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This whole thing most likely could have been avoided if the U.S had kept its half of the deal. In the 90’s the U.S made a deal with North Korea that if they abandoned there nuclear programs the U.S would build them some nuclear reactors (that wouldn’t be capable of producing the material need for a bomb). The money and the reactors never came and the Koreas decided to say f**k you by admitting they were pursuing nukes. The U.S has been able to negotiate with North Korea on the issue of nuclear weapons before and hopefully will be able to this time around. I think North Korea is just looking for a pay off.
"GDP: $21.8 billion
Military Expenditures: $5,124,100,000
Exports: $708 million
Export Partners: Japan 40%, South Korea 24%, Hong Kong 7%, China 6%, France 4%, Germany 4%
Imports: $1.686 billion”
Sorry to point this out but measuring a communist state by its trade with other countries is pointless since unlike countries with market economies the main goal of a commie government is not economic output.
Second statement I would like to poke holes in
“suprise and launch conventional invasions of there the own”
I hate to break it to you but no ones going to be matching the military might of NATO any time soon and even if they could occupying a country as big as Canada or the U.S is no easy task. The number of troops needed would be mind boggling not to mention that that force would have to be transported over seas. And last but not lest nuclear weapons make a conventional invasion impossible because what ever country they came from would be nuked 5 times over.
just my $0.02
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No one will send a nuke. It's like "Wargames" ( :p ), no one can win. But that makes it even more scary to think of IF someone sends one. :\
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Uhm... I'd like to point out that this was said by US officials, NOT North Korean ones. That doesn't mean that they wouldn't have reasons for getting it released in some manner, but I've heard the story several times today with the implicit assumption that it was in an official public statement FROM N. Korea, which puts a very different spin on things.
I think the US adminstration knew or strongly suspected this for quite a while, as to why they are making it a bit publicized now, I'm not sure. But it looks like the adminstration is not trying to squash it or drown it out. Perhaps taking the time to give N. Korea a hint while the muscle-flexing is already underway.
And I saw this quite a while ago, heh. I have it posted on my door. Here are some more funny ones.
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Quote:
Originally posted here by Terr
Uhm... I'd like to point out that this was said by US officials, NOT North Korean ones. That doesn't mean that they wouldn't have reasons for getting it released in some manner, but I've heard the story several times today with the implicit assumption that it was in an official public statement FROM N. Korea, which puts a very different spin on things.
That's not the way I've heard it, Terr. Here's what I've found on how the news was broken:
Quote:
Quoted from here.
North Korea acknowledged to U.S. officials earlier this month that it has a secret and active nuclear weapons program that began after the 1994 agreement, the White House said Wednesday.
The official said the revelation came in a meeting in Pyongyang between Kelly and a top North Korean official, Kang Suk Ju, described as the equivalent of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's right-hand man.
A senior Bush administration official said Kelly told Kang the United States knows North Korea has a secret uranium-based nuclear weapons program and that it has enough plutonium for at least two nuclear weapons.
The North Korean official then shocked Kelly when he said "something to the effect of, 'Your president called us a member of the axis of evil ... Your troops are deployed on the Korean Peninsula ... Of course, we have a nuclear program,'" according to the senior source who has been briefed on the meeting.
Am I just reading this article wrong? It sounds to me like the admission was a sort of a self-preservation defense argument, and it doesn't sound like it was prodded by anything specific.
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A true threat...
Just wanted to note something here.
A nuke does not have to land on a major population centre in order to be devastating. It doesn't need to travel even 200 miles. It doesn't ever have to even enter US airspace in order to do massive damage. All it has to do is go up. The most strategically sound use of nuclear weapons on any heavily tech-based nation like the US is to employ the electromagnetic pulse effect of a nuke. When a nuke is detonated in the upper atmosphere, it's blast energy cannot be readily converted into kinetic energy since there is nothing really around it, so it remains as it started; an EMP. The reasons for an EMP blast effect are many. Firstly, the "kill zone" it has is huge beyond anything at ground level. A single medium nuke would have a kill zone roughly comparable to the radius of north america (actually it's slightly larger, maybe 5-10%). Secondly - it doesn't have near the amount of radiation damage to the soil. Employing a nuke in the high atmosphere scatters the radiation, and doesn't leave a lingering wasteland that exists for thousands of years. Third - it doesn't destroy agricultural improvements, leaves the land itself mostly intact; all it destroys is technology. Consider the results if a nuke was fired from a pleasure yacht a short ways off of the shore of the united states on both sides. In the united states, every bit of technology that utilizes electricity will fry. Probably most of canada as well. That means no factorys, no clocks, no heaters, no communications equipment, no planes (Air force jets included), no cars (excepting deisel engines), no refrigerators, etc... Basically, the country would fall back into a technology level roughly comparable to 1700. All the sophistication of our military would collapse, and we wouldn't have enough food to feed our citizens. People would die all over the place, deprived of needed food, pure drinking water, and heat. Plauges would break out, as all the medical technology would be gone and people would be concentrating in unsanitary enviroments in order to survive. Probably the country which fired the nukes would even help with disease spreading.
Nukes are a big threat... I think it's a good thing that the leaders of the country are afraid of them.
