N. Korea has nuclear missile capability to hit US territory

President Merkin Muffley: [to Kissoff] Hello?... Ah... I can't hear too well. Do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little?... Oh-ho, that's much better... yeah... huh... yes... Fine, I can hear you now, Dmitri... Clear and plain and coming through fine... I'm coming through fine, too, eh?... Good, then... well, then, as you say, we're both coming through fine... Good... Well, it's good that you're fine and... and I'm fine... I agree with you, it's great to be fine... a-ha-ha-ha-ha... Now then, Dmitri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb... The *Bomb*, Dmitri... The *hydrogen* bomb!... Well now, what happened is... ah... one of our base commanders, he had a sort of... well, he went a little funny in the head... you know... just a little... funny. And, ah... he went and did a silly thing... Well, I'll tell you what he did. He ordered his planes... to attack your country... Ah... Well, let me finish, Dmitri... Let me finish, Dmitri... Well listen, how do you think I feel about it?... Can you *imagine* how I feel about it, Dmitri?... Why do you think I'm calling you? Just to say hello?... *Of course* I like to speak to you!... *Of course* I like to say hello!... Not now, but anytime, Dmitri. I'm just calling up to tell you something terrible has happened... It's a *friendly* call. Of course it's a friendly call... Listen, if it wasn't friendly... you probably wouldn't have even got it... They will *not* reach their targets for at least another hour... I am... I am positive, Dmitri... Listen, I've been all over this with your ambassador. It is not a trick... Well, I'll tell you. We'd like to give your air staff a complete run-down on the targets, the flight plans, and the defensive systems of the planes... Yes! I mean i-i-i-if we're unable to recall the planes, then... I'd say that, ah... well, ah... we're just gonna have to help you destroy them, Dmitri... I know they're our boys... All right, well listen now. Who should we call?... *Who* should we call, Dmitri? The... wha-whe, the People... you, sorry, you faded away there... The People's Central Air Defense Headquarters... Where is that, Dmitri?... In Omsk... Right... Yes... Oh, you'll call them first, will you?... Uh-huh... Listen, do you happen to have the phone number on you, Dmitri?... Whe-ah, what? I see, just ask for Omsk information... Ah-ah-eh-uhm-hm... I'm sorry, too, Dmitri... I'm very sorry... *All right*, you're sorrier than I am, but I am as sorry as well... I am as sorry as you are, Dmitri! Don't say that you're more sorry than I am, because I'm capable of being just as sorry as you are... So we're both sorry, all right?... All right.

I have been reading this thread through from the beginning. This is difficult for me as a new member of this forum because I am unfamiliar with the personalities of the posters.

It is easy to pick out the right wingers. Their behaviour is so consistent.
They are convinced that they argue in a cogent manner, from facts.

The first insult here was hurled by Brandon.

Brandon writes thick sentences. He resorts to passive voice. He coins words.

Brandon coined the word, "decomposable." I suspect he wanted to use a word from literary criticism that enjoyed a certain amount of cache over the past two decades, "deconstruct."

Decomposable reminds me of a joke my son brought home from elementary school.

The caretaker of a cemetary heard the sound of paper being ripped. He walked around a large tombstone, marked with the name Mozart. The grave was open and the great man himself was tearing pages of musical scores. "What are you doing?" screamed the horrified groundskeeper. "Decomposing," answered the maestro.

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

Gosh kuvasz, even Liberals suffer from Althzheimers. Pretty insensitive of you.

Not really, it takes someone nearly brain dead to think of such a thing as giving your enemy the keys to your castle. Btw: Reagan was the one who stated he wanted to give away the Star Wars technology to the Soviets. It was pure political posturing intended to entice the Democrats in Congress who were against spending the money on it to support the program.

Be that as it may, your cavalier use of Althzheimers is insensitive. I do note that none of your Liberal confreres have chosen to take you to task for your awkward post, but that is to be expected. What is good for the goose, is rarely good for the gander.

What would your response have been had Clinton offered to give it away to the Chinese? You folks on the right are still screaming about Clinton being a traitor for allowing the private sector to transfer electronic technologies to the Chinese. Technology by the way which was used to allow the Chinese to send into space payloads for US communications satellites.

If Clinton had offered to "give away" missile defense technology then my response would have been the same as it is on this thread. The issue with Clinton's transfer of technology to the Chinese centers on the question of whether or not the Chinese contributed to his re-election campaign. Say what you will about Reagan, but there was never a quid pro quo factored in his position.

