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Farmerkev wrote:

Which still means nothing, a failure is a failure.

One is likely to fail, the other very unlikely to fail.

Farmerkev wrote:

kb5zhh wrote:

Farmerkev wrote:

Which still means nothing, a failure is a failure.

One is likely to fail, the other very unlikely to fail.

Unlikely doesn't mean foolproof so IF it was a failure you don't have evidence of what failed and can't argue with any degree of certainty what that device might have been or what may or may not be the influence of the admitted nuke tech given to NK.

Sounds like you are being rather biased about what uncertainties you call people on.  Its possible this was an earthquake that NK is just claiming to be a weapon test.  Of course that's silly.

edit:  and the larger point here is that it is GH that is claiming that AQ Khan's leaks of tech led to this weapon, so if you want to grouse about uncertainty, why not go after the person making the much stronger affirmative claim.

Last edited by kb5zhh (2006-10-10 10:20 pm)

Farmerkev wrote:

You already called him on that but used obviously faulty logic in an attempt to bolster your case.
I also doubt the tech he gave them played no role in furthering their development.
All in all, I would have to say GH is on slightly firmer footing with his opinion.

Didn't the "tech" involve uranium production?  Wasn't the bomb likely made from plutonium?  Didn't they already have a plutonium plant that was out of service until 2002 or so?

bratboy wrote:

Farmerkev wrote:

You already called him on that but used obviously faulty logic in an attempt to bolster your case.
I also doubt the tech he gave them played no role in furthering their development.
All in all, I would have to say GH is on slightly firmer footing with his opinion.

Didn't the "tech" involve uranium production?  Wasn't the bomb likely made from plutonium?  Didn't they already have a plutonium plant that was out of service until 2002 or so?

Yeah, but science-wise, no failure is really a failure, you always learn something.

Even if they abandoned the line of thinking that KHAN!!! lead them down, that doesn't mean they didn't learning anything from that journey. I'm sure Oppenhiemer chased many snipes on his way to the atom bomb, but that doesn't mean those fruitless hunts of his were really useless.

In any case, this doesn't really affect the idea that Bush bares no blame, or Clinton bares more blame, or whatever it was GH was trying to say.

NK might have a bomb now, and something has to be done, right? And currently, Bush is the one that is charged with doing something. Historically, Bush, with the exception of what appeared to be sham negotiations and chest-thumping, hasn't really done anything about NK, and they're waving their new toy around like a giant boner.

The Bush admin doesn't seem to know diplomacy from the moon, and in the past 6 years of war, I can't think of a time when they actually attempted to use diplomacy. Like NK, their negotiation tactic seems to be brinksmanship. What happens when you have 2 countries with that same strategy negotiating with each other? It doesn't seem like it would be good. The other option is to fake like you want resolution, like we did with Iraq before that invasion, then invade. This could work, but I don't know if we would have the military strength to do that in an effective manner. And if we did this and failed, then we even heighten the risk of a pissed off NK actually using a nuke somewhere (I don't think this would happen though, even if we dropped a few shock-and-awes). I think targeted sanctions are not a bad start, but not the best, and should be coupled with a genuine shot at diplomacy, and also multi-laterally, not just bilateral.

Has there ever been a war that wasn't about land, that was won by force?

gas huffer wrote:

Jaligard wrote:

Saying diplomacy didn't work from the beginning is a little difficult conclusion to come to because we had an agreement with North Korea, worked out by the Clinton/Albright team, to keep them from enriching plutonium.

Then the Bush team came along and said, because North Korea was enriching uranium, that they had violated the deal. He pulled out of the agreement. So North Korea took the locks off the doors and built a plutonium bomb, which they detonated on Sunday.

Saying diplomacy didn't work in this case from the beginning is outside of logic. It worked pretty well until someone tried a different tack.

It was certainly an imperfect situation. It's not any better now. It's worse.

I could blame North Korea—and I certainly do—but I have absolutely zero influence on them. But I am a piece of my government, if only a small piece, so discussing my dissatisfaction with them is, even if only in the miniscule, useful to me.

from the beginning was the DPRK ever going to follow the treaty?

