How do you feel about this fact?

[MrLabGuy]

How do you feel about Hilliary Clinton being in her position in the Obama Administration now that North Korea has taken a drastic turn and become more militant? They have the capacity to wreak havoc and destruction over a large area which includes many US allies and they seem more willing than ever to make that point.

I for one think this could and will get ugly in the next 6-12 months and I believe Hillary is the wrong person for this job.

[AzX5]

I think the jury is still out, since she hasn't done much of anything yet regarding Kim Jung-mentally-ill.

This could get pretty ugly soon, IMO.

[motordavid]

Not sure that TheHill bothers me...Gates is still Sec of War, and Obama may
choose to play harder ball. But, OB or McCain or Bush for that matter, didn't/don't
have much support from the whoring/pimping "allies" we have, to support a hard
ball embargo.

As for the KimWeirdo and his annointed son, the NewCrazyComrade,
unless there is info we don't have, NK has not shown that they can
do more than lob missles in the air and hope that they lift off/find land.

It's ugly, I agree and, it will get uglier...but this current saber rattling by the
Fearless Leaders in NK is posturing for the moment, imo. For that regime to
suggest NukeWar is "near" is like NASA suggesting we are going to colonize
Mars next quarter.

The "allies", along with the bad guys, cannot resist selling tech and equip to
that doo-wop lil' crazy midget and his gang of azz kissers. The World continues
to leave us/The US, out on a limb, on our own.

[Quicksilver]

Times Topics: North Korea

Lee Jae-Won/Reuters

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/wo...orea.html?_r=1

North Korea failed in its highly vaunted effort to fire a satellite into orbit, military and private experts said Sunday after reviewing detailed tracking data that showed the missile and payload fell into the sea. Some said the failure undercut the North Korean campaign to come across as a fearsome adversary able to hurl deadly warheads halfway around the globe.

Defying world opinion, North Korea in recent weeks had moved steadily and fairly openly toward launching a long-range rocket that Western experts saw as a major step toward a military weapon. The launching itself of the three-stage rocket on Sunday, which the North Korean government portrayed as a success — even bragging that the supposed satellite payload was now broadcasting patriotic tunes from space — outraged Japan and South Korea, led to widespread rebuke by President Obama and other leaders, and prompted the United Nations Security Council to go into an emergency session.

But looking at the launching from a purely technical vantage point, space experts said the failure represented a blow that in all likelihood would seriously delay the missile’s debut.

“It’s got to be embarrassing,” said Geoffrey E. Forden, a missile expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “I can imagine heads flying if the ‘Dear Leader’ finds out the satellite didn’t fly into orbit,” he said, referring to the name North Koreans are obliged to use when speaking of Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s reclusive leader.

North Korea’s official news agency said Mr. Kim attended the launching.

Analysts dismissed the idea that the rocket firing could represent a furtive success, calling the failure consistent with past North Korean fumbles and suggesting it might reveal a significant quality control problem in one of the world’s most isolated nations.

“It’s a setback,” Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks satellites and rocket launchings, said of the North Korean launching. He added that the North Koreans must now find and fix the problem. “The missile doesn’t represent any kind of near-term threat.”

Others said North Korea’s client states, like Iran, seemed to be having more success at rocketry than North Korea. In February, Iran managed to launch a small satellite into orbit.

The United States Northern Command, based in Colorado Springs, issued a statement on Sunday that portrayed the launching as a major failure. It based its information on a maze of federal radars, spy ships and satellites that monitor global missile firings.

The command said that North Korea launched a Taepodong-2 missile at 11:30 a.m. Sunday local time, or 10:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Saturday, and that its first stage fell into the Sea of Japan, which analysts had expected as the point of splashdown in a successful launching.

However, “the remaining stages, along with the payload itself, landed in the Pacific Ocean,” the statement said. Analysts had expected the rocket’s second stage to land in the Pacific but its third stage and its ostensible satellite payload to fly into space.

