[thoughtomator]

So why take great comfort in the fact that North Korea still has work to do in successfully developing and demonstrating its ability to attack U.S. with its long-range missiles?

We can take some comfort in that they can't do it right now. That gives us some breathing room to clean up the mess in aisle ME before we bring our assets to bear on this little problem.

[msnimje]

I take comfort in the fact that this little stunt pissed off the Chinese.

[Paul Ross]

It shouldn’t take Tom Clancy to imagine scenarios in which terrorists buy several such missiles, arm them with weapons of mass destruction, put them to sea, and launch them at several cities, making September 11, 2001 look like ants at a picnic by comparison. So, clearly we should care about “Six Scuds and a Dud!” And clearly we should have doubts about the prospects of diplomacy doing much more than delaying this threat.

Utter truth.

[glorgau]

they would involve increasing the current Navy missile defense effort from about $1 billion a year to less than $2 billion a year.

About the one-time cost of building a barrier on the southern border.

[PghBaldy]

Link to 9/16/2002 Rumsfeld Press Conf: http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2002/t09162002_t0916sd.html "Rumsfeld: Furthermore, the -- September 11th suggested lots of ways to deliver lethal damage to the United States. In addition, countries have placed ballistic missiles in ships -- cargo ships, commercial ships, dime a dozen -- all over the world. Any given time, there's any number off our coast, coming, going, on transporter-erector-launchers, and they simply erect it, fire off a ballistic missile, put it down, cover it up. Their radar signature's not any different than other 50 others in close proximity. So your comment that they don't have the ability to deliver a ballistic missile to this country is flat wrong."

[unionblue83]

Eventually, IMHO, Kim-Jong Ill-in-the-Head will get too big for his britches, so to speak, and piss off the Chicoms just enough that he will have outlived his usefullness. NK gives the Chicoms a thorn in our side that allows them to hold some useful purpose in theater thereby keeping us from really damaging their economy with sanctions. We should have sanctioned them after the missle tests near Taiwan but we "needed" their pressure on NK in the negotiations (which I don't think work anyway). One good sign is Japan. There is now the desire within the government as well as the general population to begin building their defense capabilities again. India is another chip in our favor but I don't know enough about the India scene to comment on the details. China, to their credit, learned from the Japanese how to hogtie us economically--look at the debt ratio. They will posture, as they always do, but we have troops to their south, a friend in India, whose nuclear and Japan who is beginning to be more of a potential military ally. Not to mention all of the assets we still have in the So. Pacific.