North Korea: Do we or don't we (invade)?

When taking out the nuclear facilities, you have to be careful what you strike. Where pools of plutonium are stored, such as the plant at Fukushima, the risk is setting off a nuclear disaster which would lead to contamination of a large area basically forever.
 
Musburger1 said:
When taking out the nuclear facilities, you have to be careful what you strike. Where pools of plutonium are stored, such as the plant at Fukushima, the risk is setting off a nuclear disaster which would lead to contamination of a large area basically forever.
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This is part of the reason why I'm leery of a preemptive strike on North Korea. If a strike on the South is imminent, then by all means, take out their nuclear facilities. We'd save a million lives. That's worth the environmental risks. However, what I'm hearing about is another nuclear test. How would such a test constitute a more imminent threat than previous tests?
 
Mr. Deez said:
...Even if Obama and Clinton got Iran and North Korea to sign the most onerous nuclear arms deals, would anybody really trust those countries to keep their end of the deal if they truly wanted nuclear weapons? It's one of the dumbest assumptions I can imagine.
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Rhetoric aside, I can tell you what you do not do, with specificity. You do not give them (or give their best friends) the means to move their weapons program ahead two decades. Yet this is what Bill Clinton did in the 1990s, which directly leads in great part to where we are today.

Back then, the Chinese were the ones trying to become a nuclear superpower. But they were having trouble with their ICBMS. They could not achieve geosynchronous orbit with their satellites which meant they could not control the guidance of their ICBMs (they could not hit the broad side of a barn).

The US, of course, was way ahead of the rest of the world on this front and one US company stood alone in this specific field -- Loral Space & Communications, headed by Bernie Schwartz, a big time Dem donor. Can you already smell what happened here?

Bill Clinton hatched a scheme to bring in campaign contributions to the DNC (and perhaps his own pocket) in exchange for the transference of this technology. It was a tricky transaction due to the laws about the sale or transfer of this type of "sensitive technology." To get around them, Clinton had to take the project away from Commerce and give it to State. There was even a bagman -- Terry McAuliffe -- involved in the very elaborate Communist Chinese money-laundering scheme.

People from Loral were actually sent to Beijing to look at failed Chinese missiles and shared with them guidance and other technology so they could keep their satellites in geosynchronous orb, thereby mastering their missile guidance. In addition, there was also a transfer of huge supercomputers (which was also banned at the time for "security reasons.") Supercomputers underpin the technology of nuclear and missile warfare, and not only for firing and controlling the missiles but for simulating a nuclear test which is crucial to the development of nuclear warheads. Yet, in the first three quarters of 1998 alone, 9X as many supercomputers were exported to China as during the previous 7 years.

What does this have to do with the NoKos? Well, obviously, the South Koreans carefully watch them, including collecting whatever they can from NoKo missile testing. Can you guess what the SoKos found in the debris of the NoKo missiles? You guessed it, guidance technology from Loral Space. The Chinese gave it or sold it to them. The Bill Clinton organized transfer put them at least 20 years ahead. Maybe more.

Thus, as president, Bill Clinton wiped out the strategic advantage the US had by selling advanced US missile technology to an enemy, the People’s Republic of China. Why did Clinton wipe out our technological edge? He did it for cash. And not just any cash, cash from the military and intelligence services of a massive totalitarian country determined to eclipse the US as a world superpower. Oh, and Bernie Schwartz went on to become the Democratic National Committee’s largest donor while McAuliffe became DNC chair. Isn't it a great world we live in?

At a minimum, all of this gives a little context with the activities of unpaid volunteer Cater Page.

I actually brought this up on this board back in the day. I was attacked at that time for calling Clinton a traitor, by the same types of folks who are here today, bringing the same type of rhetoric. I dont know if those pages are archived, but it might be fun to see if they are still around. I think back then I called the Clintons "the Julius and Ethel Rosenbergs of our time." Still sounds about right to me, especially in light of things like Uranium One and the Clinton Foundation.




Here is some further reading bagman Terry McAuliffe -- he never stopped! http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/t...l-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/article/2592889
 
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McAuliffe is the one who gave over half a million campaign donation to McCabe's wife. McCabe is head of the FBI counter terror division and in charge of both the Hillary and Huma investigations. He has stonewalled the investigations.
 
