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I do not agree.For more info go to System.String[]

In the meantime, the shortest answer is to anti-missile NK's rockets.

You can get out the missals later.

We can wait because we know how long it takes to make an effective missle. Thank God for people smarter than me who can tell if Kim wants attention, or if he is aiming toward blowing up one of his neighbors.

We can wait for something to happen, wait until his neighbors wake up and use sanctions against him. We can keep our subs around to shoot the missles down. Lastly, we can watch him. If his neighbors do nothing, is it our problem?

We can wait because we know how long it takes to make an effective missle. Thank God for people smarter than me who can tell if Kim wants attention, or if he is aiming toward blowing up one of his neighbors.

We can wait for something to happen, wait until his neighbors wake up and use sanctions against him. We can keep our subs around to shoot the missles down. Lastly, we can watch him. If his neighbors do nothing, is it our problem?

very good writing here, thanks.

.

you can not measure effectiveness by ordinary literary standards...

nor commentary about wars,

when we're not in one...

you do not invade another country and seek to gain control of a region for corraling economic resources and call it a war,

unless this is the 12 century, and bush is the pope,

back off shut up and talk to me, I'll take you home.

.

most of my view has been said

Mr Arkin want to ride the bomb in, like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove?

if you're killing the other side, unmanned is compelling.

there isn't anything in war that makes it appropriate to go mano a mano

that's why some of us like sports for competition; win or lose, both go home intact

for war, it's kill them first, stop their ability to kill you .... what a truly strange piece by Mr Arkin

Namron,

Kim Jon Il, has the same right to be as evil as America, and America's leaders. And America's impersonation of a Police Force is laughable. A police state would be a more appropriate characterization, just ask the people of Iraq.

You truly are an apologist for American malfeasance around the world. When are you going to explain to me how and when America inherited the Divine Right to judge other nations of the world? And what potentate passed on that Right?

Was it the Gun God, or the, I Will Kill You If You Do Not Do Want America Wants You To Do God?

How can you defend a nation that acts much like the nation that imprisoned, maimed, murdered and incerated your own people? Since the shoe is on the other foot now and your people are no longer the one's being oppressed, I suppose that it simply does not matter. They had so of those kind of people in Nazi Germany. How can you support this nonsense?

You know that America has destabilized more governments, taken down, murdered and imprisoned more Heads-of-State, not to mention spied on more nations than any other nation in recent history. Well thank God that America stopped that practice.

And isn't it ironic that the same America, as I mentioned yesterday, that complains about the invasion taking place on its Southern border, has no qualms about crossing the borders of other nations, at will. Perhaps that's America's comeuppance!

America had no right to invade Iraq, and America did not have the right to Judge Saddam either. Are you kidding me, it has been proved that America provided him with weapons of destruction that were used to destroy Iraqi citizens.

He apparently did not do a good enough job, for America decided to take over and do the killing itself. And don't forget that America, apparently, encouraged Saddam to use WMDs against the Iranians.

Well you know the Iranians deserved that, America has not forgotten that the Iranians dispatched of the Despot Shah, that America previously placed in power in Iran. Ah, Demo-crazy, at work again, right!

If Saddam deserved to be judged, his partners-in-crime, several American Presidents, should be judged right along with him. Why have you excused them? We have tolerated our substandard leaders in America!

And with regard to my WASP comments, how many neighborhoods have you moved in and been called the N-word, or told N-word, go back to where you came from... from the good God fearing WASPs of America? I stand by my comment for the racial divide in America still exists in America. The Koreans that I worship with, don't seem to have any problems with us.

It sounds like you really love America. If that is the case, help to fix it. And the only way to do that is by being truthful.

I won't even dignify your comment about, whether America will fire on..., someone else has already responded. Although we don't always agree, you are a very erudite man, so how could you let those words come out of your mouth?

Now that is beneath you!

I hope Mr.Arkin won't mind if I compare his columns with the work of Hans Morgenthau or Kenneth Waltz, academics who have written illuminatingly on strategy and international relations: or with the work of Henry Kissinger. The comparison is: there is no comparison.

Kissinger, Morgenthau and Waltz are not gods, but if you read their works you find properly structured arguments. Their writings illuminate; but when I read Mr. Arkin, I find that opinions emerge out of his mouth like a shot out of a gun. He does not illuminate.

It is not that I disagree with his opinions. I cannot agree or disagree what he says because his opinions are half-formed.

It would be good too if he paid more attention to style: Strunk and White will help. In case he doesn't think he needs to pay any attention to style--if style is for sissies--he should read a chapter from The Peloponnesian War, The Gathering Storm or Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Thucydides, Churchill and T.E.Lawrence were warriors. But they knew how to write.

David Todd
Miami, FL

this is the other side of the coin...
now everyone is afraid we will dye by the weapons created to protect us

so ... two sides of the coin to choose from

Namron sayz, or shall I say imputes bs:

"
Would the American military fire a single shot if they were not being attacked?
"

sure, invasion under false pretenses, that much is very obvious to the American people and getting more obvious, with your help.

they're doing as they are told, the Iraqi's attacked us didn't they?

and what did the United States Military Industrial Complex need after the collapse of the Soviet Union,

a reason to exist.

Has the government turned it's back on their own country?

check out all the outsourced jobs, empty factories and income disparity....

has unemployment gone down or are the people working retail, not looking or getting SSI?

would the government lie to us? It's what _they_ do at least right now.

.

supercomputers for stock fraud

Rev,

"Kim John Il attempts to exercise his rights as the leader of a free nation, and you will have none of it."

"free nation".... you are kidding me right?

I never got worked up about N Korea launching missiles.... Like I have said before - the only people that the N Koreans are a threat to are the N Koreans... They are simply looking for the USA to write them a check...

As for Iraq... I have been 100% consistent in my opinion for over 15 years. Saddam deserved to be ousted because he was a threat to his own people and the region as a whole.

BUT.... BIG BUT..... America should only got to war to replace a regime if it replaces it with a democracy! That is why I was against Gulf War I. We went there and re-installed a dictator - the Emir of Kuwait....

Iraq was a direct threat to the peace of the ME... The Iraq/Iran war.... The invasion of Kuwait.... The support of the Palestinian suicide bombers... The coddling of Al Quaeda in ts northenr territory in order to keep pressure on the Kurds [if you do not believe me in this one.... Google "Ahmed Hikmat Shakir" - not to mention he offered OBL asylum not once, but twice!

So yes, he had to go.... and for all the violence that is happening over there.... just who do you think is behind most of it? Would the American military fire a single shot if they were not being attacked? Who is killing most of the Iraqi population - US troops or extremist bombs? Who represents the forces of evil? Extremist Muslims or US Troops? Check out life in Afghanistan pre-9/11 for the answer...

