Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

US fears 'hell' of a response
au ^ | October 12, 2006 | Mark Dunn

Posted on 10/11/2006 7:03:38 PM PDT by Flavius

PLANS previously drafted by the Pentagon predict 52,000 US military casualties and one million civilian dead in the first 90 days of conflict if America attacked Pyongyang. The US leadership is looking at international economic and diplomatic sanctions against North Korea as its primary response to Monday's nuclear test.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: exterminatethepests; getitoverwith; goodbyechiapet; kimjongmakesusill; northkorea
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 61-8081-100101-120 ... 221 next last
To: Mojave Mark

...and they're pretty cramped together, aren't they? Um so besser!


(Why Mojave? Have you transplanted to Nevada?)


81 posted on 10/11/2006 7:38:21 PM PDT by bannie (HILLARY: Not all perversions are sexual.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 71 | View Replies]

To: jveritas

82 posted on 10/11/2006 7:38:56 PM PDT by darkangel82 (Higher visibility leads to greater zottability.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 75 | View Replies]

To: Flavius
I call bologna...with tactical nukes from fighter/bombers, nuclear artillery, cruise missiles, neutron weapons, and our cornucopia of conventional weaponry, I don't see any reason for massive casualties. Once the north Koreans fire their first salvo, ROK (South Korean) and American counter battery fire would respond to many of those fires. We should probably reinforce 2d Division and the ROKs now, rather than wait. Possibly send the Marines from Okinawa and troops from Hawaii to let Kim Jung Il know we won't be threatened...
83 posted on 10/11/2006 7:38:59 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (Second to none!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Jim Robinson

I've been wondering just how many they have now. Surely when they did their test(s) they didn't use up all they had, one would think.


84 posted on 10/11/2006 7:39:04 PM PDT by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: jveritas

I've seen these wild extremes between people assuming the NKs get instanty annihilated by airpower in an easy war, and people under the rather silly impression the NKs would somehow roll forward a huge distance into South Korea in an unstoppable juggernaut (dumb on two levels - one, I honestly think it's people unaware of the existence of the ROK army, and two, if the DPRK ever thought they REMOTELY had a chance of success in such an attack, they would have tried it already).

The truth lies in-between. The terrain is rugged and the weather usually bad which impairs airpower, but I don't see a North Korean attack getting much of anywhere - the troop densities are very high and the ROK army is a far, far better force than it was in 1950. And GPS bombs are a true revolution in warfare the scope of which we haven't fully seen yet.

It would be a heck of a lot bloodier than either Gulf War and more difficult, but some of the extreme casualty estimates seem a bit silly (as they did back before GWI, which I was pointing out on the old GEnie BBS at the time - I was roundly ridiculed back in December before that war started for guessing the land war would last two weeks with less than 1,000 US dead).


85 posted on 10/11/2006 7:40:36 PM PDT by Strategerist (Those who know what's best for us must rise and save us from ourselves)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 75 | View Replies]

To: darkangel82

Does anyone else see a clown in that picture...or is it just me?


86 posted on 10/11/2006 7:40:43 PM PDT by bannie (HILLARY: Not all perversions are sexual.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 82 | View Replies]

To: jveritas

I respectfully disagree. The North could put 2 million men on the southern border of North Korea, and we would not act until they fire or move on us. We would only use conventional means which would limit a ability to effect millions. In that theatre we would not use nuclear devices, unless they first used it on our soldiers, and maybe not until they attacked our homeland. That means conventional warfare.


87 posted on 10/11/2006 7:40:56 PM PDT by Texas Songwriter
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 75 | View Replies]

To: Extremely Extreme Extremist

So what other options do we have for massive non-nuclear bombs? Seems to me there were some pretty impressive ones used in Iraq; ones that would cause massive damage for quite a fair sized radius- I just don't remember how far out they'd go.


88 posted on 10/11/2006 7:41:21 PM PDT by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: Texas Songwriter

Everyone forgets that the Republic of Korea (ROK aka South Korea) has 600,000 men under arms, and another couple of million in the reserves. The ROKs are tough as nails, too, and shouldn't be taken for granted.


89 posted on 10/11/2006 7:42:16 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (Second to none!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 80 | View Replies]

To: Ichneumon; Lancey Howard
I think Mr. Howard was referring to the fact that we don't have 52,000 troops in the entire country, and we're certainly not stupid enough to mass the ones we do have all in one spot to make a convenient target.

