From CNN:
North Korea would respond to a pre-emptive U.S. military attack with an “annihilating strike and a nuclear war,” the state-run media said Monday, heightening anti-U.S. rhetoric amid close scrutiny of its missile program.
The Korean Central News Agency, citing an unidentified Rodong Sinmun newspaper “analyst,” accused the United States of increasing military pressure on the isolated communist state and basing new spy planes on the Korean Peninsula.
The North Korean threat of retaliation, which is often voiced by its state-controlled media, comes amid U.S. official reports that Pyongyang has shown signs of preparing for a test of a long-range missile. North Korea claims it has the right to such a launch.
On Friday, Pyongyang accused the United States of driving the situation on the Korean Peninsula “to the brink of war,” and said it is fully prepared to counter any U.S. aggression.
Monday’s report accused Washington of escalating military pressure on the country with war exercises, a massive arms buildup and aerial espionage by basing new spy planes in South Korea.
Man, that missile defense system is starting to look genius isn’t it?
Whereas, say, Jimmy Carter and Madeleine Albright? Not so much.
“Massive arms buildup”?
Um, we’d notice a bunch of troops moving there. Their “news” agency doesn’t even try to be credible.
Remember, the North Korean “news” agency is always saying horrible things about the US and threatening us with drastic action if we breath in their direction. Of course, they claim that flowers spontaneoudly bloom on poofy-hair’s birthday, too.
I’m glad we’ve got the anti-missile missiles, though, in case Poofy has one too many bottles of cognac and has one of his concubines hit the “launch” button….
I thought the Reality Based Community had an anti-nuclear defense – the “Chickens Coming Home To Roost” shield where, in case of nuclear attack, they explain how we had it coming, use the term “blowback,” make the Michael Moore like observation that some of the incinerated victims weren’t even Republicans, and ask “What else could they do in the face of chimperialism?”
What are the odds in Vegas? Debbie needs a new pair of shoes: 3-minute blowjob stilettoes (quizas?):
http://pandagon.net/2006/07/02/who-knew-youd-have-to-act-like-a-5-whore-to-get-a-shot-a-the-ny-times/
Madeleine Albright can leg-press North Korea.
Can we get the NYT to publish Li’l Kim’s home address? That’ll fix ‘em!
Diplomacy and national image aside, it would, for once, be fun to see someone from the administration appear on CNN, or better yet the BBC, asking something along the line of how you say “glow in the dark” in North Korean.
tw: How many years is that half life thingy again?
Easy bedwetter. Don’t start humping a bible and praying for chimpy Mchitlerburton to save you just yet. North Korea doesn’t mean what they say, they are just posturing. It’s cultural. A little over the top rhetoric. We called them part of the axis of evil. They are threatening us with nuclear annihilation. Fair is fair. Don’t you get it? Just by us having nuclear weapons it is a threat to every other country on earth. Therefore if we have nukes everyone else should too. North Korea should have them ditto Iran and Saddam’s Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya etc. Also they can threaten us all they want but under legitimate international law we can’t do anything until one of our major cities is in cinders.
So sleep tight. What are the chances of them choosing Denver? If they were going to nuke us which they are not because I can discern the subtle clues which point us towards the real meaning of the current statements, which is “Just leave us alone to fly our kites and play with our kittens you meanies”.
Subtle.Nuanced.Reality
We’re provoking this war with peaceful North Korea so that Bushchimphitler can get his friggin’ Star-wars, or “missle-defense, or whatever.
Can’t you see! It’s the NEOCON CONSPIRACY!!
It would never come to that.
One sparkling foxtrot around the ballroom floor, and Mr. Kim would be begging, BEGGING! for mercy.
If only wishes were horses and all that.
TW=”came”.
I had something about “first”, “Kim”, and “Albright”, but I’m not going there today…
“What are the chances of them choosing Denver?”
None.
What are the chances of them aiming for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle and hitting Denver by accident? Good, they are North Koreans.
Slightly off topic but can someone tell me if the following makes me crazy?