Yes, Saddam had to go and we have to stay until the Iraqi government can enforce their own rule of law.

As for your "WASP" comment.... Ask ANY immigrant.... would you rather live in a WASP neighborhood or a black one? "Whites" are not the only ones with prejudices....

That comment was beneath you.

Arkan's discussion, and a lot of the comments that followed don't make much sense, in that since WWI the greatest killer on the battlefield has been artillery. Since before that time artillery has been an indirect fire weapon, meaning the crew shot a projectile that landed miles away on a target they couldn't see. Operations in Iraq after the fall of Baghdad have probably had a much higher percentage of direct fire (small arms and tank fire) than has been typical since WWI, but artillery and aircraft have still played a big role. For almost 100 years, killing on the battlefield as a percentage of deaths achieved has been a remote affair. For my part, I've seen death from artillery, direct fire, mines, etc, and I haven't seen a polite or tasteful way to kill someone.

Arkin,

Re: Unmanned killin'

The problem with unmanned missiles, unmanned vehicles and other technologies that do not require the presence of a human being to kill, maim or destroy, is that those technologies embolden people to kill, given that the killer never has to witness the carnage.

On the other hand, it would appear that there are humans, who are not, and would not be bothered at all by carnage.

Hanging a person, shooting a person at point blank range, torturing human(s), ripping out one's entrails, burning them at the stake or dropping hydrogen or laser-guided bombs on them, does not bother Americans at all.

Unmanned vehicles would simply be another weapon in the arsenal of the detached. Of course they would always reason that they actually preserved lives, given their actions. Whose lives in particular, their own?

Why is killing preferrable, for some, to civil discourse?

Namron my esoteric Friend: Murder is Murder!

Yesterday, you pointed out, as many other Americans have done, the indisputable failings of Kim John Il, and the suffering that he has caused in N. Korea.

Yet you bristle, when someone points out the indisputable sufferings that are currently being levied on the people of Iraq, as a result of the fascism of America and George Bush. But you have nothing to say about that, hmm?

You asked, why do so many North Koreans want to flee from North Korea? Have you forgotten that over half of the American population would like to be rid of the American Dictator, George Bush. Why don't you direct those individuals, who want to flee from North Korea, to Iraq where they can get a first hand look at American totalitarianism and hegemony at work?

Better yet, send them to America to a WASP neighborhood, where they will learn firsthand how some American's truly feel about people who are non-white! America does not care about the Korean people, America cares about American interests abroad! We are not in South Korea because we like South Koreans, we are there because of an ideological divide.

How many people in Iraq alone, have George Bush and America, caused to live under political oppression and, without self-determination, food, electricity or potable water...? How many Iraqi citizens have been maimed, slaughtered or displaced? How many Iraqi's are suffering now because of George Bush. If you want a cause to fight for Namron, how about fighting for a just cause, i.e., standing up against American oppression in Iraq?

For once America does the right thing, it will have the moral authority to stand up against injustice in and around the world!

As long as there are people who believe as you do, Bush, or any other American leader, can kill at will, and nothing will be said. On the other hand, Kim Jong Il fires off a few missiles killing no one, and you get all worked up. The U.S.A. is occupying a once sovereign nation and your voice is muted, Kim John Il attempts to exercise his rights as the leader of a free nation, and you will have none of it.

It is the nature of the human beast to never admit to his own wrongdoings, or the wrongdoings of his friends who support him in his folly. It is also the nature of white Americans, to excuse double-standards like the ones that inured to their benefit since the inception of this country. White Americans and their friends, accept this double-standard as being normal. And they have had no problem trying to export the same double-standard around the world.

Again, over half of the people in this country do not agree with G. Bush. Why do we stay here? Because, we know that eventually he will have to go?

Namron my esoteric Friend: Murder is Murder!

Yesterday, you pointed out, as many other Americans have done, the indisputable failings of Kim John Il, and the suffering that he has caused in N. Korea.

Yet you bristle, when someone points out the indisputable sufferings that are currently being levied on the people of Iraq, as a result of the fascism of America and George Bush. But you have nothing to say about that, hmm?

You asked, why do so many North Koreans want to flee from North Korea? Have you forgotten that over half of the American population would like to be rid of the American Dictator, George Bush. Why don't you direct those individuals, who want to flee from North Korea, to Iraq where they can get a first hand look at American totalitarianism and hegemony at work?

Better yet, send them to America to a WASP neighborhood, where they will learn firsthand how some American's truly feel about people who are non-white! America does not care about the Korean people, America cares about American interests abroad! We are not in South Korea because we like South Koreans, we are there because of an ideological divide.

How many people in Iraq alone, have George Bush and America, caused to live under political oppression and, without self-determination, food, electricity or potable water...? How many Iraqi citizens have been maimed, slaughtered or displaced? How many Iraqi's are suffering now because of George Bush. If you want a cause to fight for Namron, how about fighting for a just cause, i.e., standing up against American oppression in Iraq?

For once America does the right thing, it will have the moral authority to stand up against injustice in and around the world!

As long as there are people who believe as you do, Bush, or any other American leader, can kill at will, and nothing will be said. On the other hand, Kim Jong Il fires off a few missiles killing no one, and you get all worked up. The U.S.A. is occupying a once sovereign nation and your voice is muted, Kim John Il attempts to exercise his rights as the leader of a free nation, and you will have none of it.

It is the nature of the human beast to never admit to his own wrongdoings, or the wrongdoings of his friends who support him in his folly. It is also the nature of white Americans, to excuse double-standards like the ones that inured to their benefit since the inception of this country. White Americans and their friends, accept this double-standard as being normal. And they have had no problem trying to export the same double-standard around the world.

Again, over half of the people in this country do not agree with G. Bush. Why do we stay here? Because, we know that eventually he will have to go?

The argument, in essence, that unless the U.S. willing to ride with its bombs rather than using unmanned missiles the actions are unhumane, is strange.

It would seem to be more sensible to focus at a different level on the issue of populations distancing themselves from war. For instance, where is the official Congressional declaration of war in clear terms explaining how it was justified and when the goal will be completed? Such an official act is more than a ritual; it is a statement of clear moral backing for those put in the difficult and dangerous jobs to conduct the fighting and make the morally challenging decisions.

Politicians initiate wars. That's were the accountability belongs.

The argument, in essence, that unless the U.S. willing to ride with its bombs rather than using unmanned missiles the actions are unhumane, is strange.

It would seem to be more sensible to focus at a different level on the issue of populations distancing themselves from war. For instance, where is the official Congressional declaration of war in clear terms explaining how it was justified and when the goal will be completed? Such an official act is more than a ritual; it is a statement of clear moral backing for those put in the difficult and dangerous jobs to conduct the fighting and make the morally challenging decisions.

interesting, isn't it...

multinational corporation, no ties to the president right?

check those phone lines boyz...we got a sighting

static response: "tinfoil hat, kool aid"

please, do yourself a favor and buy some new underwear.