So, its still standard stuff from you folks. You think the sun shines out the a$$hole of anyone who is a Republican and believe any crazy thing they say is okay without thinking clearly about it

What complete and utter nonsense. Presumably you take refuge in the phrase "you folk," but within the context of your argument it is the equivalent of "you Wogs." Yes, Kuv, we conservatives believe everything spoken by a Republican, just as you Liberal folk believe everything spoken by a Democrat.

What? You Liberals are not in lock-step with the Democrat Left?

I said:

Quote:

so you are saying we should spend HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of BILLIONS OF DOLLARS of tax payer money for this technology, and YOU WANT TO GIVE IT AWAY TO OTHER NATIONS?

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

YES THAT IS WHAT SHE IS SAYING!

If one accepts the argument that by providing all nations with the means to deter nuclear attacks, the whole world is made safer, then one might be expected to see the billions spent as a pretty good investment.

It is not necessary to use the flight of a missile to deliver a nuke.

No it is not, but should we argue against missile defense systems because they cannot defend us from 100% of nuclear threats? Let's not even think of a Star Wars defense until it can fire a laser burst to take out a clown with a briefcase.

Similarly, it is analogous to the idea that the best protection against bullets would not be to ban guns but for everyone to wear a bulletproof vest.

No it is not.

The best protection against nuclear attack would, indeed, be to ban nuclear weapons. Now, please tell us how such an all inclusive ban might have any possibility of being employed.

Given that it is entirely unreasonable to expect that we might, in any time soon, ban nuclear weapons worldwide, the most logical answer is defensive in design.

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

Geez, I thought you One World Order, Kofi Annan Lovers would appreciate an effort to share valuable technology with our fellow riders on the blue marble that is the earth.

You should remember this when you accuse me of being innervate UN supporter. I am an America-firster. Apparently, neither you nor Lash is.

So, presumably, you have no problem (despite your prior posts) with missile defense systems, only a problem with our sharing this bitchin tech with the likes of the Russkies or Chinks.

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

Awfully capitalist of you kuv. It's really too easy to point out that an extension of your argument is that should we someday develop a cure for cancer (no, let's make it AIDS - that seems to reliably pluck the heartstrings of Liberals) we would be fools to GIVE IT AWAY FOR FREE! Think of the bucks we could make on Africa alone!

Maybe you forgot, I am a capitalist, (its in my profile) owing my own company and all. And a cheap renewable energy source has profound world-wide implications, a cure for a disease, even one as bad as AIDS is not comparable to the global societal watershed a new clean energy source would have. It would re-invent the world. 100 years ago no one knew what they could do with an electron, now our society is based upon its use.

Nope. didn't read your profile. (In fact, I'm afraid that I have a bias against anyone who might provide a profile).

So you own your own company. Bully! Thus you cannot possibly be a hypocrite who believes that the free market is good for him but not for the unwashed "folk."

Wow! Where did this renewable energy riff come from?

Nice try at diversion Buckaroo (or whatever similar casual nomen of disdain you regularly prefer to employ), but whether dilithium crystals or the cure for cancer, are you susuggestinghat you would withhold these wonders from the rest of the world unless they met your price?

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

Classic! Cheaper and safer and morally superior if we unilaterally destroy our nukes. After all, once Big Bad Amerika gives up its nukes, why would any other country have a reason to stockpile them? Appreciating that you are a rationalistic devotee of facts and figures, I hesitate to question you on how you know that a "system" to "monitor" all offensive weapons would so cheap. If I didn't know you were the personification of rationalism, and therefore that you would not render a comment that did not rest on a rock solid foundation of scientific proof, I might even question whether or not such a "system" is even remotely possible.

I notice you failed to make it thru even one post without setting up a straw man argument to knock down.

I wish I had the time to determine why you Libs, reliably and consistently, introduce a "Straw Man" argument in every thread. Is there some secret mailing list that informs all Libs to bring up the "Straw Man," whenever they might debate a Conservative?

If you are going to accuse me of unilateral disarmament, you have to provide proof that I advocated it. So where is your proof? That I used the term "we?" You are confused. The "we" referred to the human race.

Let's see. Encouraging the banning of bullets (and, by extension, guns) is preferable to providing all citizens with bullet proof vests. OK. Now let's extrapolate to nuclear weapons: Banning nuclear weapons is preferable to providing all nations with missile defense systems.

Since there is. clearly, no reasonable expectation that nuclear weapons, worldwide, can be banned, the only possible action of someone opposed to missile defense systems, but desirous of making an impact on the nuclear threat, is to unilaterally disarm and hope other nations will follow suite.

