Posted on 02/06/2003 5:32:29 AM PST by kattracks
North Korea has warned it would launch a pre-emptive attack on United States forces if Washington sends more troops to the Korean peninsula, the BBC said.
The threat to strike first against US troops in the region came from North Korea's foreign ministry deputy director, Ri Pyong-Gap, in response to US moves to reinforce its military presence around the Korean peninsula.
US officials have said the Pentagon ordered B-52 and B-1 bombers to prepare for deployment in the western Pacific to back up US forces in South Korea.
They say the reinforcements would help signal that a possible war with Iraq was not distracting the United States from a nuclear stand-off with North Korea.
North Korea's 1.2-million-strong armed forces have been on alert since the crisis escalated in December when the Stalinist country expelled monitors from the United Nations' atomic agency.
Speaking to a visiting BBC correspondent in Pyongyang, Ri said his government was becoming increasingly alarmed at signs that Washington planned to bolster its military firepower in South Korea.
North Korea will regard such actions as an invasion or attack against it, he said, adding that Pyongyang would not just sit and wait and could decide to strike first if necessary.
Tension over North Korea's nuclear ambitions mounted Thursday after Pyongyang's announcement that a nuclear plant capable of making plutonium for nuclear weapons had begun producing electricity.
The announcement came as Washington stepped up war preparations against Iraq, with US Secretary of State Colin Powell unveiling a dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction at the UN.
The United States branded North Korea's announcement "blackmail" after Pyongyang justified the move to restart its reactor as vital for the energy-starved nation.
The BBC said tensions on the streets of Pyongyang are tangible.
Air raid drills and blackouts are becoming twice-daily rituals and huge posters calling for courage in the fight ahead cover billboards and walls.
In Washington, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsefeld, referring to a "dangerous" situation," said North Korea would be making a mistake if it felt it could exploit US preoccupation with Iraq.
"To the extent the world thinks the United States is focused on problems in Iraq, it's conceivable someone could make a mistake and believe that's an opportunity for them to take an action which they otherwise would have avoided," he told members of the US Congress.
The Pentagon has ordered two dozen long-range bombers -- an equal number of B-1s and B-52s -- to prepare to deploy to Guam as a check against North Korea while it masses forces in the Gulf for a possible war against Iraq, US officials have said.
Rumsfeld said North Korea could add to the one or two nuclear weapons it is currently assessed to have by making nuclear material for six to eight more in a relatively short period of time.
"Our forces are arranged around the world -- not in a threatening way but in a way that demonstrates that we do in fact have the capability to act in more than one theater at one time," he said.
US officials reported that spy satellites over North Korea had detected what appeared to be trucks suspected of moving some of 8,000 spent fuel rods out of storage at the Yongbyon nuclear complex.
Bush aides have said they are willing to talk to North Korea -- but only about how it can end its twin nuclear programs, which sparked the crisis.
The United States has been seeking to bring the issue before the UN, which could impose sanctions, an act Pyongyang says it would view as a declaration of war.
South Korea opposes the imposition of any sanctions against North Korea and has stressed the need for time to allow diplomacy to work.
The DPRK played the pysops game and intimidation real well with naive and green Clinton staffers and diplomats in their 30s and 40s, inexperienced liberals/pansies by heart with little military strategy, nor SunTzu guts and brains. NK, however, cannnot easily pull that crap on Rumsfield, Cheney, Rice and their crews. And they know it.
Thank goodness the adults are back in charge.
But, sad to say, eight years of Clinton appeasement and naivety, may well bring deaths to hundreds of thousands by terrible means. On this National Prayer Breakfast Day, we might start praying on this.
"Clinton Deal Gave N. Korea 100-Nuke-Per-Year Capacity"
http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2002/10/19/114657
Strictly out of curiousity... how come they consider it a Declaration of War when we act and move troops in response to their actions- yet they don't think we will take it as a Declaration of War when they say inflammatory things and act aggressively? Is it a massive case of one-way mirror syndrome?
Is it that they are genetically/nationally blind and can't help but think this way, or is it that they are just acting offended in a purely calculating way?
=========================
Playing Poker With Korea
Jack Wheeler
Freedom Research Foundation
Monday, Dec. 30, 2002
Poker Beats Chess
One of the meta-reasons America won the Cold War is that Russians play chess, while Americans play poker.
Chess demands great skill and intelligence, particularly at developing complex long-range strategies and anticipating your opponent's moves. But it bears little resemblance to life in the real world. It is completely static and open. Nothing is hidden.
Poker is very different. You have to guess what your opponent has and the extent to which he is bluffing. In business, in politics, in life in general, the folks who know how to play poker will almost always fare better than those who know how to play chess.
Ronald Reagan never played chess with Mikhail Gorbachev. He played political poker. At the 1986 Reykjavik summit, Reagan bluntly told Gorbachev he was going to build and deploy a space-based missile defense (SDI). Then came the clincher.
"Mikhail," he said, looking the Soviet leader in the eye, "we both know that America can afford to do this, and the Soviet Union cannot. There is no way you can compete with us in military spending. So you are going to lose."
