Originally posted here by The Duck
You have to keep in mind that was in 1991, and only 1991 according to that article you showed us. That was over a decade ago, now we got things like unmanned air craft and much more. And it only get's better from there, they estimate that in the year 2020, 1/3 of the US military will be robots.


That was one article. I'll try to find the other articles that I have read on the matter. It is easily available on the internet so if you google you will find it as well.

Not true, the United States' focus was not in east asia, it was in the middle east, targeting the terrorists and people who aid them.
Where have you been? Iraq had nothing to do with terrorists. As a matter of fact the CIA just released information yesterday saying that Saddam at best produced very small quantities of WMD, and that he had nothing to do with Bin Laden.

I did some research and if your numbers are correct, that means 1/4 of N. Korea's entire population is in the military!? I think not. I also highly doubt that the korean military permit many women to join, which makes your numbers even less accurate.
There are approximately 1.1 to 1.6 million regular troops. The rest of the military force that I am referring to are "reserve" type troops. Also known as the peoples army. So yes, it is regular citizens who have served previously in the military and women do serve in the military.
http://www.freenorthkorea.net/archiv...ea/000429.html

If you are going to make assumptions why don't you go do some net searches because your assumptions are wrong. There is nothing that I am not presenting here that I cannot back up with press releases. I cannot be 100% sure of anything as the true strength of the N. Korean military is kept secret, even our military planners don't know. But I'm not spewing out my opinion on any of this. If you want to continue the discussion I will only do so if you start checking your facts and opinions before you post them.

CIA World fact book North Korean population- 22,697,553 (July 2004 est.)
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/...k/geos/kn.html

I'll just copy the following facts from the CIA fact book since you seem to think I am making these numbers up-

Military manpower - military age:
17 years of age (2004 est.)
Military manpower - availability:
males age 15-49: 6,181,038 (2004 est.)
Military manpower - fit for military service:
males age 15-49: 3,694,855 (2004 est.)
Military manpower - reaching military age annually:
males: 189,014 (2004 est.)
Military expenditures - dollar figure:
$5,217.4 million (FY02)
Military expenditures - percent of GDP:
22.9% (2003)

You should note that the fit for service means the number of people who they feel would actually be on the front lines. That leaves almost 2.6million people able to provide background logistical support. In case you missed the link above- http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/...k/geos/kn.html

That's what the bunker buster bomb is used for . We also got the daisy cutters and that one bomb, I forget the name, but it sucks the oxygen out of anyone's lungs within a 5 mile radius of the bomb... or something like that .
Yeah, those worked real well against Bin Laden didn't they? A bunker buster will not destroy a hardened nuclear facility. You would need something like the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator(RNEP) that is currently under development. It is a nuclear weapon and something that I don't even think we should be developing. Most government officials agree and more than likely this program will be stopped if Bush loses the election.

Bottom line is, I never said it would be easy for the US to win, but we would win, if we really wanted to, with heavy casualties on both sides. But no country in the world can compete with the US air force. Once the US takes over the air, it's only a matter of time. Most of the North koreans have the fighting spirit, but they only have that spirit until the US unleashes their true firepower. The fire power you see in iraq today is nothing because we are worried about civilians. We get in true war with N. korea the military leaders won't give a rats ass about the civilians, especially if they are gonna use cheap tactics like chemical weapons. If they do use chemical weapons, the US population will get that "fighting spirit", and I guarentee you that the US will strike back with some form of nuclear weapons. And remember, we're not even sure if N. Korea has any nuclear weapons. If they do, they don't have enough to win a nuclear war with the US and it's allies.
I have seen estimates that the total death toll to South Korean civilians could easily reach 1 million on only a matter of months. The US could also expect to lose more soldiers than we did in Vietnam. Is that really worth it? Please also explain what firepower we have that we are not using? My father is a Marine Corp veteran of over 23 years, my brother just left the Marines and was the supply officer for Paris Island, not to mention one of my best friends father was 3rd in command at Eglin Air Force base which is where the future weapons development takes place. They developed the daisy cutter, the moab(the one you couldn't remember the name of) and the bunker buster. These are all people that I speak to on a regular basis and they are all deathly afraid of a war with N. Korea, I've grown up around the military my entire life and I don't know of any secret weapons that we have that we are not using in Iraq. We are not using weapons like the MOAB but those weapons are not intended to be used in urban settings. The US will never take a stance that civilian causalties are OK, it is against the Geneva convention to purposefully target civilians.


The US technology in the vietnam war was a joke... The united states might as well not even have any technology. The only technology the US really used was communication equipment.
What are you talking about? The Bell UH-1 Huey helicopter is one of the best combat helicopters to ever fly. The F4 was the premier air/grounf fighter of the time and was still used well after the Vietnam conflict to train US pilots in dogfighting tactics. The M60 was and is a great weapon. The M16 is still the preferred weapon of most US forces, they did have problems with the weapon because of the environmental conditions but all of that was fixed before the end of the war. Not to mention the B-52 which was one of the best bombers ever built. The US and Russia had the best military technology available at the time.