N. Korea Says It Is Making Nuclear Bombs

[DuctapeFatwa]

North Korea said Thursday it is using plutonium extracted from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods to make atomic weapons, a move that could dramatically escalate tensions on the Korean peninsula and strengthen its hand in negotiations with the United States.

The claim came as some U.S. intelligence analysts are becoming increasingly concerned that North Korea might have three, four or even six nuclear weapons instead of the one or two the CIA now estimates.

"The (North) successfully finished the reprocessing of some 8,000 spent fuel rods," a spokesman from Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the North's official news agency KCNA. The spokesman was not named.

Accusing the United States of taking a "hostile policy" toward the North, the statement said North Korea "made a switchover in the use of plutonium churned out by reprocessing spent fuel rods in the direction (of) increasing its nuclear deterrent force."


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031002/ap_on_re_as/koreas_nuclear&cid=516&ncid=716

[Cappurr]

1. No duh

I thought they were making oatmeal cookies because Mr. Bush has been such a sweety to them. :silly:

[Muddleoftheroad]

2. Until they stop

The world should cut them off -- from everything. No contact. No aid. No travel. Nothing.

[mmm]

7. Seems you are not exactly up to speed on this issue

1. China will never stop aid to NK. Look on a map -
NK protects China's Eastern border from... the US.
2. We have far too little contact with NK, this is why
there is such a dearth of reliable intelligence on the NK
nuclear program
3. It makes no sense to punish the N Korean people for the sins
of the leader. Bush needs to get his dumb ass in gear and
NEGOTIATE with these people. We do not want to anger them.
4. Kim will fight if he is pushed hard enough. Nukes over
Tokyo and Seoul would send the world economy into a tailspin
and may well be the start of WW3.
5. Jimmy Carter recently predicted that without a US change of course
war with NK is inevitable. The US MUST change course first.

[Muddleoftheroad]

8. Point by point

1. China will never stop aid to NK. Look on a map -
NK protects China's Eastern border from... the US.

China got so frustrated that it cut of oil delivery to NK a while back. Even THEY don't like the direction NK is going. No, we can't force China to do as we wish. We can't pretty much force everybody else though through sanctions.

2. We have far too little contact with NK, this is why
there is such a dearth of reliable intelligence on the NK
nuclear program.

NK is a psycho dictatorial cult. We know what they are doing. They are starving their people and building weapons.

3. It makes no sense to punish the N Korean people for the sins
of the leader. Bush needs to get his dumb ass in gear and
NEGOTIATE with these people. We do not want to anger them.

They are already angry. That doesn't give them a right to aid. Face it, there is NOT enough aid to go around for the world. I would rather it go to Africa to help starving people there than to prop up a nation that has threatened us with nukes.

4. Kim will fight if he is pushed hard enough. Nukes over
Tokyo and Seoul would send the world economy into a tailspin
and may well be the start of WW3.

So we don't push, we don't pull. We just wait them out.

5. Jimmy Carter recently predicted that without a US change of course
war with NK is inevitable. The US MUST change course first.

Jimmy Carter is a really nice man, but he was not a compelling president. Why must the U.S. change course first?

[Patriot_Spear]

19. "Jimmy Carter not a compelling President"? - get some coffee...

The only president to make concrete advances in the middle east.

The president who scuttled the B1-B project in favor of Lockheed-Martin's stealth research.

And any simpleton who thinks they can make an enemy submit through diplomatic disengagement is a fool who will pay the eventual price of war.

[Muddleoftheroad]

22. Carter was in over his head in DC

Virtually all presidents have something to their credit, but Jimmy (and I like him a lot) was just not ready for prime time.

I don't think we can make NK submit by anything we can do short of nuclear war, which I obviously oppose. I just think we can limit their negative impact.

[NickB79]

13. Didnt N. Korea declare this spring they would consider an embargo

An act of war? Might want to reconsider that trade embargo then, unless you want Seoul and Tokyo to become smoking craters.

"The world should cut them off -- from everything. No contact. No aid. No travel. Nothing."

After the past couple years under Bush, the same could be said of the US right now.

[Muddleoftheroad]

15. NK is like a spoiled child

Just because it wants something doesn't mean it gets it.

In the adult world, they don't want war because war, especially a war they start, would end it all for Kim Jong Il and his gang of thugs. They run a country and abuse a people, that's a good day's work.

[Spentastic]

3. Fuck em

they're just bluffing! That's the latest excuse for invading people so let's stop pissing about and invade them.

[saigon68]

10. Don't just "Fuck Em" send Wolfies "Shock and Awe"

Just imagine a few thousand cruise missiles landing.

Imagine the flowers and rosepetals that will be thrown at our victorious forces as they land on the beaches at Inchon.

More sights of the victorious president proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" and "Bring Em On", while wearing his parachute harness still buckled up tightly around his genitals, on the deck of the USS Nevermind.

[saigon68]

11. Don't just "Fuck Em" send Wolfies "Shock and Awe"

Just imagine a few thousand cruise missiles landing.

Imagine the flowers and rosepetals that will be thrown at our victorious forces as they land on the beaches at Inchon.

More sights of the victorious president proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" and "Bring Em On", while wearing his parachute harness still buckled up tightly around his genitals, on the deck of the USS Nevermind.

[chromotone]

14. Two reasons why Bush won't invade...

1. They DO have WMDs,
2. They DON'T have oil.

[underpants]

4. What? You mean all of W's talks with them haven't worked?

Whoda thunk it?

[Corgigal]

5. Well

we could really use Mrs. Plume Wilson's work now.

Opps, my bad ..TOO LATE.

