Gabriel, Not just duckspeak, but doubleplusgood duckspeak. As unnerving it is to see further development of R-27 by the Jongettes (or navalized versions of the Nodong, for that matter), I can think of no quicker way to bankrupt an already tottering economy.

Boomer-type missile subs are possibly the only weapons system more expensive and complicated than the modern carrier. We have plenty of examples of recent failures (the 70 fatalities and near swamping of the Chinese Ming-class sub 361 on 5/2/03 and more famously, the destruction of the Kursk 8/12/00 with all 118 dead). All I can say is the Korean Big Boy is going to have find himself some very brave warriors to man this boat. There's every chance they're never coming back.

That said, we should NEVER take the threat lightly. A recent 30-day outing by a Ming-class sub went totally undetected by the US, with THE best detection systems on the planet. Pride goeth....

rdelephant - Keep your pants on, North Korea and Iran will be addressed in the 2nd term. That's what you're talking about, right?

"Its all Buhs falt, he shoulda neva called Irac, I-Ran and North Koran the Acids of Evel. He maid dem mad, now day wanna hurt us."

- signed Larry Liberal

Kerry gonna give these guys plutonium so they won't finish their nuke program?

I think we ought to give Kerry's plan of "give the Iranians nuclear fuel as a bribe not to build nukes" as far and wide as possible. I think it could cost him the election.

Gabriel, I'm coming to this late. Kerry really didn't say that, did he?

I always figured he was Michael Dukakis-stupid, I didn't realize he was Jimmy Carter-stupid.

How lovely. Sounds like a Willie Horton ad to me.

Kerry didn't say it, one of his foreign policy advisers said it for him, and I think Kerry ought to disavow and fire him quick:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5570503/site/newsweek/

One of the findings of the 9/11 Commission concerns Iran and its alleged support for Al Qaeda. U.S.-Iranian policy has been in the deep freeze for 25 years. How is that going to change with Kerry?

John Kerry regards an Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism armed with nuclear weapons as unacceptable. He has a multiple-part strategy that is much more realistic than the Bush administration's. One is to rejoin and work through the international legal framework on arms control. That will give greater force to the major powers if they have to deal with violators. Secondly, he has laid out, I think in the most comprehensive way in modern memory, a program to secure nuclear materials around the world—particularly in the former Soviet Union but also in the places where research reactors have existed that could be susceptible to proliferation. The point is to try to prevent Iran from ever getting this material surreptitiously. Thirdly, he has proposed that rather than letting the British, the French and the Germans do this themselves, that we together call the bluff of the Iranian government, which claims that its only need is energy. And we say to them: "Fine, we will provide you the fuel that you need if Russia fails to provide it." Participating in such a diplomatic initiative makes it more likely to succeed.

it sounds like a Rand Beers statement to me. he's basically the only foreign policy guy left after the recent flame outs on Kerry's team

Skip: It was "James P. Rubin, now a senior foreign policy adviser to the Kerry-Edwards campaign"

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5519253/site/newsweek/

"So what you’re saying, rdelephant, is that poor misunderstood Kim Jong Il was building nukes before just as a lark, but since the Iraq war he really means it because he’s afraid of having his regime changed?"

Actually, I was talking about the intercontinental missile that is the subject of this thread. Seems like a new development to me, unless you have a cite for pre-Axis of Evil ??

So, rdelephant, your're saying now that:

Kim Jong Il wanted nukes all along, but didn't want nuclear missiles until big bad Bush frightened him.

That is really one of the most inane things I have ever heard and you are incredibly stupid if you believe it. But I am convinced that you are duckspeaking, not communicating. Everything is Bush's fault and so you are relieved of the painful necessity of thinking.

North Korea has been researching nuclear weapons, including nuclear missiles, since the early 1990's despite Clinton's sending Jimmy Carter to bribe him not to:

http://www.jinsa.org/articles/articles.html/function/view/categoryid/104/documentid/180/history/3,2359,947,653,104,180

"(November 1995-January 1996) During the Defense Department's second annual conference on counter-proliferation, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Deutch stated that he expects North Korea to deploy the Nodong-1 ballistic missile in 1996. The Nodong 1 has a range estimated at 1,100 km. North Korea is also actively pursuing both chemical and biological weapons programs. The CIA believes that North Korea is working to equip the Nodong-1, Nodong-2, Taepo- Dong 1 and Taepo-Dong 2 missiles with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The Taepo-Dong missiles have ranges estimated to be in the thousands of kilometers. North Korea continues to invest heavily in research and development for improvement in all aspects of ballistic missile performance, including weapons delivery."

Check the links at the bottom--most dated pre-2000. I guess Kim Jong Il has a time machine.