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Who knows for sure, other than the intellegence agencies, what's realy going on in the world? Every time our economy goes into a recession, we go to war.....WW I, WW II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and now 9-11/terrorism.....what wil be next?
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North Korea got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Now they are trying to go through diplomatic channels to smooth things out. I think they know Bush is actually crazy enough to go after them :) Will it lead to WWIII, of course not. We live in a different world now and these countries need to be put on notice.
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Re: A true threat...
Quote:
Originally posted here by Sunflare
Just wanted to note something here.
A nuke does not have to land on a major population centre in order to be devastating. It doesn't need to travel even 200 miles. It doesn't ever have to even enter US airspace in order to do massive damage. All it has to do is go up. The most strategically sound use of nuclear weapons on any heavily tech-based nation like the US is to employ the electromagnetic pulse effect of a nuke. When a nuke is detonated in the upper atmosphere, it's blast energy cannot be readily converted into kinetic energy since there is nothing really around it, so it remains as it started; an EMP. The reasons for an EMP blast effect are many. Firstly, the "kill zone" it has is huge beyond anything at ground level. A single medium nuke would have a kill zone roughly comparable to the radius of north america (actually it's slightly larger, maybe 5-10%). Secondly - it doesn't have near the amount of radiation damage to the soil. Employing a nuke in the high atmosphere scatters the radiation, and doesn't leave a lingering wasteland that exists for thousands of years. Third - it doesn't destroy agricultural improvements, leaves the land itself mostly intact; all it destroys is technology. Consider the results if a nuke was fired from a pleasure yacht a short ways off of the shore of the united states on both sides. In the united states, every bit of technology that utilizes electricity will fry. Probably most of canada as well. That means no factorys, no clocks, no heaters, no communications equipment, no planes (Air force jets included), no cars (excepting deisel engines), no refrigerators, etc... Basically, the country would fall back into a technology level roughly comparable to 1700. All the sophistication of our military would collapse, and we wouldn't have enough food to feed our citizens. People would die all over the place, deprived of needed food, pure drinking water, and heat. Plauges would break out, as all the medical technology would be gone and people would be concentrating in unsanitary enviroments in order to survive. Probably the country which fired the nukes would even help with disease spreading.
Nukes are a big threat... I think it's a good thing that the leaders of the country are afraid of them.
You are massively overstating the affect of the EMP from a nuke. For a start all military systems (communications, aircraft, tanks etc.) have equipment which is specially hardened against EMP attacks. Some systems may be affected, as obviously this has never been tested in anger - so for example you might find that some radar systems on fighter jets would misbehave, but the jets themselves would not drop out of the sky.
This stems from the days of the cold war, when an EMP attack was considered highly likely. Depending on where the source of the blast is, yes it will damage some civillian systems (mainly communications), but to talk about destroying everything and going back to 1700 is pure fantasy.
Cars (petrol & diesel) : these will still work, even if by some remote chance the engine management chip is damaged/destroyed. It just resorts to a a less efficient way of working - I't's happened to me!
Factories : possibly in the short term.
Clocks: Depends on whether or not they use batteries :)
Refrigerators : Highly unlikely, as they usually have no chips (of the computer sort).
More worringly, is that most PCs would be affected :( as they are mostly connected without any sort of surge/power protection box.
A country like Iraq/North Korea would almost certainly not use a nuke for an EMP affect in a conflict, as the affect on them would be far more devastating than the US. The most likely result of this would be to leave them almost totally blind, whilst the US could continue to be able to operate.
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"....... Equipment specially hardened against EMP attack...." Darkes, i certainly hope you are correct in that statement, it would be just fine in my book. One problem i see, is; some time ago i entered into a serious discussion regarding EMP disabling a serious piece of soldier equipment that was in RandD, and the discussion expanded into other peices of ground equipment already fielded. The rebuff i eventually received was, and i quote: "We have considered that possibility and determine it to be acceptable risk." End of conversation. There's more to the story, however no reason to expand on it here. I just hope you are correct, and that a massive dose of EMP, or the highly-touted EMP "cleanbomb", would not fry all the micro systems and delicate circuitry and computer control chips built into today's "everything". i guess the bottom line here is "don't sell your '56 Chevy just yet!" :D
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Quote:
Originally posted here by The Old Man
"....... Equipment specially hardened against EMP attack...." Darkes, i certainly hope you are correct in that statement, it would be just fine in my book. One problem i see, is; some time ago i entered into a serious discussion regarding EMP disabling a serious piece of soldier equipment that was in RandD, and the discussion expanded into other peices of ground equipment already fielded. The rebuff i eventually received was, and i quote: "We have considered that possibility and determine it to be acceptable risk." End of conversation. There's more to the story, however no reason to expand on it here. I just hope you are correct, and that a massive dose of EMP, or the highly-touted EMP "cleanbomb", would not fry all the micro systems and delicate circuitry and computer control chips built into today's "everything". i guess the bottom line here is "don't sell your '56 Chevy just yet!" :D
Well, I hope I am correct in what I have posted. I suspect you are correct in reviewing what happened when you reviewed matters in the past ....