[AndyTiedye]

9. Blowing Plame and her team is part of the next LIHOP

You know the next "incident" would have to be something really big :nuke:

[tom_paine]

6. Sure they are, Bushevik "logic" has compelled them

The Iraq Invasion conclusively shows that the Cowardly Bush will only attack those who cannot fight back, who have NO NUKES.

So, what is a self-respecting Third World Dictator to do to keep the Empire off their back but have a strong military and some nukes?

(also, the Kim IL Jong are crazy evil fuckers who I'm sure would be right at home at a Bushevik Tea Party, if only they used Capitalism instead of Communism as an excuse for their Totalitraian Control -- if they did that, their problem with the Busheviks would be OVER and they would be "on the team" with Cameroon, Mauritania and Poland)

[soleft]

12. If only Kim had gassed his own people

I'm sure we'd be in there right now disarming them.

:eyes:

[0007]

26. ......and cutting out their tongues

will even get our attention faster, 'eh? They must be stopped.

And junior is lost, he blew his road map a long time ago!

[teryang]

16. Another neo con blunder

Neo cons sabatoged the Agreed Framework by stalling and then failing to deliver two light water reactors promised to built by 2003. Then they cut off promised fuel supplies under the Agreed Framework blatantly breaching the agreement.

Then they cut off humanitarian food aid, (as much as they could). Wolfowitz pronounced the policy of "tightening the noose." He said more than once that N.Korea was on the "verge of collapse."

Now we reap the results of this diastrous and ill considered policy. The N.Koreans apparently now have enough plutonium to build several nuclear weapons. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, another massive foreign policy failure from the neo con military junta.

The "tightening the noose" policy of Mr. Wolfowitz failed miserably. The N.Korean dictatorship is impervious to his amateurish realpolitik theories. While starving the nation launches IRBMs and restarts its nuclear program. The question now raised is whose noose will it become? In his poorly disguised racist and xenophobic hysteria the fool has opened the door to possibilities of nuclear conflict which never existed before.

The so called "scholar" Mr. Wolfowitz should be reminded that a Stalinist regime (like those that toppled MacArthur from his Imperial palace and Truman from his presidency) can put into practice any program it likes even if it means letting millions of peasants starve while it has millions more to labor as ordered. Kims original objective was economic developement which would have been provided by the two nuclear plants we forced him to stop development on in 1994 and then sabotaging the construction of the two new plants we promised to have built. We have now diverted Kim's main effort from nuclear power for economic purposes to the construction of strategic nuclear weapons. One seriously has to consider that it is our neocon leadership which is insane.

"A state of this kind has no...crises to fear...So long as there is a well disciplined and well fed police army ...it can maintain its existence for an indefinitely long period and go on increasing its power to an indefinite extent." Carl Jung 1957

[Muddleoftheroad]

17. Power

It can increase its internal power, but NK can't expand without fighting the U.S. or China or Russia. So, putting a noose around it and cutting it off from the world seems the only way to limit its negative impact on its neighbors.

[Spentastic]

18. That's fine

Unless you tighten the noose too tight and they decide to fight for survival. Then you have WWIII.

[Muddleoftheroad]

23. As has been made clear here

We can't control the acts of China, so the noose will only be so tight, but we owe them nothing in the way of aid or trade.

[Patriot_Spear]

20. Noose around N. Korea- are you a fool? They have nukes AND missiles...

They have an active MRBM missile program and an active nuke production capability.

How do you plan to win that victory, Pyrrhus?

And exactly how are you going to 'cut them off from thr world' when the Chinese will NEVER agree to the kind of blockade you suggest.

We've seen what cowboy dimplomacy got us in Iraq- we need some grown-up's to take the lead in foreign policy before it's too late.

[Muddleoftheroad]

24. No aid, no trade

Let them remain China's psycho client state and let China deal with feeding and reining in the wildly insane despot Kim Jong Il.

[chenGOD]

21. In fact the North can expand without fighting.

The way to "defeat the evil communists" is by introducing them to free market economics slowly. They were actually going to try that themselves, too bad they didn't vet their choice better (a tax-evader from China!!). Once the leaders of the north see how much money there is to be made, they'll jump ship early to ensure they remain in positions of power. If they had some economic infrastructure (like a means to generate electric power?), they would be in a much better place to implement market reform. By increasing their ability to trade, they would have a positive influence on their neighbours.

Instead, xenophobia rules in the neocon world, close em off, make them appear evil, and don't try to incorporate them into the world, just bomb them to pieces. Start WW3, just cause Bushie boy "loathes Kim Jeong Il". Puerile? You bet. Illogical? Of course. Should we expect anything else from the 2 year-olds running the US of A? Nope.


Oh yeah to everyone else reading this thread, the best way to "debate" with puddleofmudd on North Korea is basically to ignore him, since he's more than likely never spoken to a Korean person and has not a clue about what life is like on the Korean peninsula. Now I may not have a clue about life inside North Korea (since I've never been there, but then neither has he), but I know for a fact that I've spoken to a lot more South Koreans about the situation than him.

[Muddleoftheroad]

25. NK is not the old Soviet Union

It is a crazy cult of personality. So normal rules do not apply.

It is not xenophobia to want a crazy group of potentially nuclear armed cultists to be cut off.

As for the personal attack at the end of your post, it is worth the paper it is printed on, which is not at all. I follow the subject, I have done so for a couple decades, talking with both Koreans here and military folks who have served there.

There was a name for the policy you propose around WWII. It's called appeasement. It doesn't work.

[teryang]

28. Well said

Good to hear from you.

Jaw boon i pabo ieyo.

[2cents]

27. I don't think Kim is as crazy as many think

Winter is coming. If NK needs heating oil, now is the time to be a squeaky wheel.