.

Forgive me if I lose no sleep over your appraisal of me.

Now go and put your tin foil hat back on before the CIA blasts your crania with gamma rays and stops you from contacting the mothership....

personal relationship with the president,

price fixing, playing the market with money manipulations

don't talk to me about definitions when I have you with your hands in the pants of the United States Government.

.

namron sayz:

"
Bridas actually lost out to Unocal after we removed the Taliban and sued Unocal in court - they lost...
"

notice namron sayz: "we removed," so you're an unbiased reporter of information?

no, this is more the way that I heard it....

I received this in October of 2004, and I wondered at the validity of it...it's about Afghanistan and GITMO

_BEGIN_ INCLUSION:

From Karl W. B. SchwarzPresident, Chief Executive Officer
Patmos Nanotechnologies, LLC
10-13-2004

By Email, By Facsimile to White House

Mr. President,

I am a Conservative Christian Republican that has no intentions of voting for you in this year's election and many other Conservative Republicans are following me.

America demands the TRUTH and not after the elections; this nation demands the truth from you RIGHT NOW! This letter and an identical email will be going out to hundreds of thousands by me, millions by others. The following content was sent to the White House by facsimile earlier today from Ground Zero in New York City.

1. I demand as an American citizen that you lift the "gag order" on Sibel D. Edmonds and let Americans know what foreign names and what AMERICAN NAMES she uncovered in her FBI translations that were involved in drug trafficking, money laundering and the financing of 9-11.Her facts and your "official story" lies do not add up. Americans demand the truth on that matter before the election.

2. I demand to know what energy companies were in that Cheney Energy Task Force meeting and what discussions there were as to the steps that would be taken to remove the Taliban and Bridas Corporation as the last remaining obstacle to the United States controlling the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline. I met that company in 1999 and have known since then about the Bridas v Unocal, $15 billion interference of contract lawsuit in US District Court, Southern District of Texas. I also know about the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision on September 9, 2003 that upheld the Bridas $500 million arbitration settlement and the March 22, 2004 denial of Writ of Certiorari at the United States Supreme Court, Case 03-1018, Turkmenneft v Bridas.

3. I demand to know how many prisoners are being held at GITMO and other places that are either BRIDAS EMPLOYEES or are persons that know all about Bridas Corporation and what your administration did to get control of that Trans-Afghanistan pipeline.

4. I demand to know how many board meetings Condoleezza Rice and Thomas Kean sat in on at Chevron and Amerada Hess where it was discussed how they were going to deal with making the billions in "Big Oil"
investments into a land locked Caspian Basin and how to get rid of the Taliban and Bridas so they could turn those investments into cash flow. How many times did Big Oil ask for military force to complete a commercial transaction
they could not get under their control, and on what exact date did you agree to provide such military force - prior to 9-11? Isn't it true Mr. Bush that the Cheney Energy Task Force discussed that attack on Afghanistan and removal of the Taliban / Bridas obstacle once and for all - and did so well in advance of 9-11?

5. I demand to know why you appointed 10 persons to the 9-11 Commission, 8 of which are directly benefiting by the Taliban / Bridas "contract" obstacle being removed - breached with military force, and the big Caspian Oil deals that are now coming to market. No, America does not 'thank you' for that nor do we hold such despicable conduct up high.

6. I demand to know what US Oil Company stepped up as the sponsor of that OPIC and Asia Development Bank funded Trans-Afghanistan pipeline and what US company is constructing that pipeline right now, and what US firms are supplying the key components and their relationship to your administration.

7. I demand that you identify the company and persons who were going around Bridas to be "natural gas suppliers" to the US owned natural gas electrical generation plants in Pakistan (Dynegy - Illinova /Tenaska, El Paso (2 OPIC financed transactions) and others.

8. I demand to know why you have not been truthful with the American public that your GWOT and military policy are protecting the Caspian Basin Oil and Gas deals for many of your Bush Pioneers, some $9.6 trillion in oil and about $3 trillion in natural gas, now mostly in the hands of your elite wealthy contributors and some elite Liberals to keep this all quiet.

9. I demand to know what role the post-bankruptcy ENRON (Prisma Energy International, Cayman Islands) is playing in the Caspian Basin area, the same Enron that uses the law firm of Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw [Richard Ben Veniste, 9-11 Commission] that established the offshore SPE's for assets that were never under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

10. I demand to know why you appointed Richard Ben Veniste to the 9-11 Commission when it was his law firm that was stalling Bridas Corporation at the Fifth Circuit US Court of Appeals in the matter of Bridas Corporation v.Turkmenneft and his law firm is directly involved in Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and your administration.

11. I demand to know the exact date of the order that had our military practicing in early 2001 the invasion of Afghanistan to take out the Taliban and Bridas Corporation and make that pipeline under control of US interests, many of your Bush Pioneers, and the exact date that our military started practicing and preparing for that invasion.

12. I demand to know who Remington Holdings Ltd is, and Western Acquisitions, Inc, both Baker & Botts clients and the lucky recipients of OPIC financing to acquire oil and gas deposits in Pakistan.

Who are the parties involved in those entities by name and benefited from such governmental magnanimity? Is this transaction a payoff? Since American taxpayers are footing the bill, we have the right to know - right now.

13. I demand to know why you could not find 10 people to sit on the 9-11 Commission that are not directly benefiting from the actions you have taken and the lives you have cost or otherwise ruined. Why would you select people not motivated to find the truth for that would impact "their bottomline"?

14. I demand a full disclosure from your administration as to the Citibank / IFTRIC / OPIC / Export-Import Bank financing of American /Israeli based deals in Islamic nations on behalf of your major campaign contributors. "IFTRIC and Citibank have an agreement allowing Citibank to finance approved IFTRIC-backed transactions. Citibank Israel CEO Nandan Mar said: 'The Citibank branch, and the Structured Trade Finance Group, view IFTRIC's program as a basic product for the bank's domestic activities.' " I see distinct differences between "terrorism" and "outrage"
(Shurtan II) at your policies.

15. I demand to know why you wanted an entire new division of the CIA for Argentina. As an American citizen I take umbrage to your belligerence towards a nation that is not an enemy of the United States by any stretch of the imagination, except possibly yours. It is abundantly clear that your intentions were solely to intimidate Argentina and
Argentinabased Bridas Corporation into silence and that is NOT AMERICA. That has every appearance of the United States acting as the terrorist and a state sponsor of terrorism. Yes, you are wrapped in a flag but I clearly see that it is not the one you purport it to be.