From July 17, 1997, rdelephant:

http://www.jinsa.org/articles/articles.html/function/view/categoryid/169/documentid/493/history/3,2360,652,169,493

"North Korea is also developing two long-range missiles known as Taepodong-1 and Taepodong-2. The Taepodong-2 presents a huge security concern due to its ability to be fielded rapidly with little warning and its extensive range. The missile will be capable of hitting "major cities and military bases in Alaska and some Hawaiian islands," the Washington Times, reported.

In addition to these threatening characteristics, the Taepodong-2 could be operational by 2002. "

Kim Jong Il has been seeking this technology long before the war in Iraq, moron.

Thank you for thinking to blame America first, rdelephant, instead of bothering to look up anything about poor misunderstood Kim Jong Il.

Okay, fine, I knew he was developing medium-range missiles before January 2002, but had not heard he was developing anything that could reach the U.S.

I still think it was unhelpful to call North Korea and Iran part of the axis of evil. Say what you want about the Agreed Framework, it shut down a reactor that would have produced enough material to build several bombs per year for the last decade. Now that is by the wayside. While the North Koreans used laboratoy methods of building one or two bombs total in contravention of the spirit of that Agreement, it is also true that we were still dangling a nuclear sword over their heads contrary to our commitment in the Agreed Framework, never provided the light water reactors called for by that agreement, and if memory serves we also provided less fuel oil than the agreement called for, as well.

John Gorenfeld has a series of very illuminative posts on this issue. You'll never guess who supplied North Korea with those subs. Find out here:

http://www.gorenfeld.net/blog/2004/08/rev-moons-submarines-sold-to-kim-jong.html

What conservative journalist is brave enough to take on this story?

Hey red-eyed elephant,

You need to put down the bong, bro. The Agreed Framework didn't shut down or stop a damned thing. All it did was give NK more time to develop its nukes without having to worry about us.

Well, we see where rdelephant's sympathies lie.

Let's give Hitler Czechoslovakia too. It's his last territorial demand in Europe, and if he doesn't get it the war will be our fault.

So if only we'd waved magic wands and summoned up his light-water reactors instantly out of thin air, he would never have wanted nukes, is that about right, rdelephant?

Your comment is straight out of North Korea's talking points:

http://www.kimsoft.com/2003/kmc-0308.htm

Thank you again, rdelephant, for blaming America first, and not the man keeping millions in starvation and subjection; who also holds the city of Seoul hostage. Your moral equivalence games are sickening.

The Agreed Framework definitely shut down their reactor for a decade until the seals were removed in the last year or two. That reactor produced enough fissile material to make several bombs a year. The Agreed Framewowk didn't totally stop the nuclear program as intended, but it definitely slowed it way down, so that instead of 50 or 60 bombs, today we are facing a couple. You seem to be operating on the assumption that the alternative was to militarily stop them, which if you have studied the North Korean military capabilities is a very very costly policy option (for the South Koreans mostly). Even cowboy Bush has to swallow hard on that one. This is the very reason that the current negotiations are still operating on the same basic plane as the Agreed Framework... North Korea gives up its nuclear program and in exchange it gets security guarantees and economic assistance.

Our failures to follow through on the Agreed Framework was not just the light water reactors. It certainly wasn't about not being able to "instantly" provide the reactors. We had nearly a decade and never even broke ground on the damned things. We shorted them oil we had promised and we made public that we were continuing to target them with nuclear weapons. These may be North Korean talking points, but they are also facts. BOTH sides breached the Agreement, not just them.

What does North Korea's fuel oil go to, rdelephant? Kim Jong Il's regime of mass murder.

Signing that agreement, much less following through on it, is evil; as evil as agreeing to supply Hitler with Zyklon-B in exchange for peace.

This is why your moral equivalence sickens me, rdelephant. Kim Jong Il's regime is evil and wanted a bribe, enabling it to do lesser evil--in exchange for not threatening greater evil. This agreement pledged the United States to be complicit in the murder of North Koreans, so that North Korea might stop threatening to slaughter South Koreans.

And all you can say is "both sides broke the agreement"!

(It's not as though North Korea was going to keep it anyway; they refused to allow any means of verifying that they were abiding by it. That's not the sign of an honest and sincere partner.)

I don't agree that Kim Jong Il is a mass murderer. His country is weak economically. It has grave security concerns which it must address. The starvation which undeniably exists is a result of these facts, not any homicidal impulses on the part of North Korean leaders.

The Agreed Framwork was not designed to and did not in fact strengthern Kim Jong Il. It was simply designed to replace his graphite based nuclear power plants (which produced bomb-making material), first with an equivalent value of fuel oil, then later with equivalent light water reactors. This transition was clearly in the national and international interest. Your analogy to selling poison gas to the Nazis just shows how little you understand the situation we faced there.

