He can hit Oz from there, the asshole.
Has Australia got nukes? I think we got a few nukes, don't we?
Actually I don't think we do, but I think the Yanks let us hold theirs now & again.
I think you guys scrapped yours.
Now be nice and I'll let you touch one.
"The nuclear test will contribute to maintaining peace and stability in the Korean peninsula and surrounding region," KCNA said.
Ummm, yeah.
Perhaps their starving population will feed on nuclear pride.
And maybe this will put the fear of god terror on USA voters, again. My, how convenient.
Anyway..
This is great news. Developing horrific weapons of mass destruction and unleashing them on Japan was a vital stage in the U.S. victory over the forces of oppression in World War II - and I'm glad that North Korea are emulating that tried and tested model of development.
Unlike those horrible Iranians with their "peaceful nuclear power program", I hope that North Korea can now join the family of freedom-loving nuclear weapon States like Pakistan, Israel, Russia and China: all proud and valuable allies of the U.S.A. in her struggle against countries without WMDs - you know, pushover little pussy-countries like Iraq.
Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere.
No, no weapons over there.
Maybe under here?
Curious George: How was The Most Horrible President Ever, Yes, President Clinton, Responsible for yesterday's explosion, and should he be waterboarded to find out?
That won't work on the Clenis. He doesn't inhale.
The US invaded Iraq because of rumors of WMDs, but completely ignored North Korea, even though at the time they were blatantly flauting that they did have WMDs.
This administration's capricious application of policy seems to be biting everyone in the ass now.
He can hit Oz from there, the asshole.
Missiles are so old school.
Load one inside a shipping container and he can hit anyone in the world.
Oh Chryen, I think you're wrong!
President Clinton eventually concluded a complicated and multipart agreement in which the North Koreans would suspend their production of plutonium in exchange for fuel oil, help building light water nuclear reactors (the kind that don't help making bombs) and a vague promise of diplomatic normalization.
President Bush came to office believing that Clinton's policy amounted to appeasement. Force and strength were the way to deal with North Korea, not a mix of force, diplomacy and aide. And with that premise, President Bush went about scuttling the 1994 agreement, using evidence that the North Koreans were pursuing uranium enrichment (another path to the bomb) as the final straw.
...the North Koreans were [probably] breaking the spirit if not the letter of the 1994 agreement by pursuing a covert uranium enrichment program.
...
The plutonium production plant, which had been shuttered since 1994, got unshuttered. And the bomb that exploded tonight was, if I understand this correctly, almost certainly the product of that plutonium uncorked almost four years ago.
I think we can all agree that if it were not for Bill Clinton's tacit aid and comfort that the plutonium used in yesterday's bomb would never have been created. Once again, Bill Clinton gives aid to dictators through his ineffective, womanish, soft, appeasement policies.
My question is simple: what secret agreements has Clinton signed with foreign countries that will imperil the United States in years to come? I am thankful we now have George W. Bush who is brave enough to take on these dangers. Will the world ever be safe from Bill Clinton?
It's a very scary October -- we find North Korea has nukes, and that Democrats once again were trying to subvert Congress and the election with teh ghey.
I was the first to blame the evil Clenis for all this, MokneyFlirett. I'm just saying that waterboarding won't work on him. We need to strap him to a cesna propeller & turn it on. Or something.
I see, we're agreed then. So is Stanley Kurtz of the National Review: What will it take to wake up the West?Will a nuclear explosion beneath a North Korean mountain be enough? The threat of nuclear terror has been rumbling beneath the surface since 9/11, yet still we’re in denial. Make a deal? President Clinton tried that and failed, accepting a bogus deal, with a porous inspections regime.
I'll go spin up the Cessna.
And Chyren, I humbly apologize for mispelling your name....
MonkeyFlitter, as I am relatively new to this board, I don't have a strong sense of your sense of humor or your politics, so I can only assume that your entire post was sarcastic (crossing fingers, knocking wood, other ridiculous superstitious dealings).