16. I demand to know why your administration has never disclosedthat DynPort Vaccine, LLC, owned by DynCorp and now owned by Computer Sciences Corporation, a Bush Pioneer, is a possible source for where the weaponized Ames Strain of anthrax came from that was used against this nation. How did your administration manage to miss one of your campaigncontributors and a company doing large volumes of business with your administration and even being known euphemistically (DynCorp) as The Mercenary Company? Who put that Contract on America?

17. I demand to know how you can claim a pretense of being a Christian while sponsoring and condoning the torture of prisoners, including sodomizing children, at Abu Ghraib prison.

18. I demand to know how your administration can send firms overseas as "representatives of this nation" that were convicted of running a flesh trade in little girls in Bosnia, specifically one DynCorp. Convicted in Texas and the United Kingdom according to reports I have seen and apparently detested in Afghanistan. You do recall that DynCorp is the company providing security to protect your puppet Karzai in Afghanistan and your other puppet Zalmay Khalilzad is deterring anyone from running for President in that bogus "free" democracy?

19. I demand to know why your administration keeps running the name and photos of Adnan G. El Shukrijumah as the"dirty bomb boogeyman" and on March 25, 2003 the FBI knew exactly where to find him and did not go after him.
That telephone call was made from my telephone by a Canadian friend that was in Little Rock on that date, Mr. Bush, so do not pretend "national security" with me.
I am "first person" on this matter and all of America deserves to know the extent that your administration has been and is lying to us all - and someone that is not Al Qaeda is probably "dropping a suspect name" as they set up a dirty bomb attack. Sure have pushed up the oil and gas prices with your strategy though, guess we can consider that another "Mission Accomplished".

20. I demand to know why your administration keeps referring to Adnan G. El Shukrijumah as a "Saudi" when the FBI knows full well he is not Saudi. His family is from Guyana in South America and they have lived in Florida since 1986 without incident. His grandparents were from Yemen, moved long ago to South America and his mother is from Trinidad & Tobago.

21. I demand to know why you alerted India, Pakistan and "Axis of Evil" member Iran of your intentions to attack the Taliban / Bridas well before 9-11, and not notify the citizens of this nation. That matter was reported on June 26, 2001 in India newspapers.

22. I demand to know the exact date that the first meeting, first page of the Patriot Act was started by your administration.

23. I demand to know why it is you, your backers, certain Democrats that apparently "hate our freedoms" more than these purported GWOT Islamic fundamentalists, hence the Patriot Act that treats all Americans with the same degree of contempt and disdain you treat all non-wealthy Americans.

24. I demand to know why Homeland Security is protecting this government and not protecting this nation.

25. I demand to know why any dissent or objections to your Orwellian, imperialistic, pro-corporate agenda is referred to the Homeland Security Counter-Terrorism Division.

26. I demand to know why you defile everything you touch and try to twist it into something that is pro-Bush Backers and anti-American citizens and then try to alter our rights as Americans via Patriot Act measures
that are designed to force America into submission and does nothing to protect this nation, only this government.

27. I demand to know why your administration is planning a "pro-Bush Pioneers pharmaceutical program" derived from TMAP (Texas Medical Algorithm Project) and PENNMAP (Tom Ridge, Pennsylvania) to have Americans tested under guidelines prepared by your Bush Pioneers and force psychotropic drugs on Americans.

28. I demand to know why your administration keeps injecting our troops with an anthrax vaccine known to be deadly and harmful to the health of our soldiers and now apparently wish to inject that into all Americans under Project BioShield and martial law. Is that why you have no concern whatsoever for the 3 million jobs lost, for between your TMAP lunacy and Project BioShield lunacy, well over 3 million Americans could perish if the same statistical rates hit the general population as has hit our military? Can you explain away Holocaust with "brilliant strategy policy" driven by unmitigated greed?

29. I demand to know why Li Ka-shing was denied Global Crossing on national security grounds (very public) yet allow him in the back door in Savi Technology (not disclosed), the RFID technology company that is purportedly protecting our ports from insertion of a nuclear bomb into this nation via "ocean going containers". How many doors are left wide open by your administration in this GWOT Fable?

30. I demand to know why you search the world for mythical terrorists and cannot find robber barons and financial terrorist right under your nose. That many of them are Bush Pioneers and even backers of the Democratic Party, and have plundered the investors, workers and citizens of this nation, is very apparent to Americans and not very pro-family on your part.

Christians do not lie, Mr. Bush, for that is an affront to God. A Christian would not willfully mislead this nation, nor send our troops into Harm's Way for a lie while your wealthy contributors take over a $9.6 trillion oil, $3.0 trillion natural gas deal and already maneuvering for Africa. You are proving to the world that you are terrified of the truth and have impeded every investigation into the truth.

Your actions prove that you are not an upstanding Christian, nor are you a Conservative Republican worthy of that designation.

Your position as President does not make you unaccountable to the citizens of this nation, nor does it entitle you to act as a tyrant, an emperor, or serving only those Americans that dole out money for your political ambitions and agendas. I see no "stewardship" in your conduct whatsoever.

You have "Mission Accomplished" three times - the removal of Taliban / Bridas to control that pipeline, radically escalated the price of oil and gas for some of your major backers, and the death and maiming of many due to your lies. Your "Iraq Strategery" makes perfect sense to me, since all of you needed

a diversion away from Afghanistan, the Caspian Basin and what you did to Bridas Corporation to get control of that $9.6 trillion in oil, $3
trillion in natural gas.

Go back home and wrap yourself in the flag of Texas and the shame you alone are responsible for creating. Your resume is your doing and yours alone.

If you were running against me this year, you would not have the guts to stay on the stage in a debate with me.

Shame on all of you, both sides of the aisle that have lied to America and gotten so many killed and maimed for a lie, and no, I am not an antiwar person. Just adamantly opposed to what you stand for, for that is lower than Clinton on his worst day.

Sincerely,

Karl W. B. Schwarz

President, Chief Executive Officer
Patmos Nanotechnologies, LLC

END INCLUSION:

just curious. Wondering if you could shed some light shed on the subject...the validity of it...

you know complicit congress and all, murder for oil, that kind of thing, thanks.

yes, I know what a futures market is, yours just dropped substantially.

.

June 10, 2002
N. KOREANS TALK OF BABY KILLINGS
By JAMES BROOKE

On a cold March day, the bleak monotony of a North Korean prison work detail was broken when a squad of male guards arrived and herded new women prisoners together. One by one, they were asked if they were pregnant.

''They took them away in a car, and then forcibly gave them abortion shots,'' Song Myung Hak, 33, a former prisoner, recalled in a interview here about the day two years ago when six pregnant prisoners were taken from his work unit in the Shinuiju Provincial Detention Camp. ''After the miscarriage shots, the women were forced back to work.''

More and more escapees from North Korea are asserting that forced abortions and infanticide are the norm in North Korean prisons, charges the country's official Korean Central News Agency has denounced as ''a whopping lie.''