Every time I hear or see Madeleine Albright’s name mentioned I can’t help but imagine her and Helen Thomas having sex. One time I saw them on the news together and it just clicked into my brain. Thankfully you don’t hear Albright’s name mentioned near as much as you used to. The Clinton years were not pleasant in that regard. I also had a similar thing going for a while with Cindy Sheehan. Only I saw her with Jesse Jackson. Really painfull stuff. Fortunately that one went away with time.
Steve, Oh, I thought it was former Clinton officials calling for a preemptive, unilateral, strike. Conveniently enough, they don’t have any power, but N. Korea is apparently taking their position seriously.
You are nearly as fucked up as Deb, Big E. Seek help.
I think Jeff might have the kind of drugs you need hidden between the cushions in the sofa.
Actually Phil I made the mistake of turning on CNN one time after I got back to my hotel from a Widespread Panic show. As it turns out the effect is actually heightened by certain hallucinogens. The sick part is for several milliseconds before I knew what I was seeing I liked it. I’ll never forgive myself for that.
Actually Phil I made the mistake of turning on CNN one time after I got back to my hotel from a Widespread Panic show. As it turns out the effect is actually heightened by certain hallucinogens. The sick part is for several milliseconds before I knew what I was seeing I liked it. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for that.
What are the chances of them choosing Denver?
Slim, but has anyone figured out actholes address? GPS coordinates wouldn’t take too much to figure out with that info. That could be a win-win solution.
Um, well, just a thought.
Was that a flash back, Big E?
Ahhh Gawd Peg, MY EYES!!!!
“Every time I hear or see Madeleine Albright’s name mentioned I can’t help but imagine her and Helen Thomas having sex.”
Oh, great! One so friggin’ ugly that tears roll down the back of her head – and the other with a face like a bucketful of assholes.
I thought it was former Clinton officials calling for a preemptive, unilateral, strike. Conveniently enough, they don’t have any power, but N. Korea is apparently taking their position seriously.
Mark,
How can North Korea or anyone take the Clintonites’ position seiously, when these Dem foreign policy “experts” are posturing for a pre-emptive thrust at NoKo while permanently bent over at the waist to accommodate anti-American tyrants at the same time? Their postition is too absurd.
“Every time I hear or see Madeleine Albright’s name mentioned I can’t help but imagine her and Helen Thomas having sex.â€Â
Oh, great! One so friggin’ ugly that tears roll down the back of her head – and the other with a face like a bucketful of assholes.
What’s worse is at some point in their lives they’ve most probably gotten laid….I have just discusted myself and am off to vomit
ahh crap, too much bold…need to put glasses back on and use preview…what a drag it is getting old
“Diplomacy and national image aside, it would, for once, be fun to see someone from the administration appear on CNN, or better yet the BBC, asking something along the line of how you say “glow in the dark†in North Korean.”
There’s a fomous pic taken from a satellitte over Asia.
Lights, lights everywhere.
The whole coast of China, Eastern Russia, Japan looks like a frikkin’ Fourth of July.
South Korea is lit from one end to the other.
Not one stinkin’ light is lit in North Korea.
South Korea is lit from one end to the other.
Not one stinkin’ light is lit in North Korea.
North Korea has no way of saying “glow in the dark”?
Madeleine Albright
Donna Shalala
Janet Reno
Now I need a drink.
Charlotte,
Oh, I didn’t mean that they seriously took them seriously, they’re just pretending to, so as to use them as they have in the past—won’t work this time though.
I don’t know, but the very thought makes me crazy.
Most of my research (For a hastily prepared college paper, so take it with a grain of salt.) on missile defense showed that there wasn’t a lot in the technological field that was feasible or effective. Laser satellites aiming to fry the missiles wouldn’t get enough heat for solid-fueled rockets and a couple other things. Though I do remembr not finding anything bad about Reagan’s Brilliant Pebbles plan.
Do we have reason to believe that missile defense is attainable?
