Free Republic

Japan mulls preemptive stike on N Korea missile bases Associated Press Tokyo, July 10, 2006 Japan is considering whether a preemptive strike on North Korean missile bases would be an acceptable form of self-defence under the pacifist Japanese constitution, the government spokesman said on Monday. "If we accept that there is no other option to prevent an attack ... there is the view that attacking the launch base of the guided missiles is within the constitutional right of self-defence. We need to deepen discussion," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said. Abe added that the ruling party might take up the...

Lyudmila Lomakina watched each day with increasing horror. From her bookshop in southeast Denver, she dutifully followed the news as the hostage crisis in Beslan unfolded on Russian satellite television. When it was over, she saw bloodied children running for their lives. The day I met her, Lyudmila would be exposed to even more disturbing images, as the Russian government released video of the terrorists laying out explosives around helpless children. Many of those kids, we now know, would soon be dead. If Lyudmila, a Denver resident for 10 years, had any uncertainty about the kind of barbarism the free...