In 2000 and 2001, China deported thousands of North Korean refugees, with many ending up in North Korean prison camps. People who later managed to escape again, to China and South Korea, say that prisoners discovered to be pregnant were routinely forced to have abortions. If babies were born alive, they say, guards forced prisoners to kill them.

Earlier defectors from North Korea say that the prohibition on pregnancy in prisons dates back at least to the 1980's, and that forced abortions or infanticide were the rule. Until recently, though, instances of pregnancy in the prisons were rare.

China's deportations of housands of illegal migrants from North Korean in recent years has resulted in a sharp increase in the number of pregnant women ending up in North Korean prisons. Defectors, male and female, are reviled as traitors and counterrevolutionaries when they are returned to North Korea. But women who have become pregnant, especially by Chinese men, face special abuse.

''Several hundred babies were killed last year in North Korean prisons,'' said Willy Fautre, director of Human Rights Without Frontiers, a private group based in Brussels. Mr. Fautre said that over the last 18 months, he and his volunteers had interviewed 35 recent escapees from North Korean camps.

Of the 35, he said, 31 said they had witnessed babies killed by abandonment or being smothered with plastic sheets. Two defectors later described burying dead babies, and two said they were mothers who saw their newborns put to death.

''This is a systematic procedure carried out by guards, and the people in charge of the prisons -- these are not isolated cases,'' Mr. Fautre said in a telephone interview. ''The pattern is to identify women who are pregnant, so the camp authorities can get rid of the babies through forced abortion, torture or very hard labor. If they give birth to a baby alive, the general policy is to let the baby die or to help the baby die with a plastic sheet.''

Lee Soon Ok, who worked as an accountant for six years at Kaechon political prison, recalled in an interview that she twice saw prison doctors kill newborn babies, sometimes by stepping on their necks.

With virtually no medical care available for prisoners, surgical abortions were not an option. Ms. Lee, 54 and an economic researcher in Seoul, said: ''Giving birth in prison is 100 percent prohibited. That is why they kill those babies.''

Ms. Lee, who has written a book about her prison experiences, seeks to focus attention on North Korea's prison system. On May 2, she was one of three North Korean defectors who testified on human rights abuses at a hearing of the House International Relations Committee.

On Jan. 19, North Korea's official news agency said the charges by Human Rights Without Borders that ''unborn and newly born babies are being killed in concentration camps'' were ''nothing but a plot deliberately hatched by it to hurl mud'' at North Korea. Since then, accusations of baby killing in North Korean prisons have increased.

They were featured in February at a human rights conference on North Korea, in Tokyo, and in March the claims were included for the first time in the State Department's annual human rights report on North Korea. They were raised in April by European Union delegates to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and in May by a former North Korean prisoner who testified before a House committee.

North Korea's mission to the United Nations did not return telephone messages about the charges. But on May 9, at the United Nations conference on children in New York, the North Korean delegate said his nation regarded each child as a ''king of the country.''

But recent interviews with seven defectors now living in the Seoul area provided a detailed and different picture of North Korean prison camps.

All of the recent defectors except one, Mr. Song, allowed publication of only their family names, which are common Korean surnames. These four said they feared reprisals against relatives in the North. Two defectors, who had escaped almost a decade ago after working in the prison camp system, allowed their full names to be used.

The defectors' names and phone numbers were supplied by Human Rights Without Borders. They were interviewed individually, in their homes, without human rights or government officials present. South Korea's government, seeking to avoid conflict with the North, discourages defectors from speaking out.

In her Seoul apartment, Mrs. Lee, 64 and no relation to Lee Song Ok, said she was still haunted by memories of prison after being deported from China in 2000.

Mrs. Lee who is the widow of a North Korean general, recalled thinking that she had won an easy job in the clinic after arriving on June 14, 2000, at the Pyongbuk Provincial Police Detention Camp. Then, she said, she saw a prison doctor give injections to eight pregnant women to induce labor.

''The first time, a baby was born, I didn't know there was a wooden box for throwing babies away,'' Mrs. Lee recalled. ''I got the baby and tried to wrap it in clothes. But the security people told me to get rid of it in the wooden box.''

That day, she said, she delivered six dead babies and two live ones. She said she watched a doctor open the box and kill the two live babies by piercing their skulls with surgical scissors. The next day, she said, she helped to deliver 11 dead babies from 20 pregnant women who had been injected to induce delivery.

In 2000, from March to May, 8,000 North Korean defectors, overwhelmingly women, were deported from China to North Korea during a crackdown on prostitution and forced marriages, according to D. K. Park, a retired United Nations worker who works with Human Rights Without Frontiers along the border between North Korea and China.

''They blame North Korean women for having Chinese babies and just kill the babies,'' Mr. Song, now a college student in Seoul, said of his time in Shinuiju prison in 2000.

Mrs. Park, 41, no relation to the rights worker, said she was among those caught in a Chinese sweep two years ago, ending up in a work camp in Onsong, North Korea. She was nine months pregnant at the time.

''One day, they gave me a big injection,'' she said. ''In about 30 minutes I went into labor. The baby I delivered at the detention camp was already dead.''

For babies born alive in prison cells, defectors say, male guards threaten to beat women prisoners if they do not smother newborns with pieces of wet plastic that are thrown between the bars.

''Guards told the prisoners to kill the babies,'' recalled Miss Lee, a 33-year-old vocational student who is unrelated to the accountant and the general's widow. She said that in 2000, as she was moved among four camps, she saw four babies smothered at the Onsong District Labor Camp in April, and three smothered at the Chongjin Provincial Police Detention Camp in late May.

''The oldest woman in the cell did it reluctantly,'' she said. ''The young women were scared. The mothers would just cry in silence.''

Miss Lee, a former factory worker who survived in China through marriage to an ethnic Korean Chinese, estimated that 70 percent of the people she saw deported from China in the spring of 2000 were women, and about one-third were pregnant.

In the summer of 2001, a 28-year-old former North Korean border guard surnamed Kim was imprisoned at the same Chongjin detention camp. There, he buried three newborn babies wrapped in ''blue-tinted plastic bags.'' He recalled, ''The prisoners were ordered to get the babies coming from the mothers and to kill them.''

His wife, a 25-year-old day-care worker in Seoul, said in the same interview at their apartment here that during her 10 weeks at the same camp last summer, she counted seven babies born and smothered in nearby cells.

The current wave of reported baby killings has nationalistic overtones.

''The guards would scream at us: 'You are carrying Chinese sperm, from foreign countries. We Koreans are one people, how dare you bring this foreign sperm here,' '' Miss Lee, the vocational student, recalled. ''Most of the fathers were Chinese.''

But two decades before pregnant refugees were forced home from China, infanticide was standard practice in the North Korean prison system, a former guard said in an interview near here.

