North Korea launches rocket

Okay, countdown to Armageddon

:frowning: I hope the “Dear Leader” gets removed (or mutters something much worse) within this decade or so… =_= If he ever has any confidence in his rockets, I think he’ll make the whole world explode one day.

Why must evil people like him stay in power…? Oi… slaps forehead

[quote]Kim could also display flashes of self-deprecating humour despite a streak of vanity which led him to wear stacked heels.

“Don’t you think that I look like a midget’s turd?” he reportedly asked a South Korean actress who had been kidnapped to the North and was later freed.[/quote]

:laughing:
HG

Oh god, nama, don’t tell me you believed all that horseshit from George Bush?

You don’t really believe N Korea will have the capability (or desire) of inflicting serious harm on its neighbors (much less the US) in the foreseable future, do you?

Isn’t it obvious this is just the latest attempt by one of the world’s poorest, most pathetic nations to puff themselves up and pretend they have capabilities that they don’t in order to make it appear they are significant, thus improving their status and bargaining power with respect to the rest of the world?

Haven’t we been through this countless times already, including the cries of armageddon, and it always amounts to nothing?

I think the opposite is true which is a bit bizarre because North Korea is everything that Iran is feared to be and more. The U.S. government from George Bush on down has treated North Korea like a sideshow while regarding Iran as its number one national security priority:

[quote]North Korea presents one of the biggest foreign policy challenges for the Obama administration. But though Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has appointed a bevy of special envoys to deal with other specific international flashpoints, the North Korea assignment is a part-time job.

Envoy Stephen W. Bosworth, a well-regarded Korea expert, is also dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts. He said in an interview that he is not giving up his deanship and is “planning on spending a day or two in Washington every week or two and probably a week every four to six weeks, depending upon the pace, in Asia.” . . . [/quote]-- Washington Post

North Korea has just successfully tested for the first time a long-range missile capable of hitting the western U.S. It has a cache of plutonium and attempted to detonate its first nuclear weapon in 2006. It has routinely threatened its neighbors and the U.S. with annihilation and is the world’s greatest proliferator of weapons of mass destruction. It has proven its belligerence in the past by invading and kidnapping its neighbors and showing its willingness to fight to the death. Its leader is a dictator who has starved and murdered up to a million of his own people and even today heads the world’s biggest concentration camp which it’s a crime punishable by death to try to escape.

So by recognizing the true scope of this threat then does that mean I’m advocating George Bush’s policy of preemptive warfare?

No. I continue to believe that defensive warfare is only justified if one is attacked first. I do believe though that treating the developing North Korean threat like a part-time job is a potentially fatal mistake and a sad commentary on Washington’s priorities.

[quote=“goingstrong”]:frowning: I hope the “Dear Leader” gets removed (or mutters something much worse) within this decade or so… =_= If he ever has any confidence in his rockets, I think he’ll make the whole world explode one day.

Why must evil people like him stay in power…? Oi… slaps forehead[/quote]
They used to say the same thing about his dad.

I’m not worried. Kim Il Sung’s main concern is not getting overthrown. Now that he has a ballistic weapon he’ll feel a bit less worried about things, maybe.

Iran, on the other hand, may (or may not) have links with the kind of people who want to inflict harm. I’d say they’re still the bigger risk of the two.

Duck!

Goose!

Looks like it went up and came down without incident.

Everybody gets alarmed, Kim Jong Il stands around and looks cool, meanwhile his people starve.

I feel foolish for having paid attention.

It’ll have served its purpose. The whole thing was just a ploy to secure missile orders from Iran, etc.

Unless the ploy was to piss off Japan enough that Japan expands their Home Defense Fleet or changes their constitution and rearms. Then North Korea would claim justification to test more missiles over, or on, Japanese soil.

North Korea rocket revives Japan pre-emptive strike talk

[quote]TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea’s rocket launch has sparked calls for Japan to consider developing a pre-emptive strike capability, though any such plan could undermine regional stability and attract only lukewarm support from voters.

Tokyo did deploy naval and land-based ballistic missile defences over fears that part or all of the rocket North Korea launched over Japan on Sunday could have fallen on its territory.

But some argue Japan should go much further, despite limits imposed by its pacifist constitution.

“We should hold a proper debate about attacking launch bases and about shelters in case something does happen,” Kyodo news agency reported former finance minister Shoichi Nakagawa as saying on Sunday.[/quote]

Unless the ploy was to piss off Japan enough that Japan expands their Home Defense Fleet or changes their constitution and rearms. Then North Korea would claim justification to test more missiles over, or on, Japanese soil.

