[AmericanInTokyo]

an ICBM strike isnt even the half of it (as worrisome as that is). these jerks long ago could have smuggled into Tokyo or Osaka any WMD ie VX, sarin, anthrax, smallpox or dirty bomb form, and through their highly developed network of espionage and sabotage officers from North Korea in place in Japanese society, they can easily stage an internal trojan horse attack with devastating consequences, even if we and Japan killed those Taepodongs in their coastal cribs. the agents are just waiting to be activated by the security services of the Korean Workers Party, on Kim's direct orders (they have a good track record in Burma and over the Andaman Sea).

[katana]

You're right and that scenario is also the scariest for the U.S., that is WMD's at and through seaports of entry. Another factor is that knowing what the average Japanese thinks of the Korean community to start with, I wouldn't want to be in their (the Koreans') shoes if and when something happens.

It's a multi-faceted threat and the defenses will have to be equally diverse. That's why the attitude of the democrats here is so infuriating. They act as if every step the administration takes is the only one taken, while in fact the effort is on a broad front and will take a long time to develop fully.

Of course, if they hadn't held up funding for the effort for the year and a half they controlled the Senate after 9/11, maybe we'd have made a bit more progress by now.

[jriemer]

AIT,

I don't know if this has been mentioned to date...

What's the odds that the Aum Shinrikyo cult was just a band of useful idiots for the North Koreans et. al. to test out the feasibility of introducing chemical and biological agents into Tokyo. They definately had the technology and expertise available to produce the agents within Japan. Plus, there's a lot of interested parties who would be curious as to how effective the disperal of a very small amount of these agents would be in various environments within very dense metropolitian areas. Fortunately, they were stopped after the subway "test".

Just a thought. jriemer