Gorbachev did not know if the U.S. could actually create a workable missile defense in space. But he did know it could afford to do so, while he could not. So he didn't call for Reagan's cards. He, and thus the Soviet Union, folded their own. In the real world, good poker beats good chess every time.
One of the great geopolitical puzzles of our day is why America has been outplayed at poker by a collection of primitive Stalinists in North Korea. The guys in Pyongyang are the best experts in the world at military bluffing and nuclear blackmail. They easily took Clinton to the cleaners.
Now they have decided to raise the ante against his successor. This may prove to be a fatal miscalculation. No one plays better poker than a Texan, especially one so smart and ruthless as GW.
A good poker player always looks for "tells" in his opponents, unintended clues and tip-offs in their demeanor. GW has undoubtedly noticed that Pyongyang has created a huge nuclear crisis at the precise time when it should have done the opposite: just when South Korea is experiencing such a spasm of anti-American resentment that it elected a new president pledged to appease North Korea.
Such a blatant "tell" informs GW that Pyongyang is holding a weak hand and is playing it badly out of hand-shaking desperation. Given such a "tell," a good poker player knows it's time to go for the jugular. In examining his options, GW may decide the best way to go for Pyongyang's jugular is with a spear.
Spearing Yongbyon
North Korea's claim that its Yongbyon five-megawatt nuclear reactor's purpose is to produce electricity is laughable. Five megawatts can light up little more than a good-size trailer park. The only possible purpose for such a graphite-type reactor is to convert uranium into weapons-grade Plutonium 239.
Reactivating the Yongbyon reactor can only mean North Korea intends to produce nuclear bombs. And this leaves GW with only one choice: The reactor must be physically destroyed.
Blowing it up like the Israelis blew up Saddam Hussein's Osirak reactor in 1981 (with bombs dropped by F-16s) is obviously not the best way – far too public, releasing a media firestorm. Far better to destroy it quietly, safely, stealthily and mysteriously.
With a spear. A steel rod 40 feet long and 4 inches in diameter, fin-stabilized, with a needle-sharp tungsten-carbide tip, equipped with a small JDAM guidance package including a GPS. It is non-explosive; there is no warhead.
You've heard of smart bombs. This is a smart spear.
You take a half-dozen of these Smart Spears up in a high-altitude bomber, like a B2 or B52, and drop them over Yongbyon at 50,000 or 60,000 feet. The Smart Spears have such a big sectional density that it will be like a vacuum drop – with no wind resistance, they will be going faster than the speed of sound when they hit their target.
Going so fast and with almost no radar signature, the GPS-guided Smart Spears will punch through the Yongbyon reactor and keep right on going, burying themselves in the earth several hundred feet deep. The North Koreans won't know what happened, and all there will be is some holes in the ground – plus a melted-down reactor.
The time to do this is just after the fuel rods have been inserted into the reactivated reactor and have started to burn. It will take up to three months for the uranium in the rods to be converted to plutonium-239. The fuel rods lie inside water-cooled pipes placed in graphite blocks. If holes are punched through the reactor core, rupturing the pipes, the uranium fuel rods – no longer being cooled with the water drained out – will catch on fire and the entire reactor will melt down.
While much of the radioactive contents and fission fragments will drain down the holes in the reactor floor made by the Smart Spears, some radiation will be released into the atmosphere through the holes punched in the roof. The longer the rods have been burning in the reactor, the more radiation will be released. The earlier the Smart Spears are dropped, the less radiation release.
It would also be psychologically more effective if Yonbyon is taken out within days of its going critical.
There would be no dramatic World War II-type bombing raid by carrier-launched fighter jets. There would be no large radiation leaks. There would be no announcement by the U.S. government before or after, admitting it had done anything. The North Koreans would be unable to produce any evidence of U.S. culpability (unless they want to dig down several hundred feet underneath the Yongbyon complex, which would take them a while anyway). It would just look like there was an unfortunate "accident," about which GW would be silent.
Our Turn to Up the Ante
Now it would be GW's turn to up the ante. He could inform Pyongyang that unless it begins a full disarmament process, he is prepared to initiate the following:
Instruct U.S. Trade Representative Bob Zoellick and Secretary of State Colin Powell to inform every country that does business with North Korea – including Russia, France, Japan and especially China – that they must choose between doing business with it or America.
For any country continuing to trade with North Korea – and again, especially China, which has recently sold 20 tons of tributyl phosphate (TBP, a chemical used for extracting plutonium from uranium fuel rods) to North Korea – every port in America will be closed to the importation of every product from that country. (It is worth noting that such a total trade embargo would soon cause the collapse of China's economy.)
Instruct the Pentagon to have one B2 bomber carrying 16 2,000-pound smart bombs with conventional high-explosive warheads blow up the Yongbyon Cooling Pond. This contains some 8,000 spent fuel rods, created before Yongbyon was mothballed in 1994, from which enough plutonium-239 can now be extracted for several nuclear bombs using the Chinese TBP. The destruction of the cooling pond would cause a radiation release in the atmosphere of less than one-tenth of 1 percent of Chernobyl's.