Jumpin’ Jebus on a pogo stick, this thread has veered off into “nauseating”.
That’s it. Whack ‘em.
fwiw, speaking as a former Korean cryptographic linguist – two tours Korea, certified instructor, et yadada – the best thing about our presence on the peninsula is that there’s a landmark inside North Korea called “Luke the Gook’s Castle”
Really.
I’m not kidding.
Luke the Gook’s Castle
Here’s the picture of Korea from space at night. The South is brilliantly lit; the North is almost completely dark.
The Lefties will just say they’re saving energy in the Worker’s Paradise. Have some more bark soup!
China should step up to its responsibilities and exercise some control over this little freak; he’s in their neighborhood. The only reason he does this is to extort money from the US because we’re usually suckers–like Clinton and Halfbright. Fortunately, this administration isn’t falling for his nonsense. If his armed forces get hungry enough, perhaps they’ll turn on him.
Kim Jong Il: AAAHH AHHHHH PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!!! HEY OVER HERE!!!! AHHHHHHH!!!!!
Worker’s paradise or concentration camp. Same thing.
Oh Hans Brix.
Well, that explains it. You shoulda watched, I dunno, Eraserheard instead.
The South is brilliantly lit; the North is almost completely dark.
Then it will be a wonderful venue for the 1st annual Albright Thomas Reno Sheehan O’Donnell 100% Naked Revue and Orgy.
This reminds me of that classic line from a famous movie:
I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
OHNOES,
Whether or not a missile defense is feasable depends entirely on the scenario. We certainly have the technology to intercept ballistic missiles as they come back into the atmosphere. People who tell you you can’t hit a missile with another missile are stupid, misinformed, or disingenuous.
The problem with late stage defense, though, is each interceptor can only cover so much area – it needs time to get to the target. So it’s really only cost-effective for “theater” defense – a city, a fleet, something like that. You could never afford to cover the whole US. But we can probably cover most of Japan, for instance, with six or seven cruisers sporting the new SM-3.
The other problem is any defense can be overwhelmed. Could we stop a couple of missiles from Crazy Kim from hitting Tokyo, given the fact he’s building them one at a time? Probably. Could we ever stop a significant percentage the Russian arsenal? No, not even if every interceptor found it’s target – we simply don’t have enough. If we did, the Russians could build more ICBMs for a fraction of the intercept cost.
The Nokos don’t have the technology (or the money) to outpace us like the Russians can. So yeah, in this case, missile defense is feasable. At least until Kim gets a missile with a long enough range to hit the US and enough production capability to make 1000 of them.
Also, the missile they’ve got on the pad is a lengthened version of something they got from the Chinese. It’s never been tested, and there’s some serious questions about the design, i.e. there’s a pretty good chance it won’t work at all or at least be unacceptably unreliable. And there’s still no evidence they’ve been able to make a nuclear bomb, let alone a small and robust version suitable for a missile. So the whole thing might be a moot point.
“What a strange person…”
“And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, “O Lord, bless this thy hand grenade, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.” And the Lord did grin. And the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths, and carp and anchovies, and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit-bats and large chu…”
In honor of our holiday trolls:
OHNOES,
Eric summed up brilliantly. I will add this: that’s how Reagan destroyed the USSR (to the extent that he had something to do with it, which was a lot but probably not as much as some of us on the Right like to believe.) He announced that the U.S. would build a missile defense. The Russian philosophy has always been “nothing exceeds like excess”, so they had to go from building X missiles, where X = the most they could, to building X + N missiles, where N = the number the U.S. would shoot down. And how many is N? Ronnie wasn’t telling, so they had to guess high…
Which brings me to my proposed method for dealing with Dear Leader. Position the Aegis cruisers, invite reporters aboard, and try to shoot the missile down. Then, whether it works or not, send a loudly public message to Kim saying, “Gee, that was fun! Good practice! Thanks! When can we have another one?”