The command emphasized that “no object entered orbit,” apparently a reference to both the rocket’s third stage as well as the supposed satellite.

North Korea’s public portrayal of the event as a complete success was similar in its celebratory tone to the happy note it struck in 1998 after having failed to loft a satellite into orbit.

News reports out of Japan also said the rocket’s second stage splashed down in the Pacific, hundreds of miles short of the danger zone that North Korea announced last month. Western analysts said that shortfall, if correct, probably indicated a failure of the missile’s second stage.

A general rule of engineering is that failures reveal more than successes. If so, North Korea — which has now test-fired three long-range rockets, each time unsuccessfully — is learning a lot about limitations.

“It’s not unusual to have a series of failures at the beginning of a missile program,” Jeffrey G. Lewis, an arms control specialist at the New America Foundation, a research group in Washington, said in an interview. “But they don’t test enough to develop confidence that they’re getting over the problems.”

Dr. Lewis added that an influential 1998 report by Donald H. Rumsfeld, before he became secretary of defense in the Bush administration, argued that the North Korean rockets might be good enough to pose a threat to the United States, even without flight testing.

“But given that both versions of the Taepodong-2 have failed now,” he said, “we have very little confidence in the reliability of the system.”

North Korea is often portrayed as technically adept when it comes to bombs and rockets. But Western analysts say that image is now in doubt amid rising questions of basic competence.

In August 1998, North Korea’s first attempt at launching a long-range rocket, the Taepodong-1, managed to scare Japan but failed to deliver a satellite to orbit. The troubles continued in July 2006 when its second test of a long-range missile, the Taepodong-2, ended in an explosion just seconds after liftoff.

[Dannyell]

I don't know why we find N Korea a threat...so they can do a little damage? then what??

They'll get wiped off the map...it's as simple as that...Bombing anything for them is suicide

[StanF18]

Not a fan of Hillary, but she is not going to be "the end of us". The "buck" stops with Obama and Gates, not Hillary.

As for how much of a threat North Korea truly poses, can anyone say for sure? Yes, their rockets have not flown straight, and their nukes appear rather weak. But they do have a VERY substantial conventional military capability. More than enough to steam-roll into Seoul in a week's time. Of course, if they decide to do that, they will get their a$$ whooped in response and get driven back to their borders, but not until global financial markets have suffered severe instability. And as in the 1st Korean War, the Chinese are always the wild-card. They are the North's only economic and military lifeline.

[Wagner]

Originally Posted by Dannyell

I don't know why we find N Korea a threat...so they can do a little damage? then what??

They'll get wiped off the map...it's as simple as that...Bombing anything for them is suicide

"do a little damage"???? Ask Japan how they feel about that.

There really isn't such a think as a 'weak' nuclear weapon. It isn't so much them having it, as them selling it.

[Dannyell]

Originally Posted by Wagner

"do a little damage"???? Ask Japan how they feel about that.

There really isn't such a think as a 'weak' nuclear weapon. It isn't so much them having it, as them selling it.

Exactly Japan...not US...and I doubt N Korea will risk such a thing...

[Wagner]

Originally Posted by Dannyell

Exactly Japan...not US...and I doubt N Korea will risk such a thing...

So what are you saying, it is OK as long as it isn't the US that gets hit? You do know we have 30K troops in S. Korea, right? How do you feel about them selling off the technology to someone who would be able to hit the US mainland?

[Dannyell]

Originally Posted by Wagner

So what are you saying, it is OK as long as it isn't the US that gets hit? You do know we have 30K troops in S. Korea, right? How do you feel about them selling off the technology to someone who would be able to hit the US mainland?

That is not what I am saying...What I want to see is us involving the countries who are at a greater risk than us...They should take the initiative to try and solve this.

And the selling off the technology ... let me see... didn't we do the same to help our own causes in different areas?? I guess it would be normal for others to do the same...

What would you rather do?? Sanctions don't really work well...maybe invade the??