Text 15423, 122 rader
Skriven 2007-06-13 20:18:05 av Vorlonagent (1836.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: unions
==================

"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:ge60739840jroeodp1bg17hq43ct5iebo8@4ax.com...

> Didn't mean to imply that they wanted to anger the Chinese. Quite the
> opposite -- they knew it would, royally. Which means that they had to
> have a damn good reason to do it. The Beloved Leader strikes me as
> someone who has a knack for sensing just how far he can push. He knows
> that China can take him out if it wants. Seems to me that he had to
> have a really good reason to anger his ally.

If Beloved Leader has half a brain he realizes that he's in the driver's 
seat with China.

Sure China can collapse the NK government at will, but it won't because 
China doesn't want the refugee probelm.  That's why they're propping up the 
government in the first place.  As long as Beloved Leader isn't so obnoxious 
that China decides that the refugee problem is preferable to him, he can do 
as he likes and Chine will *shield* him from the consequences of his 
actions.

"How far to push"?  NK has slightly less than a blank check as far as the 
chinese are concerned.  NK's very wrechedness is one of its greatest threats 
it has when dealing with its neighbors.


>>> Their extortion was never the real issue: we, and other countries,
>>> gave in to it long ago.
>>
>>Under Bill Clinton, yes I remember.
>
> And again under George W. Bush with the very same terms Clinton got,
> except that now they have a bomb.

Last I heard, Bush isn't paying the NKs their extortion money.  Clinton 
chose to be extorted..

And NK does NOT have the bomb.  They have a single test that is somewhere 
between a failure and a partial success.


> The North Koreans made it clear early on when we asked them what they
> wanted that it wasn't about a payoff,. but about the security of the
> Beloved Leader.

You seem awfully willing to accept uncritically whatever is said by a US 
enemy.


>>There are ample checks on US aggression against NK.  First, it was already
>>focused on iraq and the US didn't have the resources to strike at NK or 
>>the
>>ability to manage the outcome to control the collateral damage to SK
>>(possible shelling of Seoul) and NK refugees streaming into China.  NK had
>>and has a reasonably secure position even without a nuke.
>
> We had plenty of resources. The army was still fresh. No one, the
> North Koreans included, thought the Administration would manage to get
> the world's strongest military bogged down in Iraq. The Pentagon was
> saying that we had the resources to fight a war in North Korea, if
> need be. Seoul was, as you say, hostage, but with Bush rattling his
> sabers and the US ignoring the UN and breaking with its allies Kim had
> no idea what we'd do.

Yes he did.  The US was focused on iraq.  We were days away from the 
invasion.  Did we have time to deal with NK in detail?  No.  Atthe worst, we 
could run air strikes and that's about all, but Seoul (SK's capitol in 2003) 
could easily end up paying the price for any aggressive action against NK, 
which mean most military options, including an invasion, are checkmated. 
This is obvious to anyone who looks at the situation.

You may wish to paint Bush as this unpredictable loose cannon, but such was 
not and is not the case.  NK had a good idea of what US options were and 
they weren't much.  About the only affrimative action Bush *could* take 
against the NKs was to tell them to stuff it and quit paying them their 
protection money, which is what he did.


>>They don't need to be in this special case.  I'm telling you, copy machine
>>toner.
>>
>>Besides, I would be very surprised if we didn't have some unconventional
>>bunker-busters by this time.  I think about a half-ton of depeleted 
>>uranium
>>delivered by ICBM would be very effective, if very rattling for everybody 
>>in
>>the region with radar.
>
> I can't speak to secrets. I do know that even conventional nuclear
> weapons aren't very effective against deeply buried targets. Would the
> Administration be making all this fuss about the development of
> nuclear bunker busters, which could only be employed as a weapon of
> last resort, if there were conventional alternatives?

I can't speak to secrets either, but I know some basic physics.  One word: 
"Thor".

I think the US has been looking at better ways to penetrate a bunker or cave 
since 2002 and Tora Bora.  We'd be fools not to.  I think we'd have some 
first generation results from that by now.

I will agree that Bush should not have floated the notion of a nuclear 
bunker buster.  Bad idea.  There's an unofficial moratorium on using nuclear 
weapons in anger and I'd like to keep the threshold for breaking it to be 
very high.  IIRC, Bush abandoned that notion years ago so the fuss wasn't 
"all this".


-- 
John Trauger,
Vorlonagent

"Methane martini.
Shaken, not stirred."

"Spirituality without science has no mind.

Science without spirituality has no heart."

-Methuselah Jones
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