There were locks on the doors and monitors in place. Now, obviously this wasn't going to keep them out if they wanted to get in, but they didn't break the seals and keep out inspectors until George pulled out of the deal.

Farmerkev wrote:

kb5zhh wrote:

Farmerkev wrote:

Unlikely doesn't mean foolproof so IF it was a failure you don't have evidence of what failed and can't argue with any degree of certainty what that device might have been or what may or may not be the influence of the admitted nuke tech given to NK.

Sounds like you are being rather biased about what uncertainties you call people on.  Its possible this was an earthquake that NK is just claiming to be a weapon test.  Of course that's silly.

edit:  and the larger point here is that it is GH that is claiming that AQ Khan's leaks of tech led to this weapon, so if you want to grouse about uncertainty, why not go after the person making the much stronger affirmative claim.

You already called him on that but used obviously faulty logic in an attempt to bolster your case.
I also doubt the tech he gave them played no role in furthering their development.
All in all, I would have to say GH is on slightly firmer footing with his opinion.

What faulty logic?  The main thing I was hoping for was for GH to give a more complete list of what Khan gave, as all I can find are gas centrifuges, which makes me think that making a big deal over him isn't all the important.

It is not faulty logic to say that if one type of thing has a very low chance of failing and another has a high chance of failing, then if something fails it was probably the one that has a greater chance.

Jaligard wrote:

gas huffer wrote:

Jaligard wrote:

Saying diplomacy didn't work from the beginning is a little difficult conclusion to come to because we had an agreement with North Korea, worked out by the Clinton/Albright team, to keep them from enriching plutonium.

Then the Bush team came along and said, because North Korea was enriching uranium, that they had violated the deal. He pulled out of the agreement. So North Korea took the locks off the doors and built a plutonium bomb, which they detonated on Sunday.

Saying diplomacy didn't work in this case from the beginning is outside of logic. It worked pretty well until someone tried a different tack.

It was certainly an imperfect situation. It's not any better now. It's worse.

I could blame North Korea—and I certainly do—but I have absolutely zero influence on them. But I am a piece of my government, if only a small piece, so discussing my dissatisfaction with them is, even if only in the miniscule, useful to me.

from the beginning was the DPRK ever going to follow the treaty?

There were locks on the doors and monitors in place. Now, obviously this wasn't going to keep them out if they wanted to get in, but they didn't break the seals and keep out inspectors until George pulled out of the deal.

You mean he pulled out of the storng-arm negotiation DEMAND of bi-lateral talks?

Why do you people need to distort to support your partisan hatred?  It's insipid.

gas huffer wrote:

Jaligard wrote:

There were locks on the doors and monitors in place. Now, obviously this wasn't going to keep them out if they wanted to get in, but they didn't break the seals and keep out inspectors until George pulled out of the deal.

You mean he pulled out of the storng-arm negotiation DEMAND of bi-lateral talks?

Why do you people need to distort to support your partisan hatred?  It's insipid.

Well, I did try to have a real conversation with you. I'll give it one more go.

We had a deal in place with North Korea. It was not a perfect deal and it wasn't being followed perfectly by either side (they enriching uranium, we not providing supplies timely). But their plutonium was sealed away.

George Bush pulled out of the deal because of the enriching of uranium. North Korea then kicked out inspectors, broke the seals on their plutonium and began processing more.

Since then, we've been pushing six-party talks, which we have had several times. They want two-party negotiations, which we have not had.

Then, on Sunday, they detonated one of their plutonium bombs.

The locks came off the doors after we gave up on the deal.

* * *

This demand for two-party talks v. six-party talks to me is one of those sticking points that seems silly to me. "Two-party talks won't work!" they cry out. I feel like I'm watching a drunken idiot ramble on about how the 3-4 defense is useless compared to a 4-3 defense.

Colonel Panic wrote:

bratboy wrote:

gas huffer wrote:

Why do you people need to distort to support your partisan hatred?  It's insipid.