Further instruct the Pentagon to be prepared to incapacitate the entire firing line of rocket launchers and artillery cannons, of which there are several thousand, and annihilate the entire force of close to a million North Korean soldiers clustered along the DMZ (demilitarized zone) border with enhanced radiation weapons, either produced by us or borrowed from the Israelis, who already have hundreds.
ERWs – enhanced radiation weapons, or "neutron bombs" – are extremely localized. They produce minimal heat and blast, but emit a form of nuclear radiation that is intensely powerful over a very short range that is also very short-lived. The ERW's massive wave of neutron and gamma radiation will penetrate armor, hardened bunkers and several feet of earth within a radius of a thousand yards. Within this radius, every living thing will be quickly killed.
The danger rapidly decreases beyond a thousand yards, dropping to virtually zero after 2,000 yards. The radiation dissipates within 24 to 48 hours. One single B2 with 16 JDAM-guided ERWs will sterilize 24 kilometers of the North Korean front line, and less than a dozen will wipe out the entire line of North Korean forces and batteries along the DMZ – with no collateral damage to South Korean population centers such as nearby Seoul threatened by these forces and batteries just a few miles away.
Kim Jong-il and his gang should know full well that George Bush can't be bluffed, bullied and blackmailed like Bill Clinton. Once GW raises the ante to this level, they will realize they are in a poker game they are going to lose.
Saving Korean Face
Yet it is very unwise to give a dangerous and deranged enemy no hope of escape. Once Yongbyon melts down in a mysterious accident and GW conveys to Kim Jong-il in a fully confidential manner with no media leaks what he is next prepared to order, he can then offer Pyongyang a way to save face.
Cloaked in diplomatic euphemisms, GW could say to Kim:
"Look, my opinion is that you are human garbage and that the people of North Korea would be infinitely better off if you were dead. However, my job is not to get rid of you. My job is to protect my country and the lives of the 37,000 American soldiers in South Korea. Thus my job, as far as you are concerned, is to prevent you and your government from (1) being a threat to South Korea, and (2) selling weapons and technology to countries and groups that could be or are a threat to us.
"So here's the deal. You will dismantle your entire offensive military capacities – nuclear, biochemical, conventional. You keep only what you need – and we'll be the judge of that – for defense. You will submit to a rigorous WMD inspection program. You will sign a peace treaty with South Korea. You will engage in no military transfers or sales with any foreign company or country. In short, you will stop being a threat to us or anyone else. In exchange, you get to stay in power.
"We both know that's all you really care about – staying in power. You would rather have millions of your fellow countrymen starve to death than relinquish your power. Frankly, if they would rather starve than rebel against you, that's their business (just like it's the business of the people of, say, Zimbabwe regarding Robert Mugabe).
"I am making this offer to you because I think you are less of a danger than Saddam Hussein. There is no doubt whatever that if Saddam remains in power, he will build and disseminate weapons of mass destruction throughout the world. We cannot simply disarm him; we have to remove him. I think simply disarming you will be sufficient. But if it is not, believe me, Kim, I will take you out in a New York second.
"Has it ever occurred to you how impossibly vulnerable you have made yourself, placing the majority of your pathologically large army in one narrow line along the DMZ? Do you think I care any more about annihilating your million soldiers along the DMZ than Truman did about the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? I will fry every last one of them if that's what it takes to eliminate your threat to the world. So – do we have a deal?"
That said, there remains another Korea to play poker with. With the folks in the south, the ante is straightforward. GW simply explains to incoming president Roh Moo-hyun that he no longer wants 37,000 American soldiers to be held as Korean hostages. So Mr. Roh is to cooperate with his program of disarming the North, and then all those American soldiers who annoy him and so many other South Koreans can come back home.
For far too long, Koreans in both Seoul and Pyongyang have been playing with America as if they held the high cards. They do not. The aces are in our hands. It is time for GW to use them and play to win.
Jack Wheeler is President of the Freedom Research Foundation.
©Copyright 2002 Dr. Jack Wheeler and the Freedom Research Foundation.
- NK isn't tipped off by the nuclear "disaster" and attacks the South in desperation.
- All the fuel rods are at the plant and destroyed rather than exchanged with terrorist.
- China whimpers down and complies like a beaten puppy, rather than half way superficially responds while appealing to the world (who are appalled by Bush's renegade tactics)
- That our stock market doesn't crash with the threat of war with China, and Democrats put Bush in the minority domestically.
- That the world, always sympathetic to underdogs, doesn’t end all cooperation with us in the war on terrorism, especially after we kill millions with nuclear weapons along the DMZ.
- That all the nuclear weapons NK now says they don't have are found and destroyed.
- That in 10 years, neutron bombs don't become as popular among nations as rhymes are with Jessie Jackson.
Perhaps a first strike on the nuclear weapons and processing facilities is warranted, but not a nuclear first strike on the DMZ. Too expedient, not looking at the long term consequences.
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