McAuliffe and the Clintons were very sleazy, and the Loral deal with China was a disgrace. However, none of that has anything to do with my point.
 
I'm like you in that I question the wisdom of a pre-emotive strike based on a test.

Also, I question the decision to disseminate last week's leak that the US is considering assassinating Kim.
If Kim believes we are planning to kill him, why would he not launch the first strike?
 
Mr. Deez said:
Why would we trust North Korea to give up its nukes, and why would we trust China to enforce such a promise?
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Exactly. And even if NK did legitimately kneecap their nuclear program to appease China, they certainly wouldn't abandon nuclear ambitions.

A deal with NK would be nearly impossible for the U.N. to strictly enforce due to China's veto power. Same thing that's happening with Russia's veto protecting the Iran deal.

But even if something solid was worked out it wouldn't solve anything in the long run. Following Iran's lead, NK would just agree to delay their ultimate military goal for temporary economic and security benefits.

I can only imagine 15-20 years from now when Iran and NK have vastly revitalized economies following several years free from sanctions.

Barring a U.S. military assault, Iran will have nukes shortly after the deal ends, if not before. Iran is tight with NK and both have a shared, deep hatred towards America.

Iran makes a secret deal to ship weapons grade nuclear material or nuclear bombs to NK. And we're off to the nuclear races with two fanatics.

All these deals with loose cannons are doing/will do is flood bad actors with cash to further their aggressive behavior and delay their nuclear ambitions a decade or two.

By then they'll have plenty of extra cash to fast track the nuclear process, be it by purchase or secret program.
 
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I'm still not fully convinced that Syria launched the chemical attack, but I'll assume it for the sake of discussion.
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Sorry about possible thread derailment, but I am in the same boat on this. I cannot say I am more certain anyone else launched it, but I think the whole thing smells funny. I find it odd Assad just suddenly brazenly launched a chemical attack with a weapon previously not believed to be in the Syrian arsenal. Did Russia launch the attack in retaliation for St. Petersburg? Did Israel launch the attack to keep a neighboring enemy nation in turmoil?
Did anti-Assad Turkey launch the attack? Did a rogue US general do it to encourage more US war spending/involvement? I try to avoid conspiracy theories and my last one was certainly ludicrous, but the chemical attack and our response just do not sit right with me.
 
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Musburger1 said:
Also, I question the decision to disseminate last week's leak that the US is considering assassinating Kim.
If Kim believes we are planning to kill him, why would he not launch the first strike?
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Rule No. 1 of assassinating world leaders - Don't talk about assassinating world leaders.
 
Brad Austin said:
Exactly. And even if NK did legitimately kneecap their nuclear program to appease China, they certainly wouldn't abandon nuclear ambitions.

A deal with NK would be nearly impossible for the U.N. to strictly enforce due to China's veto power. Same thing that's happening with Russia's veto protecting the Iran deal.

But even if something solid was worked out it wouldn't solve anything in the long run. Following Iran's lead, NK would just agree to delay their ultimate military goal for temporary economic and security benefits.

I can only imagine 15-20 years from now when Iran and NK have vastly revitalized economies following several years free from sanctions.

Barring a U.S. military assault, Iran will have nukes shortly after the deal ends, if not before. Iran is tight with NK and both have a shared, deep hatred towards America.

Iran makes a secret deal to ship weapons grade nuclear material or nuclear bombs to NK. And we're off to the nuclear races with two fanatics.

All these deals with loose cannons are doing/will do is flood bad actors with cash to further their aggressive behavior and delay their nuclear ambitions a decade or two.

By then they'll have plenty of extra cash to fast track the nuclear process, be it by purchase or secret program.
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Yep, and even this assumes that Iran and North Korea actually abide by the agreements during their respective time periods. Well, that's not likely anyway.
 
Mr. Deez said:
McAuliffe and the Clintons were very sleazy, and the Loral deal with China was a disgrace. However, none of that has anything to do with my point.
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The preference to roam on the rhetorical range has been noted by many studies to be the result of a shallow, uncreative sphincter.
 
