Defense secretary Gates says North Korean ballistic missiles pose 'direct threat' to U.S.

Peacenik is sick and tired of U.S. sabre rattling. The North Koreans are coming. The North Koreans are coming. This has as much credibility as the infamous balsa wood toy planes that supposedly were able to deliver weapons of mass destruction from Iraq to the U.S.A. Why is the U.S. trying to keep everyone on edge. Should Peacenik be building a bomb shelter, or buying duct tape? The terrorists are coming. Financial collapse is coming. Bird Flu is coming. Food riots are coming? The U.S. and Canada are led by dolts, elected by dolts. Peacenik has a plan for dealing with all the nonsense. Do you?

BEIJING --U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned North Korea Tuesday that its nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile programs are "becoming a direct threat to the United States."

Gates, who is in China on the second leg of a four-country Asia tour, predicted that North Korea's reclusive government would succeed in developing an intercontinental ballistic missile within five years.

But, in a first for a U.S. senior official, Gates also gave North Korea some concrete suggestions about what the United States wants it to do in order to restart stalled talks over its nuclear weapons program: declare a moratorium on both missile and nuclear tests.

Read on...

OK Mr. Gates. What Now?

by Eric Margolis

PARIS – One of the first things you learn in diplomacy 101 is not to make threats you can’t back up.

But that is just what US Defense Secretary Robert Gates did last week by thundering the US "would not accept," and "would not stand idly by" while North Korea continued to develop nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s nuclear weapons threaten the entire globe, warned Gates, whose own Pentagon has some 10,000 nuclear warheads deployed at home and abroad, 28,500 troops permanently based in South Korea, and large contingents in Japan, Okinawa and Guam.

Not to be out-threatened, North Korea warned back that if attacked, it would turn South Korea’s capitol, Seoul, into "a sea of fire" and bombard Japan.

Dire threats and angry hot air always characterize poisonous relations between isolated, Stalinist North Korea and the US, Japan and South Korea. Their recriminations have become a form of ritualized kabuki theater in which snarls and grimaces replace actual violence.

After much angry posturing, the US, Japan and South Korea usually pay off North Korea’s "Dear Leader," Kim Jong-il, to stop making trouble.
But this time, both Washington and Pyongyang have gone over the top. One wonders how Secretary Gates intends to prevent North Korea from having the nuclear devices it already possesses.

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dear punditman says...North Korea’s "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il and his nukes do not yet threaten the globe. They are not yet ready to be delivered by missile, it is believed. That's the good news. Now the bad news. A conventional war sees North Korea causing much grief for South Korea and the US troops stationed there who are currently on high alert. If things spiral out of control, Japan and South Korea may be forced to go nuclear, which apparently both can do quickly. Wonderful.

The US is threatening a maritime blockade that would see them searching North Korean freighters on the high seas for "weapons of mass destruction." This is an act of war and foolish daredevilry. It is not a cogent response. What is Obama's plan? The US can ill afford another military engagement, and an air campaign against North Korea would likely be inconclusive.

So, dear reader, a major war on the Korean Peninsula with "Dear Leader" is a real possibility. If that happens, no one will be talking about transforming General Motors. Imagine the price of gas. Dear me.