That was a fantastic article you posted that I think really highlights one of the big problems with the current administration. Our country has become the bully that says, "You better not step over this line or else," and when the line is crossed for fear of looking weak, we crumble and sputter.
Don't get me wrong. I love this country. It's just that the people who are currently in power make me ashamed.
This is really going to make the late October invasion of Iran look pretty silly. . .
As opposed to the invasion of Iraq which, by all accounts, was sheer genius and absolutely warranted.
Not to mention exceptionally well planned. And thrifty.
9/11.
How can we be certain that they developed this nuke themselves and didn't buy it on the open market in Russia, Pakistan or the US?
And if so, would that change things?
Chy, surely John Howard is more concerned about the fate of the cricket team than in some silly nuclear missile attack!??!?! I mean wow! Sarin gas! In the boys' changing rooms!
“Talking tough is great...”
It totally is. Who want’s a piece of me, hah!?
*breaks bottle*
C’MON!
“...if you can make it stick and back it up”
Oh. I had the whole cheap bravado thing goin’ there.
But see, in addition, we have sarcasm, insinuation and belittlement. It works great against other members of an ivy league frat or an elite club, and especially well in corporate politics. Why didn’t it work here I wonder? Real shame. I thought “Lips” Bush had it going on there for a minute. Say...that nickname gives me an idea on how to appease Kim Jong Il...
The S.Korean UN appointment is a nifty move.
They don't even know whether it was a successful nuke, a fizzled nuke, or a bunch of high explosive.
You know, they could just drop a big rock on you, you'ld be just as dead. Anyway, please continue running in circles, screaming and shouting. This doesn't change things much. It just means instead of guessing whether they have the bomb, we'll have certainty.
Something happened - small earthquake recorded in NK at the right time. So fizzle seems to be ruled out. I really doubt they have the capacity to put enough HE in one place to get em a 4 on the Richter scale either.
Bugger.
Though I should probably have stayed the shut up.
sigh
"But both the US and Japan said they had detected seismic waves. Russia said it was "100% certain" a nuclear test had occurred.
The size of the bomb is uncertain. South Korean reports put it as low as 550 tons of destructive power but Russia said it was between five and 15 kilotons. The 1945 Hiroshima bomb was 12.5-15 kilotons."
If it's fiveish it's probably a real bomb. Oneish kt or less and it is _hopefully_ a fizzle.
Well this hasn't done my bloodpressure much good.
Yet a number of senior U.S. officials have said privately that they would welcome a North Korean test, regarding it as a clarifying event that would forever end the debate within the Bush administration about whether to solve the problem through diplomacy or through tough actions designed to destabilize North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's grip on power.
emphasis added.
Ah yes, the clarity.
A nuclear test failure is still more progress than Iran, I think. In any case a nuke will bring stability to the region for two reasons. 1. the US can no longer start a war there if they wanted to, and 2. Japan and China have started getting friendly again because now they have a common enemy.
As long as every nuclear power properly understands the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction then the world is actually less war-filled when there are more nuclear powers. Sort of.
Janes' Defense says "if reports are correct"
They are not.
*spit-take coffee on computer
MonkeyFlitter: Very good!!
The US invaded Iraq because of rumors of WMDs, oil but completely ignored North Korea, even though at the time they were blatantly flauting that they did have WMDs.
Mord: True, dead is dead.
Unfortunately, the big rock on the head doesn't have quite the fallout.
the test would maintain "peace and stability" in the region
More fighting for peace, more fucking for virginity. Yeah.
May I?
MonkeyFilter: This administration's capricious application of policy seems to be biting everyone in the ass now.
MonkeyFilter: in addition, we have sarcasm, insinuation and belittlement
MonkeyFilter: please continue running in circles, screaming and shouting
Let's sing another chorus of the Fuck Bush song.