The agreement to take the graphite-based reactors offline was overeseen by the IAEA, which maintained seals and security cameras which assured that the reactors were shut down. The fact that there was no way to verify that they were not developing weapons with the plutonium they had produced prior to the agreement, does not change the value of the agreement itself in removing several bombs per year's worth of fissile material from their arsenal.

Kim Jong Il is nothing if not a mass murderer. His prison camps (some the size of Washington DC) employ slave labor from NK political prisoners routinely starved to death as a form of punishment. One survivor recounted how his entire family was imprisoned (after his grandfather commented favorably on the success of the Japanese economy), not an uncommon occurance.

Output from these prison camps is laundered through mainland China, who repackages the goods for sale throughout the world (including the US).

The Communist state has had trouble feeding itself or keeping the lights on since its biggest patron, the USSR, passed away several years ago from decrepitude. That said, most food aid is funneled into the hands of the rulling class while the peasants eat grass to fill their stomachs.

There's enough food in this world to adequately feed us all, but if you want starvation, look to the socialist states, who still use food as a weapon to discipline their own people.

Read a couple of eye-witness accounts from those who have escaped through China, read about the canibalism in the camps, then come back and tell us 'how little you understand the situation". I can think of better jobs to have than as an apologist for a mass murderer.

First, North Korea has no prison camps the size of Washington, D.C. According to a report by the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, about 150,000 to 200,000 North Koreans are locked away in political prisons. That is total, in a dozen or more camps.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/10/30/nkorea.political.prisons/

The conditions in the camps is terrible, no doubt, but the prisoners are generally fed (although not well) just to assure their continued slave labor. I am not an apologist for their human rights record, but when you call a leader a mass murderer Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot come to mind. As bad as the North Korean prison camps are, they do not compare to what history's true mass muderers did.

Yeah, rdelephant, you are apologizing for them, and I for one am not going to continue discussing it with you.

You think it's such a great idea to bribe Kim Jong Il so he can maintain his power and maybe not build nukes (or maybe so, since he won't let anyone check and threatens to destroy Seoul if it's brought up to the Security Council), hey, it's no stain on my soul. You're the one who has to live with himself...

Oh, and rdelephant, thank you again for blaming America for Kim Jong Il's starving his people.

Want to know who has a "precarious security situation"? Taiwan. Know how many people starved to death last year there? Know how many hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese are in slave labor camps in Taiwan?

Do you care?

Not when you can't blame America for it, I guess.

Taiwan has a vibrant economy. Not so with North Korea. You have to admit that alot of North Korea's resources goes to its military. While some of that may be to maintain domestic control, the primary focus seems to be maintaining deterrance over an American regime-change. In that sense we do bear some responsibilty. As I said, I am not defending North Korea's prison camps.

rdelephant - Okay, I stand corrected - there are 2 prison camps bigger than the District of Columbia.

I provide the link here on the slim hopes you'll actually read what's there: http://www.freenorthkorea.net/archives/freenorthkorea/000040.html

And there's no litmus test for mass murder - you don't have to rise to a Pol Pot, Mao Zedong or a Hitler to qualify. All you have to do is exterminate a decent portion of your population through imprisonment and starvation. At LEAST 2,000,000 have starved already, inside and outside the camps. Women reduced to eating their babies after delivery - does that count rdelephant, or do the poor, starving Norht Koreans have to go further to meet your high standards for MASS MURDER?

Most of the people in the camps are fed less than the general population, which is to say they're starved on something approaching 400 to 800 calories/day. Can you survive on that? Certainly some of the Nazi prisoners survived to the end of the war and contributed to the horror of 'living skeletons' - pictures forever frozen in our minds.

I'm tired of your hair splitting. You got caught flagrante delicto on this one and you can't weasel out fudging the definitions.

I'm with Gabriel here, I find your stance on this repulsive. I have a hard time believing that I'm actually arguing against a North Korean apologist. Please tell me you're not really an American. That might give me some peace of mind.

Really, I'd feel better if you were some foreign commie sympathizer.

The population of Washington D.C. is 570,000 as of the year 2000 census. Your cited article describes a TOTAL prison population of 200,000 spread across a dozen political prisons and 30 forced labor camps. The math does not add up (unless she is talking about the area of the camps, which still doesn't make sense since we are told that the prisoners are housed on top of each other, a dozen per room, etc., which is alot more dense than people live in Washington). I guess maybe she is counting alot of air, all I can figure.

Conditions in the camps are harsh, no doubt. I hate the way they are treated. If we could save them as easily as we liberated Iraq I would even support going to war to save them.