I know you like to think that it's 'gas huffer against the world' on this board, by why not reply directly to specific posters instead of repeatedly implicating everyone other than yourself?

You cries of "partisan hatred" are often off-the-mark, anyway.

Well, when you point a finger at someone 3 are pointing back at you.
So maybe he is actually on the mark.

I don't follow....

Um....He's the one spewing partisan hatred.
(Actually it's just plain ole hatred but whatever)

part of me wants to say 'man with no head' and part of me wants to say 'ottojaycee'.

This:

gas huffer wrote:

Why do you people need to distort to support your partisan hatred?  It's insipid.

points me in the direction of otto. . . his complete lack of language skill, together with his attempts to sound intelligent by way of malapropism, was comical to the nth degree.

. . . but then again, there are LOTS of intellectually underdeveloped narcissists around.

sturner wrote:

Three things to think about if the Bush administration decides to go to war.

The Bush administration will not, repeat not decide to go to war. Nuh-uh, forget it, ain't a-gonna happen. They didn't give a rat's ass about North Korea before and they still don't. Besides, even if they wanted to, they haven't the money or the manpower, to say nothing of the impossibility when the would-be opponent is armed with nukes, no one knows where the nukes are and they have connections with terrorists. So let's just take that off the table

1. Will China move south to support NK because they are thier protector (these are the only two Communist states here) and establishing a real puppet state there would be advantageous and easier to do if they put 3 million Chicom troops into NK.

China will continue supporting NK come what may. I said before that China won't support sanctions and I stand by that. The US and Japan want regime change, even if it means complete collapse of North Korea, anarchy, a mass exodus of refugees. But that's China's nightmare. Most people seem to forget that yes, North Korea's government is super fragile and liable to collapse at any time, but guess what, the same could be said for China too. And like any Chinese government (dating back to the earliest dynasties), the worst thing in the world is instability. A North Korean collapse would cause huge instability not only on China's border, but inside China -- in fact in China's northeast, which is seriously depressed economically (huge state-owned factories shut down as part of the economic reforms). Talk about lighting a match in a gas-filled room.

2. South Korea may not want to go war. If they don't, and Japan insists that we observe the treaties we have with them, then where do we establish a logistical base? It is unlikely that Japan would assist even in that if we didn't have a positive mandate from the U.N. to invade NK.

Okay, let's take the prospect of South Korea going to war off the table. That is even less likely to happen than an American attack. Ordinary South Koreans, as I've pointed out time and again, don't see North Korea as an enemy. They don't even see the North as a threat. No way would the south attack the north.

As for Japan,  they've been building up political will for quite some time to remilitarize, reform the constitution, start projecting power throughout the region. The "threat" from North Korea is a great excuse for doing that. Of course they're in major denial, can't accept the fact that huge numbers of people across Asia continue to see them as a potentially aggressive, likely hostile and certainly unrepentant power.

3. Our ground forces in SK have been drawn down significantly in the past decade. We don't have the ground forces to resist an onlslaught by the 1.2 million NK army. Shades of Task Force Smith circa 1950 and the Pusan Perimeter.

They were never really able to resist a strong attack. Their presence was mainly designed to be a kind of trip-wire, to ensure that any attack on South Korea would result in war with the US. It was basically a deterrent.

The pull-back and draw-down of US forces in the south is a tacit acknowledgement that there's pretty much no chance of an attack by the North (and/or that the US doesn't care anymore).

And the really big problems involved in invading NK is that they will know we are coming and can do a spoiling attack. We have to a) build up our military, specifically the Army and Marines, b) transport them over there, c) build a logistical tail, and no civilian contractors are not sufficient in this case as it is much more likely to be a high-intensity, fluid conflict and I don't think we will be building a lot of camps for the troops.

There aren't enough forces to carry out any kind of attack, and the logistical system is far too dysfunctional to support it.

Even if the US military was at its peak, an attack on the North would be incredibly hard. It's very mountainous and the North has been preparing for it for decades.