BEAR on 9/10/2006 at 13:51
You dont know that!
Kaleid on 9/10/2006 at 13:55
Quote Posted by BEAR
You dont know that!
Know what?
Matthew on 9/10/2006 at 14:30
Yeah, who's to say that the Dear Leader hasn't got a private cache of oil just waiting to be exploited liberated discovered! :p
More seriously: How come the Western powers were willing to bargain with (say) Libya, but not with North Korea?
demagogue on 9/10/2006 at 14:44
Libya wisely dismantled its weapons program on the heels of Gulf War II. It's about the only good thing that came out of US brinkmanship on Saddam's WMD, but probably bad in the end because it only emboldened team Bush that they were on the right track.
N. Korea is a problem from hell because 10 million S. Koreans are sitting ducks in Seoul, about 10 miles from the most heavily militarized "peaceful" borderzone on the planet. It's like a powderkeg ... nobody wants to be flashing sparks around it like we could with Libya or Iran.
Also, Iran and Libya are both somewhat "normalized" to the extent that their revolutions are more than a generation in the past and now their gov'ts have become more pragmatic, act in their own rational interest, and at least they go through the motions of trying to keep commitments (whether they do or not behind the scenes), and we can at least predict what they are thinking if they behave rationally towards their interests.
N.K. remains in a kind of perpetual "radical" state, so it's hard to even know what strategic approach to take ... It's hard to think of incentives for a State that starves its own citizens and doesn't act rationally on its own behalf (like Iran and Libya now do to some extent) ... so NK's "commitments" are hardly worth the paper they are written on. And it's much harder to predict what he's after ... it's certainly not his people's well being.
Rogue Keeper on 9/10/2006 at 14:49
Quote Posted by Matthew
More seriously: How come the Western powers were willing to bargain with (say) Libya, but not with North Korea?
Because dudes with towels on their head are still better than dudes with red stars on their garrison caps.
icemann on 9/10/2006 at 14:58
I highly doubt N.Korea would ever use nukes against anyone. If they even launched a single one, their half of Korea would disapear in a puff of smoke a few moments later. Its more of a psychological thing more than anything else. In this new age of terroists N.Korea doesn`t scare me in the slightest really.
Fragony on 9/10/2006 at 15:47
So they have a bomb, they don't even have the means to get it anywhere. Costs a lot of money these baby's, if South Korea stops their aid they have a far more terrifying weapon; hunger. Don't be provoked, let these clowns collapse on it's own.
Printer's Devil on 9/10/2006 at 16:08
HAS THE FUSE BEEN LIT?
Matthew on 9/10/2006 at 16:35
Quote Posted by Fragony
Don't be provoked, let these clowns collapse on it's own.
It's not the clowns I'm concerned about, it's the few million poor sods who've been tricked into being led by them.
Fragony on 9/10/2006 at 16:43
Quote Posted by Matthew
It's not the clowns I'm concerned about, it's the few million poor sods who've been tricked into being led by them.
They can't hurt you, these nuclair bombs tend to be a bit on the heavy side, far too heavy for any rocket system, and there is always the patriot sytem which I believe the united states posseses.
If you are talking from a humanitarian perspective, then going to war would be a noble thing to do. I am just not the humanitarian type.
