N Korea threatens to 'destroy world'

Guardian.co.uk ^

[Dallas]

Desperate efforts began yesterday to head off the growing Korean crisis as Pyongyang and Washington continued to talk up the tension.

The UN has confirmed that North Korea has carried out its threat to remove UN seals and dismantle monitoring cameras at a laboratory used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Senator Joseph Biden, the outgoing chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, warned that North Korea's plan to restart a programme for plutonium extraction could allow it to produce bombs "within months".

A spokesman for the Vienna - based International Atomic Energy Agency said: "There isn't any legitimate purpose for the facility other than separating plutonium from spent fuel."

Pyongyang has issued a series of threats, including one to "destroy the earth" if the US resorted to nuclear war against it. South Korea's president, Kim Dae-jung, and the president-elect, Roh Moo-hyun, sought to calm the mood by saying they wanted a peaceful resolution.

While Russia expressed concern at the North's weekend announcement, the deputy foreign minister warned the US not to aggravate the crisis.

But the US state department yesterday rejected Pyongyang's insistence that the crisis can be solved if the US signs a treaty of non-aggression. "We will not bargain or offer inducements for North Korea to live up to the treaties and agreements it has signed," a spokesman said.

US intelligence sources were quoted by the BBC as saying they believe "North Korea may already have a small number of nuclear bombs and the material to make a few more".

Mr Biden said the crisis was "a greater danger immediately to US interests ... than Saddam Hussein."

Yesterday, the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, dismissed such concerns. "We are capable of fighting two major regional conflicts," he said.

"We're capable of winning decisively in one and swiftly defeating in the case of the other, and let there be no doubt about it."

He said Washington chose to pursue a diplomatic strategy against North Korea for the moment, as that crisis was still at a relatively early stage.

The North Korean media, which is never short of a fiery turn of phrase, has given Bush administration hardliners all the material they may want.

The communist party's newspaper Workers' Daily declared that "the army and people of the DPRK are fully ready to mercilessly strike the bulwark of US imperialist aggressors" - implying that they could hit targets in the US.

"There can be no earth without Korea," it said. "The army and people of the DPRK will destroy the earth if the enemies dare make a nuclear strike at it. This is their do-or-die spirit."

[joyful1]

As they said in Hill STreet Blues: Let's do it to them, before they do it to us.

[joyful1]

If you're in San Francisco, then God will probably destroy it before NK does. If he doesn't, then, of course, he'll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. Uh oh. What if he decides to use NK to execute his Judgment on SF? Hmmm. My Advice.... Pray and Fast and Repent. It worked for the Ninevites. It could work for SF. BTW Where is Jonah when you need him?

Don't forget Las Vegas.

[oceanperch]

What I do not get is why our leaders are so passive to Korea. Shouldn't all threats be treated equal?

BTW I read all the Hal Lindsey and like authors many many years ago too.

You are right it sticks in your mind.

It is hard to share old knowledge or maybe I should say frustrating.

Revelation was just that. So many people are not hip to what is coming.

[oceanperch]

I thought they already had the Panama Canal?

[oceanperch]

bump

[oceanperch]

Good One My thoughts exactly.

My son and I have just been shaking our heads and laughing lately at how ass backwards everything is.

[snippy_about_it]

bump

[Rocky]

That last picture looks like they are standing in puddles. Had they just wet themselves?

[marshmallow]

If there is one thing history has taught us, it's that atheistic communists can be kept inside their box by the threat of mass destruction. Unlike our Muslim brothers who long for eternity and seek ever new ways to kill themselves and others, communists are very much interested in the here and now.

This is just so much bluster from these cretins. Their population would defect en masse if given the chance. The "Dear Leader" is much too fond of his harem and his James Bond movies for them to launch a nuclear attack.

[j_tull]

...Missiles coming from a Trident Sub, off the NK coast say about 100 miles...

Sorry, a hundred miles is well inside the minimum range of either C-4 or D-5 SLBMs. Gotta back up a ways. Merry Christmas!

[muawiyah]

You are correct that NK is a threat, but you are wrong in believing that threat to be different than the one posed by Iraq.

The "Axis of Evil" includes Iraq and NK.

[Victor]

"...We shouldn’t aggravate it we should end it. Take out the reactor....."

Roger that. The Israelis sure had no problem doing exactly that to Iraq in the 1980's.

Our Government should have the balls the Israelis have. Just go in and destroy the thing, tough sh$$t, what are they gonna do about it....?

[SauronOfMordor]

The dogbyte12 solution is as follows. Knock the tar out of North Korea, make them capitulate, then tell the South Koreans to deal with it, remove our troops.

Same problem here as in 1950: the Chinese won't like the idea of a prosperous, free Korea right next door

[TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!]

Yep...combine your post with post 93 and 109 and it is a thread of it's own worthy of front and center discussion.

[Republic of Texas]

You are correct about communists, except that N. Korea's "Great Leader" is crazy. Other than that, your theory is sound.

[steveegg]

Not only is 100 nm too close for the Trident, but the flight time no matter the range is roughly identical (depressed trajectories are apparently not an option). Reinstall those nuke warheads on the Tomahawks and 100 nm wouldn't be too close (if my math is right, that leaves about 12 minutes from launch to toast).

[steveegg]

How about re-mating the nuke warheads with the Tomahawks (real smooth move to take the original TLAM-N out of service, Pappy Bush) and parking a couple of VLS subs just off the coast?

[j_tull]

How about re-mating the nuke warheads with the Tomahawks (real smooth move to take the original TLAM-N out of service, Pappy Bush) and parking a couple of VLS subs just off the coast?

That works for me!

[RnMomof7]

I am not down playing the POTENTIAL threat..but it was not Saddam that headed up the attack..he was no more friendly to them than the Saudi government and we lick their shoes..

[Steel Wolf]

All your Earth are belong to us!

Seriously, folks, what in the wide wide world of sports is going on here? How do these guys get off threating to blow up the world? Blow up the world? It feels crazy for me to type it, and I'm not even the leader of a nuclear armed nation. Were any other nation so armed to do so, you'd expect a certain set of canned responses from the world at large. Especially when someone has been so good as to include them all in their lunatic bellicosity. So where is the response?

Where is the outrcry from the U.N.?

Where is the warm 'I feel your pain' embrace of the Democrats?

Where are the throngs of congressional / entertainment truth(?) seekers?

Where is the total capitulation of the French?

The North Koreans have been crying wolf so long, that no one is listening. I wonder how long Armed, Hungry and Crazy can keep screaming 'Stop me before I kill again' while being ignored. It would be funny in a lunatic raving sort of way, except for the ever increasing reach of their missiles.