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I really don't understand this situation in N Korea as it relates to threats against the US. One well placed bomb, or a couple of well placed bullets could end this problem in a minute.

The US has already crossed the line so far as going after another head of state is concerned, so I don't really see that there is a problem. Just kill the bastards, and be done with it.

Any problems caused by assasinating the leadership would be small change compared to allowing this lunatic to use a nuke. If we are going to be the lone superpower, we had better start acting like it.

Part of the problem is that, even barring a deliverable nuke (which they may or may not have), their military has massive amount of artillary dug-in all around the DMV. At a moment's notice, they could rain holy hell down on Seoul, killing a million or so people.

That would create some image problems for us at the UN.

One well-placed bomb, a couple of bullets....

Great idea, but we have tried decapitation by bomb attack three times in my memory -- Libya, Aghanistan and now Iraq -- and it hasn't worked very well.

Kadaffy is still alive and kicking, Bin Laden is releasing tapes and now Saddam is too. OK, you can say the tapes are fakes, but how can you prove it? It takes a body with multiple holes in it these days to prove a man is dead.

That brings us to the couple of bullets.

How you going to get a hitman close enough? In North Korea? If we have a single illegal on the ground there I would be utterly amazed. Spies go in, and they don't come out -- ever.

A coup-de-etat is possible, I guess but Kim Jong Il is a very paranoid and experienced survivor. If he wasn't he would be dead already.

There is no simple solution to these problems. If there was it would have been found by now. The end of the regime may be coming soon -- but it is not going to be pretty when it does.

DPRK "Regime Change" through assassination is in fact a scenario that has been planned in intricate detail already, along with many many other scenarios and combinations of scenarios. At this point, it appears the North Koreans are going to "cross over the red line" in plutonium rod reprocessing, which is a very unfortunate thing indeed.

One way to destabilize would be to hit a soft target with limited civilian damage, such as the very elaborate Kim Il Sung mausoleum in P'yang, where Papa's body is on ice. Combined with a bombing or sabotage strike on that facility, backed immediately with a rumor operation within the country that a shadowy anti-Kim Jong il organization did it and more can be expected, and then a ramp up the said vitriol with Korean language broadcasts about the attack in Korean to the Korean people through all kinds of media, might be enough to start the downfall. China and or Russia would also have to declare an open refugee zone on the North's border and that fact would have to trickle down to North Korea's population as a magnet to deflate the country from it's human resources and create chaos. With nukes already in place, though, we would have to work with countries to stabilize and recover the assets very quickly. This is as sensitive an operation at this time as separating twins joined at the head, IMHO. Very risky, but also very risky at this point not to do anything.