''Ever since Kim Il Sung's time, it has been a North Korean regulation to prevent women from delivering babies in prisons,'' said Ahn Myung Chul, a 33-year-old bank employee, who worked as a guard from 1987 to 1994 in four North Korean camps. Mr. Ahn, who also trained guards, added in an interview: ''If babies have to be delivered, babies have to be killed. The trainers told military personnel that this is the procedure.''

Foreign journalists traveling inside North Korea are restricted to tightly guided tours, and requests by the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit prisons are routinely rejected.

''Those of us inside the country have no knowledge of the existence of prison camps or practices inside them,'' Richard Bridle, the Unicef representative in North Korea's capital, Pyongyang, said by telephone. Asked about infanticide policies, he said: ''The only stories we get are from outside. There is no information circulating inside'' North Korea.

North Korea's prison camp system currently holds about 200,000 people in conditions so brutal that an estimated 400,000 people have died in prison since 1972, according to the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, a private group based in Washington.

''Nothing would surprise in accounts of this kind,'' Selig S. Harrison, the director of the national security program at the Center for International Policy, in Washington, and an expert on North Korea. Mr. Harrison, a seven-time visitor to Pyongyang, added: ''North Korea is a repressive, repugnant, totalitarian state, and it certainly uses repugnant methods in its prison system and in its concentration camps.''

Rev,

If you think that this, or any, American adminsitration is morally equivalent to that of N Korea, then I suggest you ponder the question of why people are desperately trying to emmigrate here; while people are risking their lives to get out of N Korea. Again - I think the best thing to do is ignore Kim Jong Il...

If you want 100% purity of motive, morality and forethought before anyone can take action against another, then you will be stopping the actions of every single not-for-profit organization in the world. Not to mention the UN, Physicians sans Frontiers, The Red Cross etc....

There are relativisms in this world. It is a fact.

No one I know of excuses America's bad behavior. It is simply a question of one's personal views. [Want to be surprised.... I was AGAINST Gulf War I and demonstrated on my graduate school's campus.... I was none too popular...] We have the right to exercise our views at the ballot box. Do the N Koreans have the same right?

Tell you what.... interview ANY N Korean living in the United States or any other democracy..... ask them about moral relativism and where they think each of the two countries stack up. You can Google it easy.... I have already read two such interviews...

In 1996 ABN Amro purchase The Chicago Corporation and Citifutures.

I was hired by ABN to bring the three entities together to form ABN AMro's European futures operations. Yes, I am an expert in futures and derivatives....

If you had turned in that paper to me as a student answering the question "What is the futures market?", I would have given you an "F".

Further.... Bridas is an Argentinian Corporation. It is Unocal that is the subject (wrongly) of the conspiracy theorists and its supposed linkage to the W Administration. Bridas actually lost out to Unocal after we removed the Taliban and sued Unocal in court - they lost...

You are so ignorant, such a complete and utter fool, that you cannot even get your conspiracy theory straight.

Bridas Corporation.

Personal relationship with Cheney, and the president.

Futures market is a commodities marketplace....that's what WallStreet, Nikei, blah blah blah...

buying realestate that is near a major intersection, is playing the futures market place...

conspiring to control oil in a region, is playing the "futures market,"

investing money, betting that something is going to happen, is playing the futures market...

playing the futures market, could be buying gold which is used as an economic indicator in many stock investing algorithms...if you know the algorithms being used you can play them...

super computers used in place of insider information is still _unfair_

isn't it.

.

Mr. Arkin,

The danger of unmanned war technology, patented mostly by the United States is already on the market. I saw a picture of the unmanned fighter prototype that will soon be in production.

I also listened to a speaker some time ago, I wish that I could recall his name, who talked about dangers of the depersonalization of war, via the use of unmanned technology.

He concluded that it would result in humans finding it so much easier to kill their fellow human beings. It will be even worse than what we do now, when we use various epitahs and slurs to dehumanize, and refer to our opponents.

For now only will we be killing a madman, warlord, terrorist, insurgent..., we will never have to witness their deaths or their sufferings.

It is frightening to me that America again on the march to develop and perfect just such technologies. Soon wars will be fought at home. If America could only put as much effort in to seeking peace, as it does in expending time and resources to find new ways of annihilating people, the world could be a safer place.

Blame everyone else in the world, and tell about all of their faults, but the world knows that the U.S.A. is just as egregious as any other nation or person.

We are heading towards a time when people will simply disappear without a trace of their DNA. And you know whats bad about that, just as G.I.S. and night vision eventually reached the public, the new technologies will eventually fall into the hands, as well, of American Civilians.

And we all know that American Civilians will not have a problem using the new technologies on their fellow citizens.

Perhaps we should just gather all nations of the world to a place like Megiddo or Wyoming maybe, there is nothing there anyway right? We will sit out on the slopes, like they did during the Civil War, and watch the contestants shooting their firecrackers and nukes at each other.

We can have popcorn or something like that, while we observe the destruction of most of mankind. However, once all of the riff raff murderers are gone, the rest of us will start over.

We will call it The Beginning or some catchy phrase like that.

1. You obviously have little, or no, knowledge of the futures market.

2. The article posted answered your question in total.

Namron,

America is listening via its intermediaries and emissaries. All of what you have listed is, common knowledge, and what Kim Jon Il has done is still the moral equivalent of what America has done at home to its own people, too bad America is dismissive about that part of its own reality, not to mention the unjustified murdering rampage that is going on in Iraq.

Why do you folks keep excusing America's bad behavior, and come down so hard on everyone else. If Saddam, Kim John Il and others are Mad Men, what does that make the murdering President, George Bush of the United States?
If the shoe were on the other foot, just as you are saying about Kim John Il, we would be sending in the American Killing Machine to take care of him. When it comes to Bush and America, there is rationalization after rationalization.

On the Fourth of July, Kim John Il shot off a few missles, with the intention of not hurting anyone. On that same day America still occupied a sovereign nation, of which it had dispatched its government, murdered, maimed and displaced, God only knows how many people.

And besides the genocide that occured during the beginning of the American blitzkrieg, we don't know how many other women have been raped, or how many Iraqi
And, on the same day that Kim fired off his missiles, America continued murdering people in Iraq.

When America can get it straight, then tell me about the wrongs of Kim Jong Il. I will never understand why Americans do that, well I really do understand. There is such a thing as blind patriotism, and there is also such a thing as 'being blind'.

had any conference calls with the president

a bout the stock market lately?

I'm okay with my posts,

I'm trying to expose a truth that you're trying to hide...

I like it that you're being reasonably cogent that when cornered you act like what you are a scared puppy...

want to call _me_ trash?

who cares, it's only a word...unless you are trash...did I hit a tender spot?

do you _feel_ like a liar? that's what I see....

blow me out of the water? how about removing the "out of the water" from the previous statement, that's closer to the truth.

