China Confidential -- Everything you need to know about the North Korean nuke test
By Aussiegirl
In a remarkable and chilling series of articles analysing the buildup to and detonation of a nuclear device in North Korea, China Confidential once again makes it clear why it is the first choice destination for keeping up with that part of the world. A must-see read -- there's too much to excerpt here. Read how predictably diplomats are already busy playing down the importance of the nuclear test -- it fizzled, it's not that big a deal, smaller than expected, etc. etc. This is precisely what we heard after the remarkable series of tests of ballistic missiles. Don't worry, be happy -- the test fizzled -- nothing to see here -- just move along.
Also read the chilling words of a direct, if unofficial, declaration of war against the U.S. probably written by Kimmie himself, threatening the mainland of the U.S. with a nuclear attack.
Read also how Iran, Syria and North Korea, and next possibly Venezuela are coordinating their provocations in an alarming way, including a possible imminent Syrian attack on Israel. Here are a few excerpts of different stories available on China Confidential.
China Confidential
Nervous Western diplomats from Washington to Whitehall and their appeasement-minded fellow travelers in the media and academia are already spreading the word: the North Korean nuclear test is not so significant (a) because the explosion was relatively small, and (b) because the blast does not prove that Pyongyang is capable of delivering a nuclear weapon on a missile or otherwise weaponizing one of its nuclear devices.
[...]Within hours of North Korea's unofficial declaration of war against the US--scroll down for the story--Syrian President Bashar Assad told a Kuwaiti newspaper, Al-Anba, that his country is preparing for war with (US ally) Israel. But Assad added that peace is still possible--provided, presumably, that Israel return the contested Golan Heights to Syria.
[...]After praising Kim Jong-Il as "the greatest of the peerless national heroes Korea has ever produced," spokesman Kim explains that North Korea's current leader is "unique" because he "is the first to equip Korea with sufficient military capability to take the war all the way to the continental US."
All the way to the USA....
"Under his leadership the DPRK has become a nuclear-weapons state with intercontinental means of delivery," spokesman Kim continues. "(Dear Leader) 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."
It gets worse.
"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.
posted by Aussiegirl @ 5:21 PM
2 Comments:
there's a load of "sky is falling" trashtalk surrounding the NK 'test-fire'.
even supposing kim il-dung has made this happen, it still takes a lot of precision and infrastructure to build & properly maintain, never mind lob, a ballistic missile halfway around the planet... just ask an engineering student, or the near-bankrupt former soviet union.
i'm thinkin' the bigger threat here is that this was a test-fire to demonstrate to osama, or whoever, that ole' kim has a workable prototype he can flog on the open market.
then you just put it in a shipping container postmarked washington, or new york... or toronto, and babu's yer uncle.
what you have to remember, is that even in the worst case scenario, one boomer (that's a u.s. ballistic missile sub for the uninitiated) has enough firepower to turn most of any continent you'd care to name, never mind piddly, little north korea into, well... afghanistan.
I think the danger is that he will proliferate these weapons to other countries. In addition, North Korea has a sizable submarine force that could conceivably deliver a weapon of this size to a U.S. port without the resort to a ballistic missile. You're right, he does not have a deliverable weapon right now in terms of ballistic missiles. Still, this will destabilize the Far East and conceivably force an arms race, with Japan and South Korea and even Taiwan rushing to develop their own nukes. The world is getting more dangerous, and no pie in the sky optimism is going to alter that. As to our own deterrent forces - they are only as credible as the enemy's perception of our willingness to use them - so far that appears to be unlikely. The real fall out from the disaster that is Iraq is that it now makes our military intervention in any other part of the world more difficult for many reasons.
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