Posted on 10/21/2006 8:40:39 AM PDT by maquiladora
1. The biggest threat is Kim's artillery fire into Seoul. We have wargamed this for fifty years and I am going to make a guess that we have it solved.
2. I remember that about two years ago forty or so of Kim's top commanders were picked up by our people. We know a lot about their stragic and tactical plans.
3. I suspect that the top NK military leaders are aware of the near certainty of annihilation if they attack South Korea. Kim's army is not a NATO grade army.
We certainly can drop the bridges into China on the NK side, mine the ports, crater the airfields, and shoot up air defenses. The South Korean Army of today is much tougher than in 1950; they can hold a lot of the country. The problem is we're going to have hundreds of thousands killed in Seoul.
Not to mention that South Korean casualties are no longer material. Those ceased to be a factor when their government sent the North close to a billion dollars in hard currency, which the North used to build nuclear weapons among other things.
We should get out of Korea. Leave it to the Koreans. South Korea has had ample time to prepare. They don't like us very much anyway.
Whatever happens there, we will never be thanked and we will likely be blamed. Let's pack and leave.
As soon as we attack North Korea China Invades Taiwan
You got it!
Use nukes only if NK uses chemical weapons.
Even old chemical weapons can create a long term mess.
We got the message to Saddams generals, we can get messages to NK. Dear Leader gets CNN, and I have to think that others in NK also get our satellite broadcasts (not many, admittedly).
"Hold on, Mr. Jihadist....isn't it a crime against humanity to rape my daughters, behead me and burn down my neighborhood??"
Does a sane person go into a struggle of life and death proportions with one hand and a leg tied behind his back, while blindfolded?
The opponent set the rules. We're idiots to not play the game the way the opponent designed it.
.....but we are morally superior to them. Surely you don't suggest we get our red uniforms dirty, break formation and chase these hooligans into the forest.....Quote by a British officer in 1775.
As for fatarse Kim of North Korean infamy, just wax him. No questions, no publicity, no second guessing. Just do it.
You're betting 10 million lives on that analysis. Much as I hate the Norks, this is a REALLY sticky situation that we're in.
When the battlefield lasers (video here) are mass produced and 1000 of them are available to shoot down artillery shells in flight, THEN war becomes a viable option again.
Criminy, you shouldn't insult Japanese that way. The Japanese had HONOR. Hard bastards, but honorable.
ROUND-the-clock strikes using Stealth and Lancer aircraft and naval-launch cruise missiles to destroy nuclear and missile capability and set the research program back years.
AIR bombing, possibly including US tactical nuclear weapons, to penetrate metres-thick concrete protecting the North's nuclear research complex at Yonben.
The USA may not be the only Country that would like the NoKo's to go away............FRegards
I'm betting nothing, my finger is nowhere near the button.
If one or two nukes are dropped and they still want to charge forward ... carpet nuke time, but I really think they'd lose all will to die (along with their families) for Kimmy Jong if they see a mushroom cloud looming on the horizon.
Again, I could be wrong. I guess it's a good thing I don't make these decisions, huh? =)
Sorry, I don't follow your logic here. NK getting nukes IS the change in the status quo. We're not going to bomb NK into oblivion as some here suggest. But NK's neighbors are going to have to respond with their own nukes to retain military equilibrium in the region.
This is exactly the threat Reagan made to the Soviets in Europe. Caterwauling liberals predicted the end of the world but in actuality it was one of the nails in the Soviet coffin.
What you said....Unleash the dogs of war. These people think that the W Europeans are pushovers, they may have forgotten history. If they think the US will sit still while our leaders "play war" for fun, remember who lit the fuse on the first Nukes. We are slow to anger, but terrible revengers.
That it will...
...that it will.
Very quickly.
North Korea has far more than a million men under arms.
The million man army is simply their active duty army.
Their reserves make up another 3-4 million.
(Not that their reserves have any decent equipment in comparison to their active duty, but with 3-4 million; human wave tactics come to mind.)
You know, I had an instructor once who was a North Korean refugee from the Korean War.
He was a young kid at the time, but after we took Pyongyang... his family decided to move south, away from the fighting.
While heading south, his family met some GI's heading north... and one of those GI's, seeing just how starving his family was, handed them some rations.
But... prior to the fall of Pyongyang, they had been informed by the North Korean authorities that any food that the US military gives out to refugees would be laced with cyanide.
Well, they believed it. They kept the rations as something to barter with, but they wouldn't eat it. Eventually, my former instructor got so hungry that he decided it better to die with a full stomach than an empty one... and he ate some of the rations.
Obviously, he didn't die... and when his family realized that, they to began to eat.
...
The point is that if North Korea had that level of control over it's citizenry right after the end of WWII... then they have FAR MORE control now, after 53 years of isolation, control, and reinforcement.
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