.

addressed an issue "in the vicinity," what you've said in essence is that no BIG OIL COMPANIES will not make money until Iraq is stable...

that is bullsh it....you can pricefix, you can leverage the market, you can play the market and you can invest in the Military Industrial Complex....there's lots of money to be made in wartime...

maybe you weren't at the recent AFCEA conference in Washington?

you're still personal friends with the president, and spinning the cabal cover story...in support of the fairytale that it's about patriotism/human-rights or some such doggerel...

regarding money-to-be-made,
it's a form of futures market, you can sell shares in something that is still in pre-construction phase, companies do it all the time, and even get profits from it, don't they?

you're simply trying to couch everything that others do as an

incentive to intervene, or justify...you are on a personal basis with the president...

address the Bridas accusation, about the Trans Afghanistan Pipeline being stolen from the Bridas Corporation and the Taliban.

address the fact that 6 OIL COMPANIES were already signed up to pump Iraqi oil before

they, the Iraqi citizens, had their first vote.

I'm disappointed in you that with the power available to you that you insist on bending over to hurt people.

.

.

.

To "Namron please"...

After you read the article below - which blows your oil company theory sky high.... ask yourself who is trash and who is the ignorant fool? Or is it one and the same person?

"You're trash"

oooooo shivers......

FYI - I never called on W to intervene in N Korea. I think we should just ignore them. Kim Jong Il has proved that the only people he can harm is his own citizens.

as for your oil company issue....

Iraq is one of several nations in the ME that gets its primary cashflow for GDP from the production of crude oil. I would think that keeping the oil flowing is somewhat important for the Iraqis. However, you assertion is misguided concerning oil profits in Iraq for the oil companies...

Oil companies reluctant to invest in Iraq
JIM KRANE
Associated Press
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - In Iraq's peaceful north, a trio of foreign oil companies have begun classic wildcat exploration, hoping a gusher of black gold will bring them untold wealth.

But the companies are little-known outside the industry - something that's unlikely to change until security improves. And the deals they have cut with the Kurdish regional administration bypassing the central government leaves them in a murky legal situation.

More than three years after the U.S.-led invasion, no big oil company has stepped forward to spend the huge sums necessary to tap Iraq's giant oil reserves and get crude flowing and revenues pouring into Iraq's government to help pay for food, jobs and even medical care.

"It will take a lot more to bring in the big guys," said Sharif Ghalib, a senior analyst with Energy Intelligence Research in New York.

None is likely to start prospecting until company chiefs feel reasonably assured that their workers won't be sent home in coffins and that their investments have legal protection that won't be taken away by a new government.

"We are interested and they are interested. But we need those conditions in place to take it to the next level," Shell Oil Co. President John Hofmeister told The Associated Press. "It's too soon to make a judgment on how close we are. I suspect we could be a few years away."

The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is eager to get them in quickly. Even with the resources of major oil companies, it would take at least five years to dramatically boost production and refining.

"Of course we want major foreign oil companies to come into Iraq. We need funds and we need technology," said Assem Jihad, spokesman for the Oil Ministry, which has called for up to $20 billion in investment.

But big companies like Shell and ConocoPhillips won't budge until Iraq has a law governing oil-sector investment and figures out just who owns the country's underground oil.

The constitution is frustratingly unclear on whether mineral wealth is controlled by the central government or the largely Shiite and Kurdish regions where it is found.

No less important, Iraq has no legal guidelines for foreign investment in the oil sector. Al-Maliki's government hopes to issue a hydrocarbons law this year that sets parameters for foreign involvement in oil fields, refineries and pipelines, Jihad said.

"The majors are especially hesitant about the constitution. It's so ambiguous," said Neil Patrick, an Iraq analyst with the Economist Intelligence Unit in London. "It's still not clear who they deal with and who makes the decisions."

The Kurdistan regional government, for example, views the legal gray area as an opening to bring in foreign companies to develop fields, over the objections of the national government in Baghdad.

Exploration by Norway's DNO, Canada's Heritage Oil and Britain's Sterling Energy is soon to start or already under way, with DNO reporting a modest discovery.

Al-Maliki appears intent on quashing such regional claims on oil resources and bringing them under Baghdad's control. But to do that, the Shiite prime minister will have to alienate key Shiite and Kurdish allies.

That is a tall order, said Muhammad-Ali Zainy, an energy economist at the Center for Global Energy Studies in London.

"I sympathize with him," Zainy said. "To come up with a truly national plan, he has to rid himself of the political parties surrounding him - including his own party."

An even bigger worry is security. The government claims U.S. and Iraqi troops can protect foreign oil companies from insurgent attacks, but analysts note rebels routinely sabotage oil infrastructure.

Some oil majors would probably be willing to work in Iraq before the insurgency is quelled - if Iraq creates a clear legal framework. But big oil would probably follow the lead of the three smaller companies by limiting its presence to the safety of the northern Kurdish lands.

That won't do much to quench global oil demand. Kurdish fields aren't nearly as lucrative as Iraq's giant southern oil fields, home to around 85 percent of the country's 115 billion barrels of crude reserves.

In the meantime, Iraq's hobbled oil sector limps along.

The Oil Ministry announced last month that crude production had risen to 2.5 million barrels a day, its highest level since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. But the country's No. 2 oil shipping terminal, on the Persian Gulf at Khor al-Amaya, caught fire and remained closed last week.

"This chaotic situation will not continue forever," Zainy said. "There will be a solution."

---

Associated Press writer Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed to this report.

here's your answer:

"
Koreans are playing for their bank accounts in taiwan which got frozen.These are the money which they earned by selling missiles and scuds to countries in middleast,pakistan,myanmar etc.USA has to understand that this countrys exports are arms and missiles and if this is going to be choked it will retaliate in its own logic.i am sure a nuclear blast is not far away.

