North Korea Tests Bomb

I just hope this isn’t true…

Unfortunately, that’s probably wishfull thinking.

They tried back in July and nothing happened. They may be bullshitting this time too. We’ll see.

[quote]k.elkouhen wrote:
I just hope this isn’t true…

Unfortunately, that’s probably wishfull thinking.[/quote]

4 something on the Richter scale. Fortunately the Russians and China are in on the peace talks, so if we could just get France and Annan in peace would be assured.

The funniest thing about it is the US would rather attack Iran over nukes rather than North Korea… who has actually admitted to having WMDs. Why hasn’t the US pressured North Korea with deadlines or sanctions just yet?

[quote]Shoebolt wrote:
The funniest thing about it is the US would rather attack Iran over nukes rather than North Korea… who has actually admitted to having WMDs. Why hasn’t the US pressured North Korea with deadlines or sanctions just yet?

[/quote]

China

[quote]Shoebolt wrote:
The funniest thing about it is the US would rather attack Iran over nukes rather than North Korea… who has actually admitted to having WMDs. Why hasn’t the US pressured North Korea with deadlines or sanctions just yet?

[/quote]

Because the NK leadership is crazy but also believes in self preservation.

The Iranian leadership believes in martyrdom and bringing about the end of the world. Scary stuff.

I’ll be amazed if, 20 years from now, we are even here. The way the world is headed, freedom may be impossible to maintain. Only brutal military dictatorships will be able to keep all these crazy forces from running rampant across the globe.

Was Saddam a precursor of our tomorrow?

Do you have to threaten to torture a family to death, to get the son from strapping on a bomb vest?

Do we have to nuke a country to get them to co-exist with neighbors?

Wow…

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Shoebolt wrote:
The funniest thing about it is the US would rather attack Iran over nukes rather than North Korea… who has actually admitted to having WMDs. Why hasn’t the US pressured North Korea with deadlines or sanctions just yet?

Because the NK leadership is crazy but also believes in self preservation.

[/quote]

He is crazy…

His profile on the BBC:

[i]"The little that is known about Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s leader, conjures up a caricature of a diminutive playboy, a comic picture at odds with his brutal regime.

Diplomats and escaped dissidents talk of a vain, paranoid, cognac-guzzling hypochondriac.

He is said to wear platform shoes and favour a bouffant hairstyle in order to appear taller than his 5 feet 3 inches.

But analysts are undecided whether his eccentricities mask the cunning mind of a master manipulator or betray an irrational madman."
[/i]

For more BBC News - Profile: Kim Jong-il

Hmm, the fact that our leaders claim he is crazy may or may not have anything to do with reality.

Anyway, now that this has happened, I’m curious, because as usual team Bush issued some very strongly worded escalatory statements at the beginning of the weekend.

Either, they need to stop making such statements if they can’t actually follow through, because it hurts the credibility of the country otherwise.

Or, we’re going to see something happening which would attempt to back up those statements. Sanctions? UN security council resolutions? What?

It was probably a dud or a few hundred tons of conventional explosives to simulate a nuke.

http://www.defensetech.org/

[quote]hedo wrote:
It was probably a dud or a few hundred tons of conventional explosives to simulate a nuke.

http://www.defensetech.org/[/quote]

Fantastic news if it was truly a dud.

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
hedo wrote:
It was probably a dud or a few hundred tons of conventional explosives to simulate a nuke.

http://www.defensetech.org/

Fantastic news if it was truly a dud.[/quote]

From the NOK’s perspective you could use conventional explosives. Several hundred tons and simulate an explosion. If the test intimidatess others then they have accomplished what they wanted to do. If it backfires and the Chines and South Koreans really toughen up and strangle them economically, they could just claim “no it wasn’t really a nuke…just fucking with the Americans.”

I wouldn’t put it past them to do something this loony.

Breaking the Khan network
BBC
Dec 2004
The finger pointed to a clandestine network run by AQ Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear programme and a man former CIA director George Tenet has described as being at least as dangerous as Osama Bin Laden.

CIA ‘let atomic expert Khan go’
BBC
Aug 2005
Pakistani nuclear expert AQ Khan was not arrested when living in the Netherlands as the CIA was monitoring him, an ex-Dutch prime minister says.

Khan ‘gave N Korea centrifuges’
BBC
Aug 2005
Disgraced Pakistani scientist AQ Khan supplied North Korea with centrifuges and their designs, President Pervez Musharraf has confirmed.

CIA let him go - CIA let him go - CIA let him go - CIA let him go - CIA let…

KHAAAAAN!!!

[quote]hedo wrote:
It was probably a dud or a few hundred tons of conventional explosives to simulate a nuke.

http://www.defensetech.org/[/quote]

agreed. All show for -il. The guy is a freakin’ loon. He 's just putting on a show for the people.

[quote]sasquatch wrote:
hedo wrote:
It was probably a dud or a few hundred tons of conventional explosives to simulate a nuke.

http://www.defensetech.org/

agreed. All show for -il. The guy is a freakin’ loon. He 's just putting on a show for the people.[/quote]

No, he is putting on a show for the whole world…

You think he is bluffing? Maybe he is…

How much are you willing to pay in order to see his cards now, as opposed to last week?

I think his move was a success…

Due to the size it could be conventional, but I think the US will know for sure.

Whether or not it means anything, some pundit was on the TV saying the shockwake looked like a nuclear explosion signature would.

I think assuming it is conventional, while the president is out making statements assuming it isn’t, is a bit of a stretch.

Rummy’s North Korea Connection
FORTUNE
May 2003
What did Donald Rumsfeld know about ABB’s deal to build nuclear reactors there? And why won’t he talk about it?

(FORTUNE Magazine) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rarely keeps his opinions to himself. He tends not to compromise with his enemies. And he clearly disdains the communist regime in North Korea. So it’s surprising that there is no clear public record of his views on the controversial 1994 deal in which the U.S. agreed to provide North Korea with two light-water nuclear reactors in exchange for Pyongyang ending its nuclear weapons program.

What’s even more surprising about Rumsfeld’s silence is that he sat on the board of the company that won a $200 million contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors…

…In his final days in office, Clinton had been preparing a bold deal in which North Korea would give up its missile and nuclear programs in return for aid and normalized relations. But President Bush was skeptical of Pyongyang’s intentions and called for a policy review in March 2001.

Two months later the DOE, after consulting with Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, renewed the authorization to send nuclear technology to North Korea. Groundbreaking ceremonies attended by Westinghouse and North Korean officials were held Sept. 14, 2001–three days after the worst terror attack on U.S. soil.

The Bush administration still hasn’t abandoned the project. Representative Edward Markey and other Congressmen have been sending letters to Bush and Rumsfeld, asking them to pull the plug on the reactors, which Markey calls “nuclear bomb factories.”

Nevertheless, a concrete-pouring ceremony was held last August, and Westinghouse sponsored a training course for the North Koreans that concluded in October–shortly before Pyongyang confessed to having a secret uranium program, kicked inspectors out, and said it would start making plutonium.

The Bush administration has suspended further transfers of nuclear technology, but in January it authorized $3.5 million to keep the project going.

Sooner or later, the outspoken Secretary of Defense will have to explain his silence.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/05/12/342316/index.htm

[quote]orion wrote:
sasquatch wrote:
hedo wrote:
It was probably a dud or a few hundred tons of conventional explosives to simulate a nuke.

http://www.defensetech.org/

agreed. All show for -il. The guy is a freakin’ loon. He 's just putting on a show for the people.

No, he is putting on a show for the whole world…

You think he is bluffing? Maybe he is…

How much are you willing to pay in order to see his cards now, as opposed to last week?

I think his move was a success…[/quote]

No more then last week. Let’s play this out.

If it was a nuke it was tiny, meaning it was a primitive weapon. Less then a kiliton is what the stories are saying. It’s not minature so it can’t be fired on a missle. Relatively useless as a military weapon.

If it was conventional, and he’s bluffing then he will pay a price for a bluff that no one is intimidated by. It also makes the NOK’s look foolish.

I don’t think they can can put one of these on a missle yet but they do have missles. It’s suicidal to try a shot at the US, if you only have one nuke, or twenty or 50. Your going to get a couple of hundred in return shot at you so what’s the point. If you give it to a proxy, and it’s traced back to you…same result.

Did you guys see this shit?

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/HJ06Dg01.html

From the article (my favorite stuff):

[i]The first message is that Kim Jong-il is the greatest of the peerless national heroes Korea has ever produced. Kim is unique in that he is the first to equip Korea with sufficient military capability to take the war all the way to the continental US. Under his leadership the DPRK has become a nuclear-weapons state with intercontinental means of delivery. Kim is certainly in the process of achieving the long-elusive goal of neutralizing the American intervention in Korean affairs and bringing together North and South Korea under the umbrella of a confederated state.

Unlike all the previous wars Korea fought, a next war will be better called the American War or the DPRK-US War because the main theater will be the continental US, with major cities transformed into towering infernos. The DPRK is now the fourth-most powerful nuclear weapons state just after the US, Russia, and China.

The DPRK has all types of nuclear bombs and warheads, atomic, hydrogen and neutron, and the means of delivery, short-range, medium-range and long-range, putting the whole of the continental US within effective range. The Korean People’s Army also is capable of knocking hostile satellites out of action. [/i]

After reading that, I started laughing my ass off. There are no nukes. People are screaming and panicking “OOOO!! North Korea is SUCH a problem! Why hasn’t Bush done anything about Kim Jong Il? Oh my GOD WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!”

Dudes, have you ever seen an underground nuclear test? There’s videos out there. The ground lurches up like a tidal wave, mountains rock back and forth… there isn’t some 4 on the richter scale. That’s probably a couple hundred tons of conventional explosives they set off. In other words, way less than one of our MOABs.

Another reason I’m laughing at this is because Kim JOng Il must be the dumbest motherfucker alive if he thinks anyone was going to believe him. What an idiot.

The GDP of North Korea is the same as Haiti. The reason we aren’t all fired up about NK is because they aren’t shit, they got nuthin’, and their momma dresses 'em funny.

[quote]orion wrote:
sasquatch wrote:
hedo wrote:
It was probably a dud or a few hundred tons of conventional explosives to simulate a nuke.

http://www.defensetech.org/

agreed. All show for -il. The guy is a freakin’ loon. He 's just putting on a show for the people.

No, he is putting on a show for the whole world…

You think he is bluffing? Maybe he is…

How much are you willing to pay in order to see his cards now, as opposed to last week?

I think his move was a success…[/quote]

wrong-----

this is strictly about maintaning control and face at home. The country’s economy is in ruins. All he has is supposed military might. Without that=total loser.

you want to corelate it to poker. I just called his bluff and went all in.