North Korea Nuke Test Preparations?

[wit>trope]

Fair enough.. most people in the world believe that Bush's doctrine was/is lunacy.

Include a nuclear option and the US simply becomes a terrorist/pariah state.

Maybe, but they could plan it so that people wouldn't know that it was a nuclear first strike. An unarmed missile could be shot by a US ship toward the US and the US could shoot it down claiming it was shot by NK and at the same time nuclear retaliation could be meted out against NK. If all the command centers of NK are nuked, then NK would have no way of disputing the US allegation since there's no NK left to dispute it.

And the Bush doctrine isn't lunacy. Think about it. Suppose that Canada instead of a friend was an avowed enemy. Suppose further that Canada started amassing troops along the US border and started aiming missiles at US cities and parked all her ships off US shores in international waters. Suppose that Canada claimed that this was all just a training exercise. Should the US believe Canada? No, the US should see it as obviously preparation for war and preemptively strike.

Same deal with Iraq (I am not convinced war with Iraq was a good idea, but the principle is the same) and NK, Iran, etc.

 

[CruddyLeper]

If North Korea dropped a nuke on South Korea, Japan, or any other nation I consider a friend nation, I would have no problem with nuking North Korea in retaliation, even if U.S. soil was never touched. And I would reject any accusation that such action would make the U.S. a terrorist state.

I don't think anyone has a problem with that scenario. Even the Chinese

Maybe, but they could plan it so that people wouldn't know that it was a nuclear first strike. An unarmed missile could be shot by a US ship toward the US and the US could shoot it down claiming it was shot by NK and at the same time nuclear retaliation could be meted out against NK. If all the command centers of NK are nuked, then NK would have no way of disputing the US allegation since there's no NK left to dispute it.

Too great a chance of discovery. China's put a lot of emphasis on military satellites to uncover just that sort of skullduggery - and if they see a launch from a US ship near to them, they aren't going to hang around wondering which way the missile is going.

 

[silver 2039]

China is the power in the region. Don't mess with North Korea unles you're prpared to mess with China too.

 

[RedWolf]

If North Korea dropped a nuke on South Korea, Japan, or any other nation I consider a friend nation, I would have no problem with nuking North Korea in retaliation, even if U.S. soil was never touched. And I would reject any accusation that such action would make the U.S. a terrorist state.

Fair enough - but this wasn't the situation originally open for debate. THAT scenario was "North Korea tests a nuclear weapon, we hit them with a pre-emptive nuclear strike".

That's lunacy.

 

[eyrei]

The whole thing is scaremongering, most likely. Many intelligence analysts went on record saying they have no evidence of anything like this. Goes along with the other propoganda...Iran building a weapon to kill our electronics and us capturing the 3rd ranking terrorist (for like the 3rd time)...very nicely. Its all an effort to take peoples' attention away from the really sketchy domestic policy being bullrushed through the legislature, to make sure people are xenophobic enough to elect whichever wackos the republicans run for legislative seats in the next set of elections, and give homeland security reasons to repeal as many rights as they feel necessary to give us a sense of security.

 

[Jack the Ripper]

and if we had taken out bin laden BEFORE 9/11 it would have been called anti-arab scaremongering

 

[RedWolf]

and if we had taken out bin laden BEFORE 9/11 it would have been called anti-arab scaremongering

That would have sucked for Bush and cronies - they would have had to come up with some other excuse to topple Saddam Hussein.

 

[Jawz II]

and if we had taken out bin laden BEFORE 9/11 it would have been called anti-arab scaremongering

bin laden has been on the top of FBIs most wanted list for over 10 years

im not surprised that you didnt know that

its not like your government didnt try to get him
anything else you might have heard back in 2004 is nothing other than campaiging propaganda (lies)

 

[CruddyLeper]

and if we had taken out bin laden BEFORE 9/11 it would have been called anti-arab scaremongering

If the US had been CAUGHT doing it - the person responsible for approving it would have broken US law.

 

[wit>trope]

Too great a chance of discovery. China's put a lot of emphasis on military satellites to uncover just that sort of skullduggery - and if they see a launch from a US ship near to them, they aren't going to hang around wondering which way the missile is going.

Couldn't they launch it from a submarine or something? Then the Chinese wouldn't be able to tell it was a US ship.