If it works, the North Koreans are where the USSR was in 1985, only worse—they have to build at least N + 1 missiles, where N is again the number the U.S. will shoot down, or they’ll never hit anything. If it doesn’t work, there’ll be red faces in the Navy and hoots and hollers from the anti-defense crowd, but given the cheerful optimism of the message Kim & Co. will never be able to figure out whether or not Vincennes “took a dive”, so they’ll still be stuck with building N + 1 missiles. And frankly, they ain’t got the scratch.
“Face” culture, remember? At the moment, Dear Leader is miffed that we aren’t paying enough attention to him, as Christopher Taylor pointed out, above. When we have to, it ought to be with maximum ridicule.
Regards,
Ric
Hear, hear, and a hearty second on that one, Ric. Ridicule, coupled with some healthy chutzpah, would be excellent weapons to deploy against many of our current foes, who are caught up in honor-based societies that sharply limit their stock of potential responses to the same.
Jan Morris, in her wonderful Pax Britannia, wrote of how Joseph Chamberlain casually scribbled the word “Cheek” into the margins of a Foreign Office report of French efforts to establish a claim to British colonial possessions in Central Africa. There’s a lesson to be learned there – I’m not saying we need to ape British imperial hubris, but there is something to say for the studiedly casual demolition of an opponent’s pretensions, especially when he’s the like of a Kim Jong Il or a Bin Ladin.
One more thing—pay attention to Eric’s last paragraph. It’s the reason people who speculate on attacking the pad site or shooting down during boost get responses approximating shush! cool it!
Experience with the type of missile this one is based on suggests a roughly 10-20% chance of catastrophic failure at launch; that is, they light the fuse and run like hell, and instead of leaping into the sky it blows up right there.
They’ve already said that if anybody comes into their country to destroy it they’ll attack the South. In case of a catastrophic failure there will of course be moonbats ‘round the world shouting that the Americans blew it up. Don’t give them any credibility.
Regards,
Ric
Then it will be a wonderful venue for the 1st annual Albright Thomas Reno Sheehan O’Donnell 100% Naked Revue and Orgy.
ralph That’s it Goldstein. I’m going on a “b” double “e” double “r””u””n”…give me your keys…
I was wondering why that sounded familiar—then I remembered our visitor in a previous thread.
Probably a couple of “journalists” in France or Italy will claim that – the same kind of guys who’ve claimed that no plane ever hit the Pentagon. They’re similar to the guys over here who claim Hillary had Vince Foster whacked. It’s unfortunate that such people exist; the best approach is ridicule.
Building missiles is a profitable venture for North Korea. They can sell them to second-tier military powers like Iran, which does have the scratch. (Hey, maybe Venezuela would be interested too.) They claim to be working towards satellite launches, which, if they could actually do it, could be a big money earner. If the missile program is less an expense than an investment, it’ll be harder to make them see it as bankrupting themselves. They’re doing it out of a mix of motives, both commercial and military.
But your deterrence math is suspect. A missile defense system doesn’t allow the US to shoot down N missiles, forcing the enemy to build N+1; it allows the US to shoot down up to N missiles at a probability of 1/X. The enemy doesn’t know what X is (neither do we, really), but it ain’t 90 percent. At the moment, DOD does’t even claim it’s 50 percent (see Carl Levin’s statements in briefings by DOD), but let’s pretend it’s 90 percent. And say the US builds 100 interceptors, rather than the 10 we have now, so there’s no real limit in that direction. Still, if the North Koreans build six missiles, they’ll have a 47 percent chance of one getting through. How strong is the deterrent value of a 47 percent chance of destroying an American city? And if the Koreans build 15 missiles, the chances one will get through rise to almost 80 percent.
But my thinking on this question has changed over the last 3 years. I remember reading that the initial deployment of interceptors in Alaska cost about $10 billion, and presumably they have enhanced American security somehow, even if negligibly. Compared to the Iraq war, which is racing towards $300 billion and has actively harmed US security, that looks like a bargain.
Perhaps you are thinking of the more radical Lefties in 1968. If you can time-travel back and ask them, please let me know what their response is. By now, of course, half of them are Righties, as the right offers more opportunities for half-baked maximalist idiocy these days.
