Varifrank: And I was in such a good mood too...

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And I was in such a good mood too...

So, How do I know with absolute certainty that any alien civilization that is quietly observing us from afar is not likely to visit us anytime soon?

Because when I go to Google news and look up the top stories I see this:

The number 1 story according to Google is that Charles Windsor, the “Prince of Wales’ is about to marry the woman of his dreams. Luckily for the human gene pool he’s marrying a 60-ish dowager so there’s no chance of his producing more goofy eared offspring, so we can thank our lucky stars for that. Dianas boys seem fine to me and if Harry were to "accidentally" push his Dad down the stairs one rainy evening, I dont think anyone would be too upset....

So if that’s the number 1 most important story according to Google. What could possibly be Number 2?

The Number 2 story is that North Korea just flipped the stink finger up at the rest of the world, putting us all in a genuinely dangerous situation. North Korea said, “ Hey everybody! We already got Nukes So what is there to talk about?”. They actually used the word “Nukes” in their official transmission, making everyone, myself included scratch their head and wonder just what the hell is going on.

Just so were all on the same page of sheet music, North Korea has Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles, and now they just said that they actually have Nuclear weapons, and to make everything just that much more interesting, they said they weren’t going to talk to any of their neighbors about them.

This is bad. Really, really bad.

I hate it when you’re playing poker and you’re only holding a pair and someone calls your bluff and that’s just what happened. We’ve been warning of “dire consequences” for the last four years. We told them to get into 6 part talks with China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and the US, “or else”.

And now the North Koreans just said “Or else what?”

So, if we do nothing, the world gets more dangerous because there are only two things to do with nuclear weapons, use them or sell them. Who they gonna sell them to? Take a guess? Who’s left since we eliminated their ready-made markets in Iraq, Libya and Pakistan?

That’s right, our pals in Iran.

And if we “do something” what’s that going to be? North Korea is not Iraq. North Koreas population can best be thought of this way:

People in North Korea exist for no other purpose than to serve the state. There is no free will, only sacrifice to the Dear Leader.

If that’s not bad enough it gets worse. North Korea has shamed its closest partner, China. China by the way is the group who brought us North Korea in the first place, but frankly the North Koreans have long since worn out their welcome. North Korea has always told China that they didn’t have nuclear weapons. But now it turns out that they do. China has lost face. This is a very bad thing for someone to do. Its especially bad when its your best friend and pal who did it.

Let’s kick it up a notch. North Korea has basically put the economic stability of China at risk. Chinas biggest trading partner is the US. There is almost nothing that North Korea can do from here on out that will not have a deep negative impact on that relationship. It will be tough on us if that trade with China were to stop, but it will be devastating to China. Wait let me be clear, it will be devastating on the party bosses who are growing rich on the development of trade in their country. A Chinese government that craves order above all other things is not going to want to have this problem on its horizon at all. North Korea cannot oppose the US without impacting the ability for China to sell things in the US. Without the influx of cash in to the Chinese economy, it will be in chaos.

So far this evening, I have seen official word from both China and Russia to the North Koreans telling them to get back to the negotiating table. I suspect that the South Koreans and Japanese will have made statements overnight to the same effect.

But let’s be serious here. What is there left to talk about? North Korea has now admitted to having nuclear weapons. Does anyone think that they will give them up just by our all sitting around a table and talking to them? These guys are still officially at war with us. If they haven’t resolved that in both fact and deed, what chance do we have to remove the manhood from this little bastard? Is it at all possible that we will we just look the other way? Hardly. North Korea will surely try to sell them to our enemies, if they haven’t done so already.

We’ve crossed into very dark territory here. It reminds me of what we did in the 1940s with Japan with the oil embargo. We tried to force Japan to leave China by taking their oil away. Don’t get me wrong, in my opinion it was the right thing to do. Where we went wrong was not recognizing that the Japanese would NEVER back down and as a result, by setting the embargo in place, it was only a matter of time before we went to war. We should not have been surprised. We were, and as a result, millions of people died.

