With both North Korea and Iran rushing to produce ICBM's that can deliver a nuclear warhead to cities in the US, it seems likely that we will put more emphasis on developing more effective missile defense against strategic missiles, ICBM's. The success rate of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system stands at about 50%. Not to good if North Korea launched 10 ICBM's at 10 US cities and 5 hit their target.
"Clinton tried bribery instead of force. A 1994 agreement led to the establishment of an international consortium that has begun to build two light-water nuclear power plants in North Korea, which would supply needed electricity without producing weapons materials. And the United States agreed to supply oil for conventional power production to North Korea in the meantime.
In return, Pyongyang agreed to shut down its plutonium recovery program.
This it did. The uranium program disclosed last month is a new and different program, apparently made possible by equipment from Pakistan in exchange for North Korean aid in building its missile-delivery systems.
Washington proposes to shut down the power plant project, the oil shipments and any talks with Pyongyang until the uranium program is abandoned, with international verification.
That's the goal, of course. But South Korea and Japan, in announcements made this week, see things very differently. While calling on North Korea to abandon any sort of nuclear weapons program, they suggest that canceling the power plants and oil shipments would give Pyongyang an excuse to resume the plutonium-processing program — far more dangerous than the uranium project — that it shelved in 1995.
Of course, Tokyo and Seoul recognize that any sort of nuclear weapons program in North Korea is a brazen violation of the 1994 agreement — indeed, they are the parties most threatened by it. But they believe dialogue, not isolation, is more likely to bring real peace.
Bush should pay attention. At the very least, engagement might reduce the danger of war on the Korean peninsula at a time when he is tied down with Iraq and Afghanistan.
But if dialogue proves successful with North Korea, Bush then will have to explain why it couldn't have worked with Iraq."
The following link is pretty sickening to view. How much is truth and how much is just propaganda, is hard to say because few people have escaped from one of these camps.
Another afternoon o' kickin' Teabagger-ass....and stackin' 'em like cordwood.
It doesn't get much better than this.....
"North Korea's human rights record has been widely condemned, including by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and the United Nations.
Finding accurate figures for the number of Koreans who died during the Korean War would require agreeing on a legitimate source. If we go by Wiki numbers, it doesn't appear that one third of North Koreans perished during the conflict. But we should also stipulate there were exactly 0 US civilians living in the US who died at the hands of North Koreans during that same time period.
Where's the joke between "deterrent" and "pre-emptive"?