North Korea rocket revives Japan pre-emptive strike talk

[quote]TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea’s rocket launch has sparked calls for Japan to consider developing a pre-emptive strike capability, though any such plan could undermine regional stability and attract only lukewarm support from voters.

Tokyo did deploy naval and land-based ballistic missile defences over fears that part or all of the rocket North Korea launched over Japan on Sunday could have fallen on its territory.

But some argue Japan should go much further, despite limits imposed by its pacifist constitution.

“We should hold a proper debate about attacking launch bases and about shelters in case something does happen,” Kyodo news agency reported former finance minister Shoichi Nakagawa as saying on Sunday.[/quote][/quote]
That’s all just political hot air. North Korea has no money. It’s quite happy arming rogue states, and that’s what this is all about. A sales pitch. Nothing to do with intimidating Japan and Japan knows it.

[quote=“sandman”]
That’s all just political hot air. North Korea has no money. It’s quite happy arming rogue states, and that’s what this is all about. A sales pitch. Nothing to do with intimidating Japan and Japan knows it.[/quote]

You may be right about Japan’s response being just political hot air, but we’ll have to see. In North Korea I would disagree. As you pointed out, they have no money. They need someone to blame their problems on. The US isn’t as engaging a target without President Bush declaring NK to be part of the Axis of Evil. South Korea is a common target but it works best when the real puppet master is the US. Now with Japan, that would be a perfect bogeyman because of Japanese Imperial history.

If Japan rearms then the North Koreans will have a field day. They’ll try to justify Japan rearming, or expanding her military, as further evidence of an imminent attack. That would be “justification” to increase their military spending and that funding will come from increasing the sales to other rogue nations and groups. It is reinforcing loop, that North Korea provokes a response and then uses that response as justification to expand their military.

North Korea certainly doesn’t seek approval from anyone and simply does whatever they want. I think Sandman is spot on, this is a spring promotion to increase sales.

These are some of the countries which operate North Korean ballistic missiles, allegedly bought such or received assistance for establishing local production.

Cuba
Egypt
Ethiopia
Iran
Libya
Congo
Sudan
Syria
United Arab Emirates
Vietnam
Yemen

N.Korea may not have money for food or other life neccessities, but it sure does for arming itself. They have the world’s 4th largest army, a huge reserve force, weapons production, air defence, air force, navy, nukes and unlimited rocks and sticks. Watch out :s

[quote=“lbksig”][quote=“sandman”]
That’s all just political hot air. North Korea has no money. It’s quite happy arming rogue states, and that’s what this is all about. A sales pitch. Nothing to do with intimidating Japan and Japan knows it.[/quote]

You may be right about Japan’s response being just political hot air, but we’ll have to see.[/quote]
No, it isn’t political hot air. I hope Japan becomes more active militarily, as they’ve shown themselves to be a responsible democracy and valuable ally long enough. Japan and S. Korea are both very incensed by this. And they can’t be comforted anymore by U.S. resolve. Obama is relying on the U.N. to fix world problems, and they’re even divided as to whether N. Korea was wrong and should be punished! So there will be no assurances of redress for Japan and Korea. The six-way talks was an effective way to keep a clamp on N. Korea (in the absense of real leadership at the UN.)

You see, China may not care so much about N. Korean ambitions, but they do care about Japan, Korea, or Taiwan becoming militarily stronger in the region for fear of N. Korea (or any reason at all), so they could be depended on to bridle N. Korea ambitions for their (China’s) own interests. So we are seeing now with the advent of Obama, this balance has been broken, and now chaos from the breakdown of these different dynamics will ensue.

Not only that, N. Korean status has been lifted, which means they can wring out more concessions in future talks. While Obama is hyping a non-nuclear world in Europe, North Korea has shown that it can transport nuclear warheads and nuclear reality to Alaska, U.S.A. Keep it up, Obama. Actions speak and mean more than mere hopeful words. So N. Korea, being a state of action, will become stronger than Obama’s words devoid of action.

Yeah, it’s all Obama’s fault, this damned Republican under whose term and aggressive politics all those nuclear weapons were spreading and Obama, this f*ckwit who basically withdrew from Asia for his pet “war on terror”.

Bad, bad Obama.
:doh:

It was Obama, after all, who started the DPRK nuclear weapons program way back when, as you may recall.

Obama has a North Korean birth certificate.