In any case, in 1968, North Korea was more heavily industrialized and better fed than South Korea, so the mistake is at least somewhat understandable. It’s kind of amazing how long the Communist charade actually sort of worked before it collapsed. Vietnamese talk about this a lot, with a sort of bemused wonder – many of them traveled to N Korea in the ‘60s and ‘70s and viewed it as their advanced big brother nation. Now, having converted to the free market and tripled their incomes in 15 years, they pity the fools.
Mmm, thanks for the info. I put the research paper together in about 10 hours of work from start to finish, non-stop, so I’m FAR from an expert on the topic. (Made an A on it though. ^_^)
How close are we technologically to having feasible deployed missile defense for most of the bullseye spots for our military and a few civvie targets? Would it even be an effective investment in the long term? Are we likely to clash with any more upstarts with a Krazy Kim Jong Il style nuclear missile or three? I cannot imagine it being helpful in any future engagements with foes worthy of at least a modicum of respect (China for instance).
Oh, shit. If Brooksfoe is in favor of BMD, there must be something wrong with it. Better surrender now…
brooksfoe, I would be a little less pendantic about the calculus. Technically you are both wrong as the combination of SLBMs, short range missiles and bombers can create a first strike capability and destroy a percentage of their nuclear capability while on the ground.
In that case, the Russians would not have N missiles at their disposal but (N – A). So they might have 10,000 warheads, but if we destroy 8000 of them, without ABM, 2000 get through and hit every target. With ABM however on the scale they were talking about, with hundreds of satellites and ground bases, we stand a good chance of killing lots of those interceptors.
Before this, the game was to survive WWIII with ten or twelve percent of the population. With ABM, the US could save 80-90% and burn the Soviet Union to the mantle. So you miss the entire point of ABM unless you figure on the First Strike.
BTW, it was US policy to use nuclear weapons to repel a Red Army invasion. The first strike was a very real danger for the Soviets.
– Did I just see a Leftie condemn “The utopian workers paradise” troupe….
– It’s definately a holiday weekend….
TW: As in how did that happen – Must be the Chevits Regal….
You miss the point. NoKo will get exactly one chance to launch a nuclear missle. Furthermore He knows it. You ar watching a desparate little man trying to hold onto power.Since he hasn’t upgraded or maintained his conventiaonal forces for almost two decades, Id say those forces on the boarder with S korea are yearning for some kimchee.
Compared to the Iraq war, which is racing towards $300 billion and has actively harmed US security, that looks like a bargain.
Still cheaper than welfare. Jihad against the west has been going on since the late eighties at least. It’s just that Iraq has brought all the cockroaches out into the light.Acting true to form the terrorists forgo a chance at the contenetal US to fight soldiers in their back yard.Brilliant piece of strategy, that.
Travel back in time?
Hardly, you just gotta travel to your local University. The radicals of ‘68 are all grown up, and they’re actively “teaching” a new batch of loons.
Kim sounds ronery, so ronery…
– SGT, yes. Political proselityzing is the next thing we need to eradicate from the campus.
– No more generations of little Marxists/Communists/Socialists.
For bottle rockets, maybe. Venezuela could possibly finance a few, they need to hurry before their economy goes in the crapper, and good luck on getting them delivered.
I’ve got a documentary on the Regulus program, and I think it’s pretty telling that one of submariners said, “The first nuclear weapons that would go off if World War III had started then would have been launched by Regulus submarines. I don’t think I was supposed to say that…”
The only reason Communist charades “work” is when they’re financed by non-Communist countries.
These clowns can’t even build a hotel in their capital city without botching the job.
Rocket Test “successful”
Who’s worried =x
Well, shee-it, boy! Bring it on!
Hell, I ain’t greased any zipperheads in years…
“N. Korea threatens U.S. with ‘nuclear war‘“
Well, ok – but just a quick one. We’ve got a date later, if you know what I mean…