Bush, Iraq, N.Korea

and now begins the event that will shape WWIII....

pay attention everyone this will be on the next history lesson....oh wait......were all gonna be dead because bush wants to hit the big red button a million times.......


http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/10/17/us.nkorea/index.html


what does everyone else think... are we... no is our government getting us into something that we really shouldent be. Are we shaping a better or worse future for ourselves?

are we on the brink of world war III?

waht are your opinions on Bushes presidency and the situations in iraq and abroad.

I think Korea coming out and saying they have a nucular weapons program is a lil suspiciouse.
I mean think about it, If you were on BUSH's axis of evil, would you tell him you had Nucular weapons. Hell NO, not after seeing what he is doing to Iraq. I dont think they said it just to be honest either. I think they have been consorting with China everysince the Axis of Evil speach. Now that China has their back, they feel like its ok to do what ever they want. Much like Israel does. I feel if we got into a war with china, it would be over. I think once they get tired of America pushing its weight around, they will start pushing theirs around. And belive it or not they have more than weight than we do.

I do not believe we are headed for WWIII.

I am also sure we have been aware of North Korea's activities for quite some time. The fact that it is now made public will not change our stance. I beleive Saddam should be made to disappear. There are just some leaders that should not have weapons of mass destruction. A country having that capability should be stable. I would not consider Iraqs leadership stable. On the other hand even though North Korea may be Communist and considered by some to be wrong their leadership could be considered stable and not the same threat level as Iraq.

Right now I am behind our countries leaders and support them.

IMO, what Korea has done is painted Bush into a corner...he can't get out of this with any "face." He has been stomping up and down and making an eejit out of himself about Iraq. Now a bigger country, who is really more of a threat than Iraq, has stepped out and said "Look what we have..whatcha gonna do?" They know they are in the famed axis of evil, that Bush has been making such a fuss about..and now they have called his bluff.

Deb

"I feel if we got into a war with china, it would be over. I think once they get tired of America pushing its weight around, they will start pushing theirs around. And belive it or not the have more than weight than we do."


The danger with the U.S. involved in action everywhere is that it's stretching itself thin and that's where the opportunity exists for a large country or a coaltion of countries that are unfriendly to the west just waiting to use
the element of suprise and launch conventional invasions of there the own you can't be everywhere and they know that not only will there be 3 or 4 war fronts going on in europe, the midde east, asia/ south east asia
meanwhile sleeper terrorists positioned everywhere will create enough chaos to keep things
busy in other ways. Am I scared hell yeah.

My read on this is that N. Korea is basically trying to show off. They are telling the United States "look, we can make nuclear weapons and you didn't even know we were trying." N. Korea is current position on the US's hit list is rather advantageous at this point. They can pretty much say whatever they want at the moment. The US, gearing up for a confrontation with Iraq, is not going to be committing itself to 2 separate conflicts if at all possible. With support for a war with Iraq seemingly declining lately, trying to rally support for another conflict is not going to happen.

In addition, the Iraq situation is due, primarily, to the oil Iraq is sitting on. No matter what is said about weapons of mass-destruction, oil is the key. N. Korea has no oil fields, and can hardly feed its own people.

Another advantage for N. Korea is China. If the US starts a ground war (or any kind of war) with Korea, China is going to get involved, and, with over a billion people, they are definitely a formidable adversary.

Basically, I think N. Korea is just taking advantage of the situation to show off it's technical prowess (however meager that may be). The interesting thing to watch will be Bush's official reaction...will he commit the US to 2 controversial conflicts while support is dwindling.

.....Did someone mention China up there? Anyone know how far from our major cities the Panama Canal is? Anyone got any ideas how many simultaneous rockets with nuke heads could be fired from the holds of cargo ships that got 'accidentally stuck' in the Panama Canal all at one time, coupled with others at sea in various locations? Anyone got any ideas how many of those nukes we could successfully fire on within the window of interception after their firing was observed and evaluated then reported, evaluated then reported, evaluated then reported, then an order to go back down the chain of command? I won't even insult your intelligence by asking if anyone knows who controls the Panama Canal, lock-stock-and-barrel... :( Don't mean to be pessimistic, y'all, just wonderin' if anyone has been thinking of this tidbit...

i believe that if things continue to go the way they are and more nations "tease" bush by waioving around there big bright orange flag that says "WE HAVE A BIG BOMB" hes gonna get pissed off and send some of us (troops) over there to deal with it for him.

if they keep poking at bush hes gonna poke back...

