Tillerson: China agrees on 'action' on North Korea as navy strike group sails

Guardian ^ | 9 April 2017 | Edward Helmore and agencies

[Vigilanteman]

Ditto. But every Korean I have ever met was from the Southern part. Very different animals than those from the North. They may have shared a cultural connection before 1950, but never since.

[TheNext]

SAFE ISLAND

Stand down.

Your Congress is a colossal failure in the nuclear era. There should be a history of a Safe Island with several retired dictators that no one can touch.

Khadaffi & Saddam should still live there alive.
Kim Un would know he could live out his days, instead of a nuke war.

The US Congress are failures.

[Gay State Conservative]

Promise that fat psychopath and all his top advisers and generals (perhaps a couple of hundred total) a half billion dollars each,immunity from prosecution and safe passage to an agreeable country.At the same time we park at least one of our boomers off the coast along with at least one carrier group.

And then you do what the Mexican cartels do with government officials....you say "silver,or lead".

[Terry Mross]

The one possibly horrible result would be the little fatty sets off a nuke because he knows he’s about to be taken out.

[DAC21]

“At some point a general will have had enough and kill the little fat loon”

Hard to do unarmed with only a little pad and pencil and a oversized hat.

[ealgeone]

Chicoms don’t want a capitalist country on their border.

[dragnet2]

That's fine, but charity beings at home, and since they're NK's closest neighbors China can provide the humanitarian aid, thus avoid all that shipping from the U.S., etc. If they can only provide rice, that's OK too.☺ Again, if China can fill all of America's Walmarts, they can provide humanitarian aid to their neighbor.

[TBall]

A Kim first strike might be a good thing.

[hinckley buzzard]

The precedent exists for pre-emptive strikes against budding nuclear programs of dictators. All China has to do is stand aside, as they did during the bombing of Syria's nuclear installation by Israel, or earlier the bombing of North VietNam by the US(not a nuclear issue, but crossing a previously "understood" limit).

Everyone always says that China plays the "long game." I suppose; but if that is so, then they have no investment in the future of North Korea as it currently is constituted. Think about it.

[hinckley buzzard]

You can safely assume it reflects the tenor of the discussions this week, and is in line with whatever understandings were reached.

[dp0622]

Should be posted twice!

As I recall, they didn’t have one yet.

[hinckley buzzard]

Norks are not capable of "full scale war." Once they shoot their artillery tubes at Seoul, half of which will be duds, they have no logistics to support sustained warfare. And China is not in a position to be their "arsenal for idocracy."

A first strike against any nuclear facilities will neutralize that nascent threat, and after that the Nork Army will be every man for himself.

It is important to understand that NK has no institutional memory of how to wage war. Their efforts in the remote fifties led to a rout, which was only reversed by human waves of Chinese. NK has not one officer with combat experience. The South has the ROK Marines who showed their mettle in VietNam as the equal of the US Marines, and even more bloodthirsty. They still have leaders carrying that institutional memory and legacy.

We should put to rest the peculiar idea that a milllion untrained and untested pieces of cannon fodder will make a fight of it on a 21st century battlefield.

Think Iraqi "Elite Republican Guard" in 1992.

[Rebelbase]

Do you think we’ll see Chicom troops mass at the NK border?

[dsc]

“Which is why best this be done in such a way as they can remain in their own country.”

Yes, that would be best.

But they will need food while the economy gets up and running, and school teachers who are not functionally insane—which means South Korean.

[hinckley buzzard]

If China can supply all the Walmart's in U.S., it can easily provide NK with humanitarian effort.

Walmart pays in US dollars. Who knows what NK pays in, some kind of unconvertible toilet paper.

Big difference.

[hinckley buzzard]

Stalin had atomic weapons of his own at that point, he was behind the invasion by the North to begin with, and would certainly have used the atomic weapons of the USSR against us if we had gone atomic.

Just something to think about when contemplating throwing atomic bombs around with gay abandon.

[phoneman08]

Well, the NORKS surely would be crushed by the US and the South, but I don’t believe it would be quick, and casualties would exceed many times over what the US has endured since Vietnam IMO.

Even with a fail rate of 1/3rd, they have the ability to fire many thousands of shells into Seoul and it’s northern suburbs. And they have chem weapons too. The civilian casualty count would be horrendous if they purposely target the city which is rather likely.

And I’m not so sure they would cut and run like the Iraqis. Different terrain, and mindset.

[TigerLikesRooster]

There is a report by a Taiwanese media that as many as 150K PLA troops massed near Sino-N. Korean border. Japanese media Sankei Shimbun reported that military vehicles were seen moving to the border area. These are picked up by S. Korean media, but not by international MSM yet.

[dragnet2]

From #107...Too bad for China. Charity beings at home, and since they're NK's closest neighbors China can provide the humanitarian aid, thus avoid all that shipping from the U.S., etc. If they can only provide rice, that's OK too.☺ Again, if China can fill all of America's Walmarts, they can provide humanitarian aid to their neighbor. It They have to foot the bill, too bad.

The U.S. has been looted by the world for decades, so they can pick up the tab.☺

[hinckley buzzard]

So you say. I doubt it. Nobody predicted the Iraqi "elites" would cut and run either. Yes they can fire off a big salvo of shells before we incinerate their arty positions, do some damage to Seoul, but invade across the DMZ? With what? Unprotected infantry cut off from supply trains and deprived of air cover? Have you any idea of what an actual ground combat operation requires these days?

The entire combined US and South Korean Air Force, cruise missiles from destroyers offshore and B-52s, would be running interdiction and strafing, destroying the rear, as well as any troops advancing in the field, where their already thin logistic trains of fuel and supply would be cut off within hours.

Beside which, The South's own military, far more modern and lethal, well supplied and fighting on their own ground, would chew up the Nork draftees.

Yes it would be bloody, but it would also be short and the outcome would not be in doubt unless China once again decided to step in and take over the fight. The whole premise of this thread is that that will not happen.

Do not be frightened by videos of goosestepping troops in parades. Means nothing. And numbers of artillery tubes by themselves tell you little, given that their reliability has been shown to be lacking in their shelling of border islands in the past.

No, NK will not launch a land assault, it would be suicidal if they do.