The South Koreans happen to have a rather effective army as well. I sense a tendency to build the North Korean soldiers up as being 10 feet tall here. They aren't. As for their missile program, that is useful largely against Seoul and not much further south than that. It wouldn't be the first time that city had been reduced to rubble. Nor need this be considered strictly in defensive terms - remember Inchon. The North will have to consider the obvious counterstroke against their own territory because we've done that sort of thing before.

Personally I don't think it will come to anything like this. The North no longer has Soviet patrons. And if the Chinese feel compelled to cross the border again they can keep the place. They don't want it.

90 posted on 10/11/2006 7:43:34 PM PDT by Billthedrill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 35 | View Replies]

To: Billthedrill

Other thing to keep in mind is there isn't a single soul in the entire North Korean military with any actual real large-scale combat experience whatsoever.

That matters.


91 posted on 10/11/2006 7:45:16 PM PDT by Strategerist (Those who know what's best for us must rise and save us from ourselves)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 90 | View Replies]

To: Texas Songwriter

That would be based on a US go it alone which we will not do.


92 posted on 10/11/2006 7:45:48 PM PDT by daybreakcoming
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 80 | View Replies]

To: Flavius
"Everybody knows that the Pentagon has ordered FIFTY THOUSAND BODY BAGS!!!!"

Hmmm... why wouldn't they use some of the leftover 48,000 that the DUmmies conjured up when we went into Iraq? These people think we have no memories.

93 posted on 10/11/2006 7:46:01 PM PDT by Snickersnee (Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Strategerist

MacArthur wanted to Nuke the Chi-Coms back to the stoneage and was handstrung about the Chinese by Truman.


94 posted on 10/11/2006 7:46:20 PM PDT by aft_lizard (born conservative...I chose to be a republican)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 58 | View Replies]

To: TomasUSMC
My Grandfather saw the effects of the Nagasaki bomb 2 months after we dropped it. His brother liberated Tinian, where they built the Hiroshima bomb. People here drop terms like "nuke Mecca", "nuke Pyongyang", without actually knowing the human effects of these weapons. A nuclear WMD is truely the evil gift that keeps on giving YEARS after it is deployed. There was a reason why the Soviets never engaged us in a nuclear exchange, and it was because they saw the same results from their tests as we did. In the end, the Soviets loved their political model enough so that they never pre-emptively engaged the US. The MAD Doctrine works, but ONLY IF YOUR OPPONENT LOVES LIFE AS MUCH AS YOU DO.

We don't have that luxury with Islam. We're dicking around with religious fanatics not seen since the 7th century. Religious fanatics who want to kill unbelievers on scale of the Crusades, only they want to do it in the blink of an eye. With a radioactive fire that burns for a thousand years.

My grandfather wept as he told me the horrible things he saw in Nagasaki.

"In a nuclear war, boy.....you better pray to be vaporized, because shitting out yer intestines is a bad way to go out. You better not let 'em do it again, boy....People just shouldn't do that to other people......"

95 posted on 10/11/2006 7:47:00 PM PDT by The Drowning Witch (Non omnes qui habemt citharam sunt citharoedi)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 43 | View Replies]

To: Doctor Don

We don't carry neutron bombs in our arsenal anymore. They don't keep well.


96 posted on 10/11/2006 7:47:14 PM PDT by aft_lizard (born conservative...I chose to be a republican)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 64 | View Replies]

To: Strategerist

Couldn't agree more. It'd be a pity to see the Itae-Won blown to smithereens...but then who could tell?


97 posted on 10/11/2006 7:48:23 PM PDT by Billthedrill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 91 | View Replies]

To: aft_lizard

Which very likely may have ended up causing a US-Soviet nuclear exchange.

MacArthur is one of the most painfully overrated military leaders in US history. Like I said, prior to the controversy with Truman, he completely ignored large amounts of intelligence and warnings that Chicom troops were in North Korea in large numbers - and we ended up getting suprised, leading to the horrors of "Frozen Chosin" etc.

Just like he managed to lose his entire airforce in the Phillipines on the ground the day AFTER Pearl Harbor in World War II.


98 posted on 10/11/2006 7:49:05 PM PDT by Strategerist (Those who know what's best for us must rise and save us from ourselves)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 94 | View Replies]

To: 2banana

The figures probably were allied forces rather than merely American. There would be an immediate airlift of US forces too. So this may not be that unrealistic. North Koreans may be more disciplined than the Iraqis.


99 posted on 10/11/2006 7:49:09 PM PDT by justshutupandtakeit (If you believe ANYTHING in the Treason Media you are a fool.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

Comment #100 Removed by Moderator


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 61-8081-100101-120 ... 221 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson