Sumea's probably not the best place for a political debate, but this is the most frightening thing I've read about recently..
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,6319509%255E2,00.html
quote:THE Pentagon has produced detailed plans to bomb North Korea's nuclear plant at Yongbyon if the communist rogue state goes ahead with reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel rods that would yield it enough plutonium for half a dozen nuclear weapons within six months.
If you didn't watch Dateline on the ABC last night, have a read of the transcript.. http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/s836878.htm
quote:"if Yongbyon attacked, North Korea immediately retaliate Japanese nuclear reactors, South Korean reactors, also American reactor that they use mainland.
That means the end of Japan, the end of South Korea, end of America."
I personally think North Korea is slightly more dangerous than America at the moment, simply because the American system (no matter how flawed people think it is) has checks to insure that no one person is in complete control, which is the exact opposite in North Korea.
And if the US does launch an offensive it would have to be a very fast and brutal one so that the North Korean forces are totally obliterated (well at least their long range missiles and air defences are destroyed).
I'm not so sure that America does have checks in regards to one person being in control, look at G.W.Bush and the whole post September 11 empowerment, he just had to declare a national state of emergency and there goes any opposition to his power.
Also - I think that a nuclear war has been a long time coming, I'm personally not going to get worked up about something that is inevitable, it's like being pissed off that you are going to die one day. If anyone has any disagreeance in regards to that particular view I have on human nature, email me, don't clutter this board with hate-crap.
Korea is a big problem but unintelligent knee jerk comments and threats from America and its establishments will just speed up if not directly cause any conflicts.
I find this gun-ho attitude and blind patriotic banter more worring than Koreas nuclear threat. Look at the way people opposed to the war are being labeled as traitors in America, its just like the Mcarthy era during the cold war, if your not with us your against us, what happened to their beloved 5th amendment? Hiprocray not democracy.
The get them before they get us reasoning is a naive, arrogant stance and America and its croonies (you listening howard) need to think about the innocent countries and people who are busy minding there own business when suddenly a nuke lands on there farm.
Maybe humans are finally about to reap what we've sown. None of us are innocent when we let these shitheads into office,
Someone develop a huge EMP generator in space to knock out all electricity for good, things were harsh on a personal level but safer for the world in general in the pre industrial era.
Armegeddon's going to be a ratings winner though, CNN will have it covered.
That offensive would have to be very fast, and would have to disarm every single nuclear warhead that North Korea would have, which I doubt they could do (the amount of intelligence that America has on North Korea has been reported as pretty poor - limited only to satellite photos)
quote:North Korea already has more than 100 nuclear warheads...
If America attack North Korean Yongbyon facility, North Korea attack New York, Washington, Chicago in less than 20 minutes.
The US government was playing it safe, downplaying the situation and going the diplomatic route, which I hope they continue. Planning a strike on a nuclear facility is just nuts at the moment - they seem pretty hell-bent on retaliation. A war with North Korea would be extremely nasty - million strong army, with a multitude amount of missile types, tanks and other armoury, and of course nuclear weapons. Very worrying.
North Korea's economy is absolutely borked.. Roughly US$5bn of the nations pitiful US$22bn budget goes into the military..
I recently read somewhere that they've begun to pay their military in promisary notes, rather than actual money - something along those lines anyways. I can't find the link.. So I could be wrong.
It does, if its true, paint a fairly grim picture of the standard of living in NK.
As for the comments made by Kim Myong-Chol....
[img]http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com/images/story.sahaf.mon…]
Some of what he has said may have some truth to it... But for the large part, I believe hes exaggerating things to the point of stupidity - playing on peoples fears..
On topic again...
quote:A top Russian Foreign Ministry official was quoted as saying yesterday in Tokyo that a "catastrophic" development of events in the US-North Korean nuclear standoff was imminent and could occur within the next day."It is probable that, as early as tomorrow, there will be a catastrophic development of events," Itar-Tass quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov as saying.
He added that the standoff had "reached an extreme stage" but did not give a more detailed explanation about his warning.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/23/1050777311990.html
and now this..
quote:The United States says it has regained the capability to make nuclear weapons for the first time in 14 years and has resumed production of plutonium parts for bombs.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/23/1050777304686.html
me want to kill G `dubwya' b now...
Oh well, I doubt that'll happen any time soon...
Although if all the peaceniks in the world started to be in power the countries that wanted to could sooo take over, I guess we do need hard-asses, but GWB isn't smart or charismatic enough to be one of those people.
Nuclear weapons are like some token that when you have it you rise above the other countires in the world in nortoriety, it like wholly unbalances the whole stability of the planet. Pity America is still making more, I would've thought having enough to destroy the whole world several times over would've been enough for some people.
Well as far as I can tell it's just like people having guns, you give people the power to do something they have no concept of the consequence of and they'll do something stupid. You got to sit back and realise the human brain doesn't have the emotional scalability to rationalise and think clrealy about killing even ten people.
Imagine killing one person, try and think of how their family felt, or how you would feel is someone killed a family member, think of their friends etc and the entire quantity (if you will) opf emotional consequence. Imagine if you killed ten people - would you scale the remorse? Can you? I doubt it. It's just the same with everyone, we aren't equipped to make those kind of decisions. G.W.Bush wouldn't have any idea the level of sadness generated just by his little short few week war on Iraq, the brain has no conept of massive amounts of emotion.
As long as people have weapons, they will always use them without any ability to understand the power of their actions and the reactions involved.
(p.s. At this stage I plug Tae Kwon Do, because the only weapons I have I was born with, and if I were to kill someone, it'd take a heck of a long time to pummel them to death while I watch - which is suffice to say - far harder to do than pull a trigger or press a button).
If only we lived back in the days of honour and valor when killing someone with a gun was like beating up a child.
I would say what i think but then i would probably be dissapeared by the government :)
But yes it is scary, the US needs to get a smarter president and soon. I'll leave it at that.