[John Jorsett]

I'd actually like to see him go into exile, not to avoid a war but because it would piss off the lefties so much.

Yep. I've been saying for a while that I thought all the saber-rattling was as much to help cause a peaceful (or near-peaceful) turnover of government as it was to ready ourselves for a war. I will not be at all surprised to see either a coup or a voluntary exile. And boy will that put the anti-war folk's knickers in a knot. But never fear, Korea will give them something new to carry on about.

[MonroeDNA]

North Korea is a pimple on our butt. Not life threatening, but irritating nontheless.

It will be lanced when the time is right.

[discostu]

And we have to remember that Saddam is no dumby. We shouldn't confuse insanity with stupidity. Nothing is going to stop a march to Bagdhad (however you spell it) this time. He knows that if it comes to war the best he can hope for is a clean round in the head, worst case scenario he gets torn to pieces by the masses, or winds up rotting in some prison like Noriega (how's that for a ignominious end). The single most important part of any military plan is the exit strategy, you've got to know how you're getting out of this if things go bad (or if things go well, permanent occupation sucks). The only exit Saddam has that's any good is to sneak out BEFORE the Stealth Bombers leave the ground.

Korea is a whole different mess. In the end I think we can negotiate out of that one. Remember they've been making a lot of reunification noise lately. The country is starving and nobody can blame sanctions. There's a pic floating around here of the globes electric lights that really shows how bad off North Korea is, there's all these lights in South Korea, and a bunch of lights in China, and North Korea is darker than the Outback. But they have Oriental pride, they won't come around asking for a handout begging to be brought into the 20th century a couple years late. They've got to make it look like (at least to some people) we were FORCED to help them out. Which is fine by me, as long as the end result is one less communist nation and one less international hot spot I really don't care what they tell their people about why it all happened.