North Korea tested a nukeFollow

Rather small from what I read.

The size of the bomb is uncertain. South Korean reports put it as low as 550 tons of destructive power but Russia said it was between five and 15 kilotons. The Hiroshima bomb of 1945 was 12.5-15 kilotons. -- CTV.caMaybe and I'm in no way qualified to guess. On another forum, the feeling seemed to be that moving that much conventional explosive would be noticed by satellite and the most likely explanation was that this was a nuclear blast of some or fashion but I'd be out of my depth to debate the point.

Yeah, damn foreigners.

It's even like they have to live with the consequences of what the US government does or anything...

Bastards.

Fun Fact: The US is still legally at war with North Korea. An armistice was declared in 1953 but a treaty was never signed.

Just in case anyone was wondering.

I was wrong? I don't remember doing anything. Odd.

Irredeemable, yet still worth ******** about?

Good attitude though. Enjoy the show.

Maybe they need to Rock the Vote. Or Vote or Die. Or Vote Kim or Die. One of the three.

Ever consider that the "situation" really hasn't changed? The only difference is that today you *know* that it's fucked up, wheras in past years you were blissfully ignorant?

Just a thought. It just seems to me that a lot of people mistake the revelation/realization that something is screwed up for the actual ******** up itself. Can you honestly argue that had Gore won in 2000, or Kerry in 2004, that we'd not be sitting here discussing the ramifications of a NK nuclear test? I know it's popular to "blame everything on Bush", but that really seemms like a stretch given the history of NK's nuclear program.



Do you *really* think that had anything to do with NK's nuclear program? Let's recap. NK was sneaking uranium and plutonium out of its reactors back in the 90s. It specifically promised the Clinton administration that it wouldn't do that anymore if we helped them build a light water reactor. We can debate why they violated that agreement, but the fact is that they did. And they did so before Bush took office. You can't sanely blame NK's development of nuclear weapons on Bush. At best, you can blame Bush for the fact that they choose to openly declare that they had nukes and to test one.

But then that takes us back to a difference merely in knowing the situation. It does not actually change it at all. Head in sand and all of that. Personally, I'd rather we know then not, but that's just me...



Pray for a disaster to occur. Great plan!

Can you see the flaw in that approach?

Since the 80's, actually.If we're judging the history of N. Korea's nuclear program, we can't simply brush off the reasons why N. Korea was so willing to violate the agreement. Both sides violated the agreement and I don't think that you can accurately use it as a measure for how N. Korea would have reacted if we had at least held our end. Maybe the same, maybe different, maybe a much slower development.. who knows. At the very least, had we begun construction of the promised reactors back in the mid-90's, we would have had an immediate bargining chip to force N. Korea to allow the inspections they promised. And I'll place that decision onto the Clinton administration for not following through just as I'll place blame on the Bush administration for exacerbating the situation further.I'll agree to that. North Korea had an active nuclear program in the 1980's under Reagan & Bush Sr's watch. Clinton probably slowed it down some but failed to follow through. Bush undid what good Clinton did managed to accomplish and then threw additional brush on the fire by declaring N. Korea part of the Axis of Evil and then invading another "Axis" nation to overthrow its regime.

I'll repeat what I said before and ask what Bush planned to accomplish with that. There's at least a dozen reasons why no sane president would invade N. Korea militarily so (in my view) either Bush was obviously bluffing and proving himself to be a paper tiger or else trying to convince N. Korea that he was mentally unhinged enough to attack Korea.If it proves anything, it proves that N. Korea has now produced enough weapons to start using them for testing. If you only have one bomb put together, you don't use it to blow up a coal mine to see what happens. It also allows them to further refine their weapons development by seeing how the testing goes. It's not a big a moment as actually developing their first weapon but it is a significant moment.

Edited, Oct 9th 2006 at 4:12pm PDT by Jophiel

Um... In the very post I quoted earlier.



Sure looks like Abrya is blaming Bush's involvement in Iraq for NK's development of nukes.

I also recall someone else saying something about how if we'd not called them part of the "axis of evil", maybe it wouldn't have happened either.


But hey! No one's blaming Bush, right?...

Ambrya is still one more then "no one" Joph.


And in the context of a whole argument about how things could have been handled differently, I think mentioning that Bush's actions were "wrong" is still relevant. Several people kept talking about how "we" screwed up our foreign policy and that's why NK has nukes. Several other's pointed out how that's easy to say when you don't have an alternative solution.

Was anyone really not aware that this was yet another "Bush screwed it up! Well, Dem's don't have a better solution!" argument? Cause it sure looked that way to me...

Ah. So you ignored the direct quote in which I showed that in fact "someone" (as opposed to "no one") had blamed Bush for the current state of NK, and went off about the "also I recall" part of the post.

You're kidding right?

Um. Way to miss the forest for the trees there Joph.

Let's recap. When Git said:




He was wrong. Yes or no?

I noticed you didn't actually answer the question.

It's pretty simple. I made a statement. Git said I was wrong. I gave *two* different examples of how his statement was incorrect. Either of them is sufficient to disprove his statement. You proceeded to debate the weaker of the two statements I provided, but missed the point. If you can't show that *both* are incorrect, you aren't actually doing anything but pointlessly arguing for the sake of arguing.

The quote of Ambrya was my main counter to Git's statement. The "I also recall" bit was just added "fluff" to the main argument (and for Nobby's sake I didn't elaborate because it is a more involved "proof" and wasn't needed). That you choose to debate the fluff and not the quoted statement is typical.