[Hop A Long Cassidy]

>>>"a pre-emptive nuclear strike on North Korea...the only thing that comes to mind is, "Where are we going, and why are we in this hand basket."

Didn't we learn an important message on 9/11? When a declared foe calls repeatedly for our country's destruction and builds weapons to do so, a pre-emptive strike by us should be a quite valid option - particularly if they have nukes.

Do we lose Honolulu or Ankorage first, and then decide?

It's one thing for a country to clandestinely build nukes, but an entirely different for them to build nukes and threaten the Western world with them.

Would you call the police if a neighbor is threatening to shoot you and your family with this [insert some specific weapon here that you know or suspect he has]?

Nukes take out cities. The dimensions change when you get to that level of destruction.

Needless to say, the mainland Chinese can squelch this guy... if they wanted or needed to. But they are letting him out on the leash. Maybe we should complain to Wal-Mart instead.

Hoppy

[birbear]

Oh... I don't necessarily have a problem with a pre-emptive nuclear strike on North Korea if the scenario warrants it. I'm just saying that a lot of things would have to go horribly wrong in order for us to end up in that position. (i.e. Diplomacy failed, conventional weapons would fail, China would be involved, possibly more intense armed conflict between India and Pakistan. Basically, the whole wide world would be in a hot war, and we'd have so many of our conventional resources scattered amongst the globe that what we currently have in the Korean Peninsula would not be enough to deter North Korea and China from invading South Korea and Japan.)

And not to play Devil's Advocate, but if I were the leader of North Korea, and I got nuked, one of my first retalitory strikes would be at U.S. bases in Japan.

To my way of thinking his whole comment was a "Duh!" moment.