Posted by: captainjohann
"

The Missile Defense System is a relic of the Cold War. It is designed to protect one state from a missile attack by another state. None of the "Axis of Evil" can successfully attack the U.S. Because of our size, they can hurt us, but not destroy us. Our capacity to launch a second strike against them means, that their countries would cease to exist. This fact deters other states from attacking the U.S. With larger states, the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction comes into play. In other words, if one large state attacks another large state, the second strike would assure the mutual destruction of both states. There are no winners in nuclear warfare.
Besides being a form of corporate welfare, The Bush Administration has a businessman's idea that technology is cheaper than labor. For the Military, it mean if you have more bang for the buck, then you don't need so many soldiers.
The basic problem with that theory is that to be effective, technology must be employed against massed formations in a conventional war. We are now dealing with insurgents who do not mass, but blend in with the population. Dealing with an insurgency is labor intensive! It demands a lot of boots on the ground for additional security, good intelligence, and, most of all, programs that benefits all the people in the country. You can win a conventional war very quickly, but, to win the peace, you need a Marshall Plan, ready to go, to prevent the rise of an insurgency.
As social programs have little attraction for Conservatives, conventional missiles without the labor costs are attractive because you can punish a country without occupying it. You get more bang for the buck.
However, as we have seen in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, insurgencies or terrorism have low tech methods of dealing with foreign invasions with less troops than the invading armies. They do not massed, and they can attack individual parts of a massed formation. Technology has very little value in such circumstances. There is no deterance or mutually assured destruction. We have 9/11, along with the Madrid and London bombings. There was no state supporting those actions, and no missiles in the world will stop those kinds of attacks. Inclusive ideas and peace agreements are the only way to bring these conflicts to an end.

you're simply trying to couch everything that others do as an

incentive to intervene...you are on a personal basis with the president...

address the Bridas accusation,

address the fact that 6 OIL COMPANIES were already signed up to pump Iraqi oil before

they had their first vote.

who are you? someone concerned about United States Citizens or someone involved in making sure that the cabal

of the Military Industrial Complex, Complicit Congress, children of the Rich and Famous,

and Nixonian Democrats and Republicans finally get the coup that they wanted?

////

you're trash.

.

If the NKs really start to develop nukes and delivery systems, can we not annihilate them? I'll even throw in northeast China for fun.

North Korea has got to be at least in the top five or ten worst countries to be born in, but so what? I don't know anyone from there, and I'm not actively seeking their acquaintance. With all of the misery on the globe, liberating a bunch of NKs is very low on the cost-effectiveness list of activities we should consider.

Dinking around with another country because of its politics rather than its external actions will only land us in more expensive, hot water. The present adventure in Iraq is probably going to result in loss of value for the US dollar.

Rev,

"I suppose that Kim Jong Il surmised, that if that is what it takes in order to get someone to listen, then we will have to show our power."

Listen to what?!

Kim jong Il built a nuclear power plant that his country could never use. He took money that could have fed his people and built a missile program.

N Korea is, without ANY doubt, the most oppressed nation on earth. Cannabalism is not uncommon in N Korea.

There is only ONE reason that Kim Jong Il wants to unilaterally negotiate with a power halfway around the world...

He wants us to sign a check to him. He doesn't want to negotiate with China or S Korea... He wants to negotiate with us because he wants $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

Check out the Amnesty International website about N Korea and tell me that he does not have it in his own power to alleviate the suffering of his own people.

Arkan overstates the potential use of conventional SLBM/ICBMs, for one practical reason; cost. Given the huge cost of these missiles, a few might be fielded for hitting time-sensitive, high value targets, but you aren't going to see enough to conduct large scale bombardment. The advantage is of course time; you can hit anywhere in the world with an ICBM in 30 minutes, half that for a SLBM launched from the Western Pacific or Indian Ocean. Accuracy is also extremely impressive, even with a conventional reentry vehicle. You really don't need an explosive RV, the kinetic impact is about the same as a 2,000 lb. high explosive aircraft bomb. The down sides, which Arkan fails to mention, are cost and the issue of warning other nuclear powers of conventional missile launches, and the possible resulting sub-orbital over flights of nuclear countries (Russia and China) to the target. And by the way, I've actually launched an ICBM from Vandenberg AFB, so I have some expertise in this area.

As far as North Korea goes, sure their program isn't much to write home about now. What happens the day they have a successful test launch? All they need is to range the West Coast of the US, and a CEP of 5 miles or less with a nuke to obtain a meaningful counter-value capability. Given enough time, money, and commitment, the day is coming when they will succeed.

A Farmer,

Not to monopolize all of the space, however, I recall a farmer who drove his tractor and parked it in the Reflecting Pool in Washington D.C. a year or so ago. What did this man, from North Carolina I believe, have in common with Kim Jon Il?

It would appear that this American farmer had reached the end of his rope, given that he felt that his own Government was not taking the issues of the woebegone American farmer, very seriously.

When he lied and said that he had a bomb on board, people listened. Did he get what he wanted? Some would argue, no. I would argue that he was listened to. By the way, was he a terrorist?

Isn't it a shame that it takes money, weapons, status, property or some desperate act, like a tumble off of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, as some have done, or the launching of a missile, taking incendiary devices to school or saying words like, I have a bomb, just to get people listen to you.

The nice thing about Mr. Il is that he did it in a way that nobody got injured; I would say that was pretty decent.

Erm, and how many men, women and children havs the United States of America put to death this year alone?

And who is the Madman? And who is a part of the Axis-of-Evil? Makes you wonder, huh?

You don't have to believe in God to be civil. All it take is a heart. I heard where a man told another, if I ever need a heart transplant, I want your heart. The other man asked, why my heart? The first man replied, because I want a heart that has never been used.

It would appear that there are a lot of those scattered around the world and right here in My Country 'tis of Thee!

America's idea of political discourse, if for its opponents to simply do what America tells them to do. I don't blame Kim John for not yielding, I WOULD NOT EITHER!

The Rev

Just a personal opinion, but it seems this is just another indication of our (U.S.) deteriorating reputation with our global neighbors - it is SO sad to know we are the ones being 'isolated' from the world by our administration's actions. North Korea has nothing on us in this area!

In retrospect, the Clinton cruise-missile pinpricks seem like a good way to keep an enemy nation in check without "boots on the ground."

[BTW: do you have any idea how disgusting it is to be one of those boots, stuck for months in the trash hole that is Saudi Arabia?]

Cruise-missile diplomacy keeps your ground troops free of major entanglement so that they may be used more effectively than they are at present.

William

I don't know if YOU know what you want to say. But at least "Missiles" are in the title so its current.

Perhaps more relevant examples of robots or missiles replacing men are Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPV)s or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)s.

Anyway for continuing serious discussion on North Korea and its implications see http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com

Pete

Man's Inhumanity To Man,

According to the late philosopher Hegel, the above is a result of, 'ownership of property and the pursuit of power through class struggle'.

To add to that, isn't it a shame that you have to have power, with some individuals and nations, in order to get them to listen to you.

I suppose that Kim Jong Il surmised, that if that is what it takes in order to get someone to listen, then we will have to show our power. And his notion was not that far-fetched. The same has worked for the U.S.A., China, Russia and others for years.

In the absence of political discourse, it would appear that Mr. Il, was left without any other recourse.

How much progress have we seen, since Olduvai? The only diferrence, it would appear, is that the big players no longer use rocks!

Koreans are playing for their bank accounts in taiwan which got frozen.These are the money which they earned by selling missiles and scuds to countries in middleast,pakistan,myanmar etc.USA has to understand that this countrys exports are arms and missiles and if this is going to be choked it will retaliate in its own logic.i am sure a nuclear blast is not far away.