[irish_lad]

Folks, we're not discussing some tiny incursion,we are discussing the possibility of NK using nuclear weapons to destroy possibly South Korea, or Japan, or some city in the western US.

What do you think the economic and human ramifications would be if such an event happended? The Dow? Cut it by at least 75%. The world insurance industry? Goodbye. The deaths of possibly 500,000 people? This is not stuff where arm chair quarterbacks sit on their ass and flippantly say "nuke them."

NK is an important lesson for the US that we should attack Iraq so nuclear blackmail cannot happen in the future. But, we need to calmly fix this problem before Kim and his loony friends make war. Remember, if a nuclear war happens, Kim and henchmen will be dead. They may be the lucky ones.

[AntiGuv]

The ramifications would be devastating, both for the people of that region and for the global economy. I just couldn't resist a rare moment of chest-beating levity. The peer pressure got to me.. ;)

[RightOnline]

Remember that nuclear power is only as strong a threat as one's ability to project it. They have a couple of missiles, do they? What are the odds that the missiles will actually launch? We now know, for example, that many of the former Soviet Union's nukes were wholly incapable of being launched (slipshod maintenance, substandard facilities, lack of parts, etc.). If we take out their launch facilities in a lightning air strike, for example, then all of their pissant saber rattling with their little nukes is for naught.

Then.......we use air power to just take our time mopping up that huge infantry of theirs. Human wave attacks would be nothing more than suicide in this day and age........and that's all they'd have left.

[Beck_isright]

I hate to break this to you, but if they launch an attack on oh, say, San Francisco, do you honestly think we won't lay waster to their entire nation? If not, we might as well surrender to France tommorrow.

[JSteff]

The odds are it would NOT be nuclear but rather a ground attack from the NOrth. That will be problematic to say the least. I do not think the SK's will be able to hole them and expect that the NK's have tunnelled deep into the South.

I think this is also a concern of leaders. WE could not get enough troops there in time to prevent an over run of the country. It does not look good, the options are just not there. We think Saddam is a wild man, Kim is far beyond Saddam.