N.Korea Could Test Long-Range Missile Any Time - U.S.

[Purveyor]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea could flight test at any time a ballistic missile potentially capable of reaching parts of the United States with a nuclear-weapon-sized payload, the State Department's top arms control official said on Friday.

Making the case for President Bush's drive to build a missile shield days after a failed test of the system, Stephen Rademaker, assistant secretary of state for arms control, said North Korea was pushing plans to develop its ocean-leaping, multiple-stage Taepo Dong 2 missile.

"This missile could be flight tested at any time," he told a conference in a congressional office building sponsored by the American Foreign Policy Council, a private research group.

A critic of the U.S. missile-defense plans, however, accused the Bush administration of playing up a North Korean threat "whether or not one exists" as a way to sell the shield program for which it plans to spend more than $50 billion over the next five years.

"They're not going to let technical problems or a less-severe threat prevent them from pursuing" missile defense, said Jon Wolfsthal, an expert on deadly weapons at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The Central Intelligence Agency has said that the Taepo-2 "may" be ready for testing. The report was in an unclassified report to Congress that covered developments to the end of last year.

Link to entire Reuters article

[illflem]

1. Taepo Dong

sounds like some sort of dildo

[NNN0LHI]

2. This is coming from the CIA? Yawn. Another slam dunk I am sure n/t

[Art_from_Ark]

3. Don't be so cavalier! The last missile they tested went almost

60 kilometers! That's the same distance as, what, Dallas to Fort Worth?

[Erika]

6. How Funny!

But Bushco doesn't propogandize or operate on facts.

He prefers the scare and control tactics.

[GHOSTDANCER]

7. They should send it right over our heads on a cloudy day as a joke.

Rub in a little that our defense shield money might as well be welfare for aeospace programs.

[Purveyor]

5. Just a new scare to silence the critics of the failed

interceptor missile test...

Nothing more, nothing less. I've be reading these "warning" of pending NK tests for the last 9 months without a spark to be observed.

[Erika]

4. Yeah. Mushroom Cloud Threats Again.

Bush should have taken President Carters offer up of going to North Korea and working for PEACE.
You know, practice the Golden Rule.

[Bragi]

8. Oh, no! The US is defenceless!

No, wait a minute. The US has the biggest military defense system since the dawn of human history.

<sigh>