Posted on 08/13/2003 8:32:22 PM PDT by Pokey78
First of two articles
NEW DELHI -- Tae Min Hun, the dour captain of the North Korean freighter Kuwolsan, glared icily from the bridge as tempers around him soared in the midday heat. On June 30, 1999, as customs agents in India's northwestern port city of Kandla waited impatiently to board the vessel, Tae received urgent instructions from Pyongyang: At all cost, let no one open the cargo boxes.
The Indians tried to look anyway, and a melee erupted. Tae and his crew rained blows on inspectors and barricaded the doors with their bodies, according to witness accounts and video footage of the encounter. A few agents who managed to slip into the cargo bay were horrified to find North Koreans sealing the hatches, trapping them inside.
When the ship's doors were finally reopened at gunpoint, the reason for the extreme secrecy became clear. Hidden inside wooden crates marked "water refinement equipment" was an assembly line for ballistic missiles: tips of nose cones, sheet metal for rocket frames, machine tools, guidance systems and, in smaller crates, ream upon ream of engineers' drawings labeled "Scud B" and "Scud C." The intended recipient of the cargo, according to U.S. intelligence officials, was Libya.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The question is will it last 6 weeks or 10 minutes?
So our good friend Mohammar is up to his old tricks, just as he is making arrangements to pay for PanAm 103. Does this clown think he is going to get any better treatment from Dubya than he did from Reagan? Given the range of the scud B and C, he's either thinking about doing something foolish like attacking Israel, or something equally stupid like re-selling them to the wrong people. You'd think that the spanking he got when we crossed his imaginary dotted-line of death in the 80's would have stayed with him for the rest of his life.
In addition to the two recent cases of North Korean submarine crews committing mass suicide in lieu of capture, this illustrates the tenaciousness of the North Koreans. Unlike the Iraqis, who largely got out of the way of our drive on Baghdad, all indications are that if it comes to war, the North Koreans will be fighting to win. A hopeless situation doesn't seem to deter them at all.
Some key might yet lie though, in whether the NK military could be encouraged to depose their man-child "leader", Kim Jung Il. I don't think their generals are looking forward to 4,000 air sorties per day.
And that's just air!
Note the referenced incident was in 1999.
We've had "regime change" in the US since then, and Crazy Mo's son has stated the "Libyan people desire a peaceful, harmonious and prosperous relationship with the people of the US" immediately after it became known that Uday and Qusay were ead-day.
I'm halfway inclined to take him at his word.
(snip)
Officials believe that 26 North Koreans were aboard the submarine. Eleven were discovered shot to death on Wednesday, apparently by AK-47 assault rifles.
South Korean intelligence originally thought the eleven had died in a suicide pact, but now believe they were murdered by their fellow commandos. The AK-47 rifles, standard equipment in North Korea, were found on the scene.
Israel? With all of france in range???
After their surrender he'd still have all but one missile left...
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