Why are they not correct? Well, I've seen three different estimates of how big it would have to be to explain a 3.7-4.2 Richter earthquake.
The most likely numbers so far given are "something between 2 and 12 kT"
Meh. They have a dozen bombs and are members of the "if anything blows up your cities are forfeit" club.
I'm just gonna sit back and wait for the UN to take care of this.
I'm guessing it'll take at least two years, but I've got time.
1. the US can no longer start a war there if they wanted to
HAHAHAHAaaaa ha ha ha ha haaaaaa! AAAHhhahahahaha!!!
Oh man! HA! Ehhh . . . fuck.
Heh.
Why, GW went crying to the UN right off. He doesn't want to invade North Korea, never has. It scares him.
Unlike Iraq, Kim Jong Il had a decently high powered economy to divert into military build up. And on top of that he 'liquidated' plenty of other resources (ie: people) in order to pour even more funds into weapons projects, all with an eye to scaring the piss out of the US. And it seems to have worked.
I really don't understand why I should be (more) scared. Its not like the Soviet Union dissolved and its arsenal became "less than accounted for" or anything.
These bombs are destined for Seoul and Japan.
And then what happens?
What do you think? Seriously. What do you think happens?
Is it the end of the world? Or is it just the end of the economic stilts propping up the United States.
We've got a couple tons of plutonium thats just "gone missing". I'm expecting a city to vaporise any day now. For all I know, there are several rogue states that have bombs that we don't know about. Why is THIS one a big deal?
several rogue states Is that like Texas, Georgia, and Rhode Island, or are we talkin' overtheres somewhere?
Yeah, I guess you're right. At the worst, another city full of stupid Japs gets nuked, which, if I recall correctly, is an event to be celebrated anyway. Good point. Thanks for pointing out that it'll mainly be foreigners who die. Screw 'em.
the US can no longer start a war
My point was just that ShrubCo doesn't need a reason.
Obviously.
Freedom. 9/11. Watch this drive.
ShrubCo isn't interested in a war with North Korea because they don't have any fucking oil.
This is very funny, because it kind of derails the NeoCon effort to ramp up something against Iran. Iran is 10-15 years away from building a nuke, whereas NK has them now. It's gonna be hard to convince people to get behind a strike at Iran under the circumstances. Not that it would be sane to attack Iran, given the shortage of troops & materiel with 2 other war fronts, but rationality never intruded into the desires of Messrs Cheney, Bush & Rumsfeld.
I expect, now, Israel will do it, backed by the US in a covert manner.
Heck of a Job, Bushie.
All, let's take this understandable cynicism to it's next possible and most likely moment in time: There are now roughly three weeks in which the Shrubinista's can stage a diversionary tactic that will divert voters from the Democratic side of the congressional ballot in the November elections.. What event will they wag the tail with? A strike in N. Korea? Iran? Bob Woodward's house?
Chy: bizzackly.
Ralph, they wouldn't stoop so low as to bomb or invade for an election. That's what whisper campaigns and outright fraud are for. Bombing and invasion reduces the profit margin. Silly dog.
You know what, as the police force for the rest of the fucking world, its about time Japan and South Korea started handling their own security. Do I not care? No. Is there anything I can do about it? No.
My leaders won't listen. They won't disarm their nukes. Now its China's problem. But I'm also not going to drop everything I'm doing and go AAAAAH! Nuclear North Korea.
Thats how we get into messes like Iraq.
If N. Korea drops bombs on Seoul or Japan, they will CEASE TO EXIST. What more can be said?
they, as in N. Korea.
I'm sorry that you don't like detente, but what do you suggest instead of bitching, NickDanger?
Particularly the bitching about how we just don't care about the "yellow slant-eyes" which is hyperbolic, bullshit and wrong.