I would call Kim Jong Il a brutal dictator, but still don't think he qualifies as a mass murderer. If he was deliberately starving masses of people to death, I could see the label, but my understanding is that with the exception of the camps, the starvation is a function of North Korean poverty and military spending rather than murderous intent. Even in the camps I do not understand him to be starving people to death (though mortaility rates are no doubt relatively high). I guess its a matter of semantics. I can see your point of view, but like I said I would reserve the term mass muderer for the likes of the figures we discussed, who deliberately set out to kill masses of people.

///the starvation is a function of North Korean poverty and military spending rather than murderous intent.///

sigh.....

I'm not going to belabor this; first because there is obviously no point, and because I feel that T8 has adequately embodied the contempt that I feel for your loathsome apologetics.

Notwithstanding your numbercrunching idiot dance, rdelephant, would you not agree that if excessive military spending were continued with the knowledge that widespread starvation was already in place, would that not be intentional death?

And of course, this is ignoring the reports that came out within the last several weeks of chemical experiments on the inhabitants of said camps, just to see how long it would take them to die, for the purpose of seeing what effect it might have during a war with South Korea.

How long could a brutal dictator remain a brutal dictator if he wasn't aware of this kind of information?

///I guess its a matter of semantics.///

No, its not a matter of semantics, its a matter of you seeing the obvious truth which is right in front of your face. Not everything is relative, rdelephant. And it is you and your party's inability to understand that which makes you an inappropriate choice to be administering foreign policy and security for the United States.

You simply can't be trusted to make the correct choices, no matter how obvious they are.

It's a choice between guns and butter. If it's truly a matter of national defense and letting some people starve, thats a harsh choice but one I believe that North Korea is genuinely facing. I don't approve of the choice, but I am not prepared to call somebody a mass muderer for making it.
The President has not called Kim Jong Il a mass murderer, is he not qualified to administer our foreign policy either ?

"The current famine began in 1995 after a series of disasters, including record floods and severe droughts, devastated the country's harvests. Those assaults by Mother Nature were compounded by poor land use policies and a centrally planned economy that failed to adapt to the problems."

http://www.disasterrelief.org/Disasters/990408nkorea/

Military spending may also be a problem, but in a command economy it is not easy to beat swords into plow-shares, even if you so desire. Again, none of the resources I am reading are calling Kim Jong Il a mass murderer because of the way he has handled the famine. Maybe its not just me after all.

This is an exercise in watering a dead plant. You want to quibble semantics while 2 million plus starve. Two million starve while Jong sends his personal chef over to Japan for cigarettes.

The prison camps were the size of Washington DC in AREA. And there are 2 of them that size. The dead number three and a half times the population of DC, so however you want to rationalize your point, you're skunked.

There's plenty of money for nukes and subs and cigarettes while millions starve. I guess the poor miserable population of North Korea can take solace in the fact that you don't consider Kim a 'mass murderer'. How very nice.

I hope God takes pity on you. You have all the education you'll ever need, but you are without wisdom.

Kim Jong Il's cigarettes are not gonna save 2 million starving people. They don't make him a mass murderer any more than your spending on cable makes you a mass murderer.

I think you are taking a dubious source a little too literally on the size of the camps. It just doesn't make sense that they would be that big to house such a relatively few people. Just think of the barbed wire if nothing else. As to the population of the dead, that is not for the camps. So no, you don't have me "skunked" either way.

The nukes were designed to make energy and were shut down under the Agreed Framework. Nuclear weapons don't cost much and put North Korea's needs in the forefront of people's concerns, so in a sick kind of way they may turn out actually benefitting the starving in a way that turning them to food (even were that possible) would not. I can agree with you about the subs, but again I am not so sure that much of that expense could really be converted to food, even if they had chosen to. I still don't see that military spending is so outrageous as to make Kim Jong Il a mass murderer.

You guys are all living up to the right-wing's reputation for hatred, hyperbole and dogmatism.

And you are living up to the left's reptutation for stupidity and willful ignorance. So there you are. Others will decide between us.

The 'dubious' source of the information on the size of the camps was the NSA.

There's not much left to say I haven't said. You stay on that side and I'll stay on this side.

I'm a libertarian, not some right-winger - but how would you know? It's easier to name-call than it is to think, isn't it?

The cite you gave me for the size of the camps says nothing about the source being the NSA. It makes referecce to satellite photos, but it is the author making that claim, not the NSA.

Libertarians are even worse than right-wingers. Anyhow, you were acting like a right-winger ("I hope God takes pity on you," all because I called KJI a brutal dictator rather than a mass muderer). Go pout now.

Let me reiterate. May God have pity on the empty vacuum of your soul. You're the best friend a mass murderer could have.

The right have no monopoly on hatred, hyperbole and dogmatism. You are their mirror image.

You don't know squat about my soul. I am not the one here who has a psychological need to call somebody else a mass muderer to tie his world up in a nice neat little bow.

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