Nobody stands to profit more than our leaders from a good cold war:


http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=5103

http://www.hereinreality.com/carlyle.html

http://www.redherring.com/vc/2002/0111/947.html

http://www.truthout.org/docs_01/01.1....Carlyle.p.htm


just do a google search "george bush sr executive carlyle group"

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Originally posted here by The Old Man
.....Did someone mention China up there? Anyone know how far from our major cities the Panama Canal is? Anyone got any ideas how many simultaneous rockets with nuke heads could be fired from the holds of cargo ships that got 'accidentally stuck' in the Panama Canal all at one time, coupled with others at sea in various locations? Anyone got any ideas how many of those nukes we could successfully fire on within the window of interception after their firing was observed and evaluated then reported, evaluated then reported, evaluated then reported, then an order to go back down the chain of command? I won't even insult your intelligence by asking if anyone knows who controls the Panama Canal, lock-stock-and-barrel... :( Don't mean to be pessimistic, y'all, just wonderin' if anyone has been thinking of this tidbit...

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Old Man -- From what I understand, nukes tend to ooze radiation at a pretty steady rate. Isn't it probable that we have the satellite imaging technology to identify surface vessels carrying nukes? I'd be willing to bet we could pinpoint any weapon with a nominal yield greater than 5 kilotons (1/3rd of Hiroshima).

I tend to believe that political motives are usually much less secretive than people think. That may make me either terribly naive or bureaucratically savvy, but either way I think North Korea is revealing this information to protect their interests. They cannot afford to thumb their nose at the global community. By revealing this now, maybe they are hoping the US will hold them in a better light then we currently hold Iraq by this show of good faith. They've seen how swiftly we're moving toward action against Iraq, and perhaps they're trying to shake the 'Axis of Evil' stigma. Sometimes it pays to take a look at a country's current economic/military/political situation and make an educated guess on motives. Take a look at some of North Korea's statistics:

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

Compare those with that of the US:

GDP: $10.082 trillion
Military Expenditures: $276.7 billion
Exports: $723 billion
Export Partners: Canada 22.4%, Mexico 13.9%, Japan 7.9%, UK 5.6%, Germany 4.1%, France, Netherlands
Imports: $1.148 trillion

Looking at the above, I personally don't think North Korea is in a position to challenge the US. It's possible that they're looking at our current situation with Iraq as an 'opportunity', but that's not too probable. By announcing this now, they're jeopardizing their relationship with the US and with Japan who is a huge contributor to their economy. This show of good faith may be intended to help dispel some secrecy to further better relationships with other nations. The question now is whether or not they now abandon the program to comply with the treaty, or continue with it.

Besides that there are two main reasons we shouldn't be too concerned with this revelation:

While North Korea may have nuclear weapons now, they still lack a mature enough ballistic missile program to build a vehicle to deliver the weapon beyond a few hundred miles.

If North Korea (or Iraq for that matter) were to use a nuclear weapon in an act of aggression, they would be guaranteeing their own obliteration. Not only would the US retaliate, but every other nation of power would collapse on them.

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

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. :\

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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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.

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That's not the way I've heard it, Terr. Here's what I've found on how the news was broken:

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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.

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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.

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.

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?

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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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.

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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.

"....... 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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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

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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 ....

Who's gonna be next after Iraq? China, Russia, and Pakistan ?And who will it be after that? Welcome to Empire....

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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.

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What I mean is this is the US announcing something told privately by a singular North Korean official, rather than an announcement by N. Korea, per se. IMO they don't carry quite the same weight as each other. Hell, the guy could've been sarcastic.

N Korea may have the bomb but without an ICBM to strap it to, it isn't a direct threat to us. They have good reason to say they have a bomb, Bush has them listed with Iraq and Iran as an axis of evil. We are openly considering attacking Iraq, they are thinking "We might be next". We would probably not consider attacking Iraq after it gets the bomb, that is why Bush is in a hot hurry to send Saddam to Ghamora (apologies to any biblical scholars). :rolleyes:

"Another advantage for N. Korea is China. If the US starts a ground war (or any kind of war) with Korea, China is going to get involved, and, wit over a billion people, they are definitely a formidable adversary. "

In last Korean war the Chinese entry was provoked if your General McArthur hadn't pissed the Chinese
off when they warned him repeatedly not to come closer they might have not have sent there troops screaming across the border like a swarm of locusts there were thousands of them.