I happen to like Japan a hell of a lot more right now than I like the United States. But then thats because I probably don't live there and I get to see all the things they do a lot better than us. Like sticking solar-panels on their roofs and maintaining a military strictly for self-defense instead of overseas wars of aggression.
Steady on, Mord. There's lots of baseball left.
Am I the only one who thinks this doesn't really change anything?
For years, North Korea has been playing the threat of nukes for advantage in negotiations/diplomatic talks/alms-seeking. And under Chimpy, they were largely ignored. So they kept working on it, at each point expecting to goad the U.S. into action. But the U.S. kept ignoring them, largely because you can't act militarily against N.K., and there's nothing left to sanction, and it was much easier to ignore them than to get into tricky discussions with somebody who doesn't have anything you want.
So now North Korea has a nuke. Which doesn't seem to be weaponized yet, which is the really hard part about nukes. So they don't have a capacity to blow up anyone but themselves. Which they won't do, because the reigime is about nothing else but self-preservation, fanatically so. So their nukes remain bargaining tools only, which is the standard use of nukes in the first place -- to make the holder of nukes be taken seriously in negotiations.
Now, don't get me wrong -- nuclear weapons are horrible things, and represent the worst parts of humanity, and they should only be eliminated. But that being said, I don't see how any country with a nuke has the moral authority to stop another country from having them.
This is sixty-year-old technology. It's amazing that it's been kept in the box this long.
China doesn't want war, South Korea doesn't want war, Japan doesn't want war, Russia doesn't want war, and the U.S. doesn't want war. The only player we're uncertain of on that score is North Korea itself -- most likely, it doesn't want war, but it has to be kept in a position where it doesn't NEED war. And that can be accomplished by reinstating the kinds of talks that Clinton had in place. Sure, it's all blackmail, but so is the rest of all international politics.
I'll stop now. I need some tea.
The only player we're uncertain of on that score is North Korea itself -- most likely, it doesn't want war, but it has to be kept in a position where it doesn't NEED war. And that can be accomplished by reinstating the kinds of talks that Clinton had in place.
This bears special emphasis, because this is the sticky wicket. The United States' relationship with North Korea has deteriorated significantly since the Clinton days, and the current administration has a stated policy of preemptive war against rogue states. True, I don't believe that they want to go to war, because it would be extremely costly, but it's just possible that they believe that they have to go to war.
I'm sorry that you don't like detente, but what do you suggest instead of bitching, NickDanger?
I just don't understand the "it's not important because they probably won't bomb me" attitude.
the U.S. doesn't want war
Except that the "war" in Iraq isn't really a war since there's no . . um, nation-state . . to . ahh. Well, which only goes to prove your point. I guess.
The Bush regime really, really . . is . . uh, bad.
Nope, we don;t want for war - we've already got plenty!
Korean test 'went wrong,' U.S. official saysThe U.S. believes North Korea tried to detonate a nuclear device and "something went wrong," a government official told CNN Tuesday. The official confirmed North Korea told China before the test that it would be a 4 kiloton device. The official added the unexpectedly small blast, of a half kiloton or less, indicates the test was not very successful.
Capt. Renault: No, you're not the only one.
NickDanger:
(A) Its not important to me because we were all already in danger. N. Korea has proved it has the technology instead of MIGHT have the technology. Who knows who some post-Soviet republic has sold plutonium to on the black market. What about out of work Russian and Pakistani physicists? You are now and have always been targets and just weren't paying attention. Welcome to the post-nuclear world, we're all in it together, and the only thing protecting you is what will happen to any country responsible for detonating one on you.
I suppose terrorists just hate the Godless Americans. They LOVE the Godless Japanese and S. Koreans and Chinese.
(B) It really is not my problem, this problem belongs to China, Japan and S. Korea. We still have troops in Japan and S. Korea who shouldn't be there that my tax dollars are paying for. Step one, remove our forces and let S. Korea and Japan who complain bitterly about our involvement take care of it.
