in them.
Of course we might actually have something more useful if certain someones didn’t keep on cutting missile defense appropriations. It’s a self-feeding argument, if you’re not aware that the reason it doesn’t work is because they kept cutting appropriations, which they did because it doesn’t work. Which it doesn’t, because of the funding cuts.
And around and around we go.
“ICBMs and their like are all but useless without nuclear payloads.”
Maybe they’re trying to develop a market for express Kimchi delivery.
#6 Techie:
There is, I guess, some value in doing this if only to keep others off balance. Uncertainty is a diplomatic card, like the USA keeping ‘all options’ on the table. Otherwise all North Korea has is a military aimed in one direction, and a military that is a few generations behind any other in its radius of action.
Maybe the Norks are getting into the space tourism business. Richard Branson, watch out!
‘within its radius of action’ is a better way of getting my intent across.
But when Baracky says he’s going to cut missile defenses he says it in his bestest baritoney voice and looks very very serious. A lot of people don’t take this into account I don’t think.
Balloon fence!
San Francisco could always protect itself with very big catapults armed with human shields. “Your nukes can’t get through our flying hippies!”
North Korea I think really underestimates what a shithole their country is I think. You would think that would be all the defense they needed, but they are led by a cabbage and they don’t think like we do.
A missile-load of kimchi would probably be worse than whatever nuclear weapon the PRiKs might come up with.
Wanna bet it’s a bargaining chip? “Give us another 10 train-loads of rice and we’ll gladly destroy our cardboard and duct tape missile launching site!”
When you’ve got precisely nothing to offer in trade you can always try to rob the global liquor store with your wooden pistol.
No worries, McCain/Schiavo will invade NK and take all their fireworks.
No worries, McCain/Schiavo will invade NK and take all their fireworks.
Are you Commiecrats still flogging that dead horse???
This move makes me wonder if the rumors about Kim Jong Ills poor health is true. Is this the NK generals stretching their muscles ? Who takes over if Kim Jong bites it ?
Liberals come up with the most irrelevant quips. What possible relevance can teri schiavo have ?
“Who takes over if Kim Jong bites it ?”
He bit the No Dong? Excitable Andy might be interested.
#20 Matt, Esq.:
Like many of these people’s republics, it will be one of his sons. Primogeniture and all that, with a dash of palace-coups thrown in. If the rest of the world is lucky, a ‘War of the Roses’ will ensue.
“#
Comment by Matt, Esq. on 9/17 @ 4:55 pm #
Liberals come up with the most irrelevant quips. What possible relevance can teri schiavo have ?”
That’s not a quip.
Dick is just stooopid.
I think the missle work is being done by contract for Iran.
That said, after looking at the range on the graphics Jeff declined to crayon in, Tina Fey should revise her Sarah Palin line to: “I can see North Korean rockets launching while sitting on my porch”
Kim Jong Il is doing a Schaivo impression these days, Dick’s inanities aside. Or maybe it’s more Ariel Sharon.
I love a good mystery.
The weird thing is, the “it doesn’t work” argument is the same one they use to increase spending on social programs.
#18
look1Look!Look! See Dick think! Think Dick! Think! Dick is a Dick!
If past perfermance is indicative of future results, whoever is down range is safest. The guy who lights the fuse has made out his will.
Missle defense is a program that works fairly well; especially in a low target density scenario. And, while the Russians can put enough birds in the air to overwhelm any ground based systems we may place in eastern Europe; the same could not be said of North Korea…
Also, while the ground based missle defense still is not quite 100% effective, statistically, it’s not like they are missing the target a majority of the time; indeed, they’ve had many impressive intercepts over the Pacific in the last few years…
While ground based missile defense is controversial, for a variety of reasons, and guys like O! want to cancel the program, it is efective and is one of our defenses of the future. And for those critics who say it can’t come on line fast enough…No worries…
I used to work in Navy Missile systems, and without going into details, let’s just say that the missile launch tubes on our boomer subs don’t exclusively have to carry offensive loads…
@ #29
I’ll bet there’s quite a few subs stationed around that lil’ Mad Dong’s peninsula.
Prolly we could get one of ours right up their gantry before they even lit the match..
So N Korea was told by the UN to stop ballistic missile production. Or what, they’ll say stop 13 more times or the UN will send Jimmy Carter to bludgeon Kim with his Nobel Peace Prize?
serr8d: don’t the japanese have Aegis destroyers with anti missile stuff? There was a demo a while ago.
See, it’s just like law enforcement. Cut the bushes around your house, and the b/e people will go somewhere else. If San Francisco gets hit, it means Chicago/Newark/Boston didn’t. Success.
You just have to think right about these things.
Derek
You can bet a paycheck, though, that all of this is just going to stir up assertions of how utterly worthless our missile defenses are, after having sunk so much money in them.
Yeah, the Union of Concerned Assholes will use another “upside down missile” that is fastest when it is heaviest off the pad to show that our system doesn’t work….
Of course we might actually have something more useful if certain someones didn’t keep on cutting missile defense appropriations. It’s a self-feeding argument, if you’re not aware that the reason it doesn’t work is because they kept cutting appropriations, which they did because it doesn’t work. Which it doesn’t, because of the funding cuts.
“Jump frog! Jump!” Scientist notes: “Frog with no legs goes deaf.”
I work in this field as well: Peace Through Light….
I, for one, trust Dick Lugar and Obama to “lock down loose nuclear weapons”.
Maybe Gavin could send them a note that this was a load he was unwilling to take?
You know who was a crook, Bennett?
Fuckin’ Nixon.
And that Agnew?
Don’t. Get. Me. Started.
Evidently The Dick Erstwhile Galoshes Bennett can’t read, B. Moe. Especially #6.
Libelslander!
I used to work in Navy Missile systems, and without going into details, let’s just say that the missile launch tubes on our boomer subs don’t exclusively have to carry offensive loads…
Oh. Well. Any Aegis cruiser will be able to fire…oh, I dunno…200+ missile interceptors during a given engagement. I had no idea USN had networked the fleet to the point where the launch platform didn’t need a surveillance and track radar, though.
“When you’ve got precisely nothing to offer in trade you can always try to rob the global liquor store with your wooden pistol.”
Thanks for that. I needed a good, hearty laugh. That line gave me one!
#32
Places like NK and Iran will get exactly one chance to get it right and then the lights will literally go out. Not that NK has a lot of lights to lose. Most of the people in NK are praying that SK or the US invades and that we’ll bring something to eat.No joke.
I hate me when I feel like this: Please let them be capable of at least hitting San Francisco!
Issues aside,
SERIOUSLY, YOU CALL YOURSELVES AMERICANS & OPENLY ADVOCATE THE NUCLEAR DESTRUCTION OF AMERICAN CITIES?
ARE YOU SO CAUGHT UP IN POLITICS & YOUR OWN INTERESTS & FEARS THAT YOU FORGOT YOUR BASIC HUMAN MORALS?
BE CAREFUL YOU DO NOT BECOME WHAT YOU HATE! TERRORISTS USE THE SAME REASONING TO JUSTIFY THEIR HATEFUL, DISGUSTING ACTS!
CHILDREN IN OKLAHOMA CITY ARE NO MORE OR LESS PRECIOUS THAN CHILDREN IN SAN FRANCISCO, OMAHA, SEATTLE, LITTLE ROCK, CHARLESTON, CHICAGO OR ANY AMERICAN COMMUNITY AND VICE-VERSA!
UNBELIEVABLE! SHAMEFUL!