It's All About North Korea: Beyond the Iraqi sideshow.

National Review Online ^ | March 5, 2003 | Stanley Kurtz

[John H K]

I've been getting a feeling that we might attack NK before or while we attack Iraq.

Ummmmmmmmmmmm....No. Forget it.

[John H K]

For crying out loud, they're talking about his deliverable nuclear warheads, not his artillery.

Nope, you're incorrect; all of the articles I'm referring with insane civilian casualty totals to are referring to civilian casualties caused by conventional artillery firing explosive shells and chemicals.

The main problem with most is that they take the figure for the TOTAL amount of artillery North Korea has, and the number of shells they can fire in an hour, and then assume that EVERY single artillery piece can hit Seoul; this is incorrect.

[Always A Marine]

The casualty figures are plausible, its just the methods are not.

You make several excellent points here. All that I would add to your argument is the mayhem which would be caused by PDRK infiltrators in the early hours of an attack. North Korea places an inordinate emphasis on its very large special forces, and has demonstrated the absolute ease with which its agents can infiltrate across (beneath) the DMZ. Seoul would be a very miserable place in the event of war.

[L,TOWM]

Now this is a fascinating hypothesis. October was when the first public news of the NK nuke program was released; we went to the UN to discuss Iraq in November...

Hmmmmm, do you think its possible that we could pull off such a good maskirovka? I mean, this would be military academy textbook material for an example of concealment to achieve strategic/operational surprise for the next 500 years.

[Congressman Billybob]

Of course we are going after North Korea as soon as we have polished off Iraq. But success in Iraq will contribute mightily to success in dealing with North Korea. Once the truth of the horrors of Hussein's regime have been laid bare for all to see, once the impotency of the UN has also been laid bare, the correct US and international steps to deal with NK will also become clear.

Congressman Billybob

Latest column, not yet up on UPI, and FR, "Truth, the First Casualty?"

Latest book(let), "to Restore Trust in America."

[Always A Marine]

It certainly helps to keep Kim guessing, doesn't it...?

[janee]

feeling we might attack NK before....

Exactly! We keep hearing an element of surprise is part of the scheme - no surprise in Iraq!!

[gomaaa]

"I know I've mentioned this before but I have to harp on this as every single article about Korea now has some insanely high figure for South Korean civilian casualties...

But I think they're WILDLY inflated. The amount of DPRK artillery that can actually hit Seoul from behind the DMZ is a lot less than people think.

And there's no freaking way a million people are going to be killed in Seoul by shelling in a few days, as most articles seem to imply.

Even mass firebombing of people in flammable houses by the US in WWII couldn't kill more than 100,000 at a time. "

Casualty estimates, are just that. Estimates. They don't know EXACTLY how many people are going to die. They just want to get within an order of magnitude or so. If they say 1 million, but it ends up being 952,347, big deal.

They may be overestimating the number of deaths significantly more than my example, but I still find it hard to see how this would be any less of a tragedy?

Oh, and the bombing of Dresden killed well over 250,000.