(C) If I accept that it IS my problem, and I should care about people who should rightfully be looking after their own security, there is still nothing I can do about it.
(D) My country is in no position to lecture anyone on non-proliferation, since it invented the damn things in the first place, has better one and more of them than just about anyone else. NOW, knowing for years that NK was reprocessing plutonium, NOW its a crisis? And furthermore we intend to lecture the world about how no-one should have them except our allies?
It sounds like McCain's solution is to let people starve. OKAY John! Good idea! That will prevent a war!
We really need to vote that Clinton guy out of office already.
I suppose terrorists just hate the Godless Americans. They LOVE the Godless Japanese and S. Koreans and Chinese.
*laughs till she wheezes
Somebody get GramMa's puffer!
Is it wrong of me to have gotten to the point where I don't even want to think about this?
To qualify, what I mean is that I've gotten to a point where I can't even produce a coherent thought. I feel like the leaders of our world are on a runaway train that they have no ability, or even desire, to stop.
I feel like it's too late to turn things around.
Lara, I feel similarly. I vote, I try to be aware of how I spend my money (ie to whom that support ultimately goes) etc., yet I don't think I've ever felt so completely helpless, at the "mercy" of a bunch of fuckwit cowboys (usian and korean and iraqi and fill-in-the-blank-ian) who would appear to have been born without even the modicum of sense and rationality that I have....a sense not only of having no--absolutely NO control over these matters myself--but hey, who did you say was driving this handbasket again?
ugh.
"But the North Koreans had another route to nuclear weapons--a stash of radioactive fuel rods, taken a decade earlier from its nuclear power plant in Yongbyon. These rods could be processed into plutonium--and, from that, into A-bombs--not in years but in months. Thanks to an agreement brokered by the Clinton administration, the rods were locked in a storage facility under the monitoring of international weapons-inspectors. Common sense dictated that--whatever it did about the centrifuges--the Bush administration should do everything possible to keep the fuel rods locked up.
Unfortunately, common sense was in short supply. After a few shrill diplomatic exchanges over the uranium, Pyongyang upped the ante. The North Koreans expelled the international inspectors, broke the locks on the fuel rods, loaded them onto a truck, and drove them to a nearby reprocessing facility, to be converted into bomb-grade plutonium. The White House stood by and did nothing. Why did George W. Bush--his foreign policy avowedly devoted to stopping "rogue regimes" from acquiring weapons of mass destruction--allow one of the world's most dangerous regimes to acquire the makings of the deadliest WMDs? Given the current mayhem and bloodshed in Iraq, it's hard to imagine a decision more ill-conceived than invading that country unilaterally without a plan for the "post-war" era. But the Bush administration's inept diplomacy toward North Korea might well have graver consequences. President Bush made the case for war in Iraq on the premise that Saddam Hussein might soon have nuclear weapons--which turned out not to be true. Kim Jong-il may have nuclear weapons now; he certainly has enough plutonium to build some, and the reactors to breed more. "
See, I knew that Iraq part fit in here somewhere.
Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! Go Kim! Go Kim! Right on dawg!!
Kinda makes you wonder *what else* they may be secretly rooting for? Oh please, please let a dirty b0mb 3xpl0d3 in Manhattan soon so that we can justify X...
godterror on USA voters, again. My, how convenient.WMDs,oil but completely ignored North Korea, even though at the time they were blatantly flauting that they did have WMDs. Mord: True, dead is dead. Unfortunately, the big rock on the head doesn't have quite the fallout. the test would maintain "peace and stability" in the region More fighting for peace, more fucking for virginity. Yeah. May I? MonkeyFilter: This administration's capricious application of policy seems to be biting everyone in the ass now. MonkeyFilter: in addition, we have sarcasm, insinuation and belittlement MonkeyFilter: please continue running in circles, screaming and shouting Let's sing another chorus of the Fuck Bush song.attackliberate North Korea. How bad could it be?