It is my opinion, at 1:00 PST On February 11 2005, The War Clock has been wound up and is now ticking away.

There is still some doubt in my mind on which country it will be that first crosses into North Korea, The US or the Chinese. It is my opinion at this point that this can only go one way. North Korea, more specifically the person of Kim Jong Il will have to be removed.

China may have a chance to decapitate the North Korean government since they still have easy access and human assets in place. We have none of those options. There is literally only one thing we can do.

That one thing is something very dreadful indeed.

This is not a case of a simple sniper bullet on a premium target. Kim Jong Il is more like a religious leader, on the model of Emperor Hirohito than a simple head of state. If you kill him, the religion goes on. You still have 22 million people who exist only to serve the state to deal with. And in my opinion they will fight to the death the way the Imperial Japanese did 60 years ago. Only this time, they have Nukes too.

Someday in the future we will get to read the true story of what went on behind the scenes in the “War on Terror”. But we can get a glimpse now at what appears to be going on behind the scenes.

Excerpt:

“Pritchard and Einhorn said the North Korean statement may have less to do with Bush administration behavior on the nuclear issue — which has been relatively moderate and diplomatic — than with a trip to Asia last week by a senior National Security Council official, Michael Green, bearing a presidential letter whose contents have not been disclosed.

Green is reported to have presented evidence to Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo that North Korean uranium hexafluoride, or UF6, a chemical used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons use, was found in Libya.

According to U.S. officials and others, the outside of a cylinder of UF6 gas found during inspection of Libya's nuclear facilities turned out to be contaminated with plutonium that matched the profile of plutonium from North Korea's Yongbyon plant.
U.S. officials have long suspected that North Korea may have one or more secret uranium enrichment facilities, perhaps hidden in caves. One official said the intelligence experts who analyzed the UF6 were "pretty certain" of their conclusions and that "our experts are really careful after previous mistakes" — a reference to intelligence failures concerning the Iraqi weapons program.

A delegation of senior Chinese negotiators was scheduled to visit North Korea shortly after Wednesday's Lunar New Year and might have been preparing to confront Pyongyang with the evidence that they had exported gas whose only purpose would be to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

The North Koreans may have thought that "the noose is going to close on us, we better act now," Einhorn said.”

So now it seems the victory over Libya counts more than we may have realized. And you remember the name Yongbyon don’t you? That’s where the mysterious train explosion involving Kim Jong Il happened a while back. Coincidence? Maybe.

So far, we’ve been pretty lucky. Let us all pray that our luck holds out a little bit longer.

Posted @ February 11, 2005 01:26 AM

Yeah... this is bad. Doesn't N. Korea have the largest standing army in the world? I don't think we really want to go to war there if we can help it... But I don't trust China to take of Kim Jung Il for us.

It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

Posted by: Curtis at February 11, 2005 05:03 AM

I disagree with only on the sniper part. The people don't exist to serve the state, they exist to serve the dear leader Kim Jong-Il. Jonestown and Waco went down so badly because their leaders were there to direct things. If we attacked NoKo conventionally, then every North Korean would die to defend their leader. What would happen if dear leader was gone? They wouldn't know what to do. Aside from the psychology of it all, their military doctrine, like that of all Stalinist states, despises personal initiative, prefering instead a "don't do anything unless you get orders" approach. Take out the top twenty or so generals, and no one will know what to do. The sad thing is, we might have to throw a few nukes around to take make sure we get Kim. And I find that option extremely distasteful.

Posted by: rbj at February 11, 2005 01:43 PM

While economic warfare can be just as devastating as the military kind, I hope that this particular crisis plays itself out in the boardrooms of China and North Korea and not in the war rooms.

Are we eventually looking at another 'greater east-Asian co-prosperity sphere' as a trading competitor? This time managed by the Chinese?

Posted by: trainer at February 12, 2005 09:13 AM