Spotted over Ark today, heading west
I thought these usually went at night?

C9YbzCMXUAE_T9S.jpg
 
2 Canadian destroyers coincidentally "visiting" Guam at the moment
Hard to tell if the helo was just checking out the tropical beach (who could blame them, eh?)
Or, maybe the point was to be seen?

 
Joe Fan said:
The preference to roam on the rhetorical range has been noted by many studies to be the result of a shallow, uncreative sphincter.
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I'll readily admit that my sphincter's creativity does not match yours. You have the Picasso of sphincters.
 
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I'm going to play devil's advocate. Here's the argument from North Korea and the rationale for it.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/0...-nuclear-program-and-its-offer-to-end-it.html

Why North Korea Needs Nukes - And How To End That
April 14, 2017

Media say,
the United States may
or may not
kill a number of North Koreans
for this or that
or no good reason
but call North Korea
'the volatile and unpredictable regime'
Now consider what the U.S. media don't tell you about Korea:

BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- China proposed "double suspension" to defuse the looming crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday.
"As a first step, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) may suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) military exercises," Wang told a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress.
...
Wang said the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula is mainly between the DPRK and the United States, but China, as a next-door neighbor with a lips-and-teeth relationship with the Peninsula, is indispensable to the resolution of the issue.

FM Wang, 'the lips', undoubtedly transmitted an authorized message from North Korea: "The offer is (still) on the table and China supports it."

North Korea has made the very same offer in January 2015. The Obama administration rejected it. North Korea repeated the offer in April 2016 and the Obama administration rejected it again. This March the Chinese government conveyed and supported the long-standing North Korean offer. The U.S. government, now under the Trump administration, immediately rejected it again. The offer, made and rejected three years in a row, is sensible. Its rejection only led to a bigger nuclear arsenal and to more missiles with longer reach that will eventually be able to reach the United States.

North Korea is understandably nervous each and every time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large yearly maneuvers and openly train for invading North Korea and for killing its government and people. The maneuvers have large negative impacts on North Korea's economy.

North Korea justifies its nuclear program as the economically optimal way to respond to these maneuvers.

each and every hand in its few arable areas. Only 17% of the northern landmass is usable for agriculture and the climate in not favorable. The cropping season is short.

The southern maneuvers directly threaten the nutritional self-sufficiency of North Korea. In the later 1990s they were one of the reasons that led to a severe famine.

Its nuclear deterrent allows North Korea to reduce its conventional military readiness especially during the all important agricultural seasons. Labor withheld from the fields and elsewhere out of military necessity can go back to work. This is the official North Korean policy known as 'byungjin'.

A guaranteed end of the yearly U.S. maneuvers would allow North Korea to lower its conventional defenses without relying on nukes. The link between the U.S. maneuvers and the nuclear deterrent North Korea is making in its repeated offer is a direct and logical connection.

The North Korean head of state Kim Jong-un has officially announced a no-first-use policy for its nuclear capabilities:

"As a responsible nuclear weapons state, our republic will not use a nuclear weapon unless its sovereignty is encroached upon by any aggressive hostile forces with nukes," Kim told the Workers' Party of Korea congress in Pyongyang. Kim added that the North "will faithfully fulfill its obligation for non-proliferation and strive for the global denuclearization."
During the congress, as elsewhere, Kim Jong Un also emphasized (transcript, pdf, v. slow) the above described connection between nuclear armament and economic development. Summarized:

After decades of emphasizing military strength under his father, Korea is moving toward Kim's “byongjin” — a two-pronged approach aimed at enhancing nuclear might while improving living conditions.
The byongjin strategy, despised by the Obama administration, has been successful:

What are the sources of [North Korea's economic] growth? One explanation might be that less is now spent on the conventional military sector, while nuclear development at this stage is cheaper—it may only cost 2 to 3 percent of GNP, according to some estimates. Theoretically, byungjin is more “economy friendly” than the previous “songun” or military-first policy which supposedly concentrated resources on the military.
To understand why North Korea fears U.S. aggressiveness consider the utter devastation caused mostly by the U.S. during the Korea War:

MacArthur-s.jpg
via Jeffrey Kaye - bigger

Imperial Japan occupied Korea from 1905 to 1945 and tried to assimilate it. A nominal communist resistance under Kim Il-sung fought against the occupation. After the Japanese surrender in 1945 the U.S. controlled and occupied the mostly agricultural parts of Korea below the arbitrarily chosen 38th parallel line. The allied Soviet Union controlled the industrialized part above the line. They had agreed on a short trusteeship of a united and independent country. In the upcoming cold war the U.S. retracted on the agreement and in 1948 installed a South Korean proxy dictatorship under Syngman Rhee. This manifested an artificial border the Koreans had not asked for and did not want. Kim Il-sung still commanded a strong resistance movement in the south and hoped to reunite the country. The Korea War ensued. It utterly destroyed the country. All of Korea was severely effected but especially the industrialized north which lost about a third of its population and all of its reasonably well developed infrastructure - roads, factories and nearly all of its cities.

Every Korean family was effected. Ancestor worship is deeply embedded in the Korean psyche and its collectivist culture. No one has forgotten the near genocide and no one in Korea, north or south, wants to repeat the experience.

The country would reunite if China and the U.S. (and Russia) could agree upon its neutrality. That will not happen anytime soon. But the continued danger of an "accidental" war in Korea would be much diminished if the U.S. would accept the North Korean offer: an end to aggressive behavior like threatening maneuvers against the north in exchange for a verified stop of the northern nuclear and missile programs. North Korea has to insist on this condition out of sheer economic necessity.

The U.S. government and the "western" media hide the rationality of the northern offer behind the propaganda phantasm of "the volatile and unpredictable regime".

But it is not Korea, neither north nor south, that is the "volatile and unpredictable" entity here.
 
Trump/McMaster have backed themselves into a corner. Utter recklessness. NK will not back down. Now what? Initiate a war under the pretense of preventing one?
 
Mr. Deez said:
This is a bit of a "validate Mr. Deez" article, but it begs a question I've always had. Beyond superficial optics, what the hell is the point of "arms-control" deals? The article spins it as a Democratic issue, and though it mostly is, I've heard some Republicans fall into a similar trap.

If you don't want a country to have a certain kind of weapon, such as nukes (North Korea, Iran, etc.) or chemical weapons (Syria, Iraq, etc.), usually it's because you can't trust that country to be responsible stewards of those weapons. Specifically, you don't trust them not to use those weapons offensively. Well, if you can't trust them with the weapons, then why would you trust them to abide by an arms control agreement? Even if Obama and Clinton got Iran and North Korea to sign the most onerous nuclear arms deals, would anybody really trust those countries to keep their end of the deal if they truly wanted nuclear weapons? It's one of the dumbest assumptions I can imagine.
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Is it possible to keep a determined "bad actor" country from a achieving nuclear/chemical capabilities absent full-scale invasion? An option is to make their journey as onerous as possible to delay the inevitable.
 
Musburger1 said:
Trump/McMaster have backed themselves into a corner. Utter recklessness. NK will not back down. Now what? Initiate a war under the pretense of preventing one?
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What now? Well apparently the knee-jerk, drama queen, we're doomed conclusion is the default setting as usual. :rolleyes1:

Patience grasshopper. China has the power to leverage this and DT has them willing to actually do so for once. All sides are in the posturing/response phase.

China will reign them in as they're already speaking of crippling sanctions. If China joins the rest in sanctions, NK has no choice.
 
What I'm worried about is at the rate NK is going, that chubby moron will be able to strike the west coast with chemical weapons sometime between 2020 to 2025. I know it's full of libs there on that coast, but those libs are like a family member. They can be idiotic and big time morons, but they are still a part of our American family.
 
I35 said:
I know it's full of libs there on that coast, but those libs are like a family member. They can be idiotic and big time morons, but they are still a part of our American family.
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The last year has really challenged my 'part of the family' view on that. Members of the family don't challenge and make laws to harbor and protect strangers (often malicious ones) at the cost of factually and gravely harming the family.

Radical Libs have zero place in the American family I was born into, love dearly, and would die protecting. I'd fight side by side with a true Democrat any day. But modern radical Libs are as anti-American as our worst enemies.
 
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