It is not necessary to quote you to understand the implication of your arguments. Blather on about Straw Men PeeWee, if you will, but this is the essence of your position.

The precursors to such programs are already being developed and implemented in a number of countries and is referred to as the IAEA. It worked well in Iraq it seems.

Huh?

On an aside, the proposal to give away a missile shield so that everyone would have one, thereby making the world safe from the technologies that produce nuclear tipped missiles is pretty stupid. It fails to address the issue of the weapons and their radioactive material in the first place, which would still exist, and which as the ex-Soviet Union nuclear and missile technologies have shown can be bartered on the black market.

Therefore if a solution is not 100% successful, it is "pretty stupid."

Of course I have yet to see your failsafe solution to the problem, but I'm sure you'll jump to the challenge.

Again, one need not attach a nuke to a missile. It can be transported in a variety of ways and you would still have the potential for nuclear blackmail. But you would have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on something that can not defend you from alternative methods of delivering the nuke.

Again... because Star Wars cannot defend us against an Islamist with a suitcase nuke, we should abandon the effort. Defense against Chinese, North Korean, and even Russian missiles is "pretty stupid."

If you would glance over your shoulder at the history of warfare, you would see that every time someone invents a defense for a weapon, someone else figures out how to overcome the defense. Past will once again be prologue with any Star Wars defense.

And a student of the history of war will realize that the dynamic you cite has never led a sensible body to giving up on defense in favor of exerting effort to stop their enemies from attacking.

Have at it Skipper.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea has the ability to mount a nuclear missile on a long-range missile and the communist state could hit U.S. territory, the head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency said on Thursday.

Lash wrote:

Does the introduction of our anti-ballistic defense technology in the Sea of Japan change any of this for you?

A system that works 1 out of 10 times when they tell the interceptor exactly where to look isn't effective to actually stop a missile.

isn't this the same defense department who told us Saddam had the capability of launching a nuklar missile and hitting the US?

Brandon9000 wrote:

As far as bioweapons go, really any number of deaths is possible, depending on the lethality of the disease. If Iraqi reaserchers developed a form of smallpox that didn't respond to current vaccines or weaponized a hemorrhagic fever, it seems pretty clear that many millions could die.

Any number of deaths is NOT possible. An outbreak of smallpox would be contained with quarantine just as any biological outbreak is. Any reasonable assessment of it would probably not have more than 1000 deaths. CDC deals with outbreaks all the time. Nothing new here. The same thing with hemorrhagic fever. Both diseases have a period that makes it easy to spot and contain.

You can't easily spread any bio agent to millions of people.

No credible study I have seen of bio or chemical attacks include any deaths like what you are claiming. (Look at the death totals in the saren gas attacks in Japan. Those were coordinated using a highly toxic agent.)

ROFLMBO.. your example proved he could kill 1 million with an atomic bomb? Go look at the numbers. I don't see even close to 1 million dead in your figures from Hiroshima.

The supposed attempt to purchase yellow cake was shown to be based on forged documents.

The aluminum tubes for centrifuges were disputed by scientists as being not of the right type.

Saddam didn't have the capability to deliver several nukes

and any he could build would have been crude and not transportable by terrorists. Go look at the weight of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It was NOT a suitcase size bomb.

13:47 15 February 2005
NewScientist.com news service

A test of the controversial US missile defence system failed on Sunday - the second time this has happened in recent months. The failure has once again drawn condemnation of the programme from critics.

An interceptor missile sited on an island base in the Pacific Ocean was meant to obliterate a test ballistic missile in mid-flight, but it failed to launch, officials from the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) revealed on Monday. "Preliminary indications point to a fault with the ground support equipment, not the interceptor missile," it says.

The target missile, carrying a mock warhead, did launch from Kodiak, Alaska at 0922 local time. But the interceptor missile - a rocket carrying a "kill vehicle" that detaches and homes in on the target - failed to get off the ground at the Ronald Reagan Test Site on Kwajalein Island in the central Pacific.

The US defence shield was to go live in September 2004, but the programme has fallen months behind schedule. A test in December 2004 also failed because the interceptor failed to launch.

Oversensitive to errors
The MDA revealed on 14 January 2005 that this was caused by the interceptor's internal safety system preventing lift-off. The safety software was found to be oversensitive to small errors in data flowing between the missile and the flight computer.

old europe wrote:

I agree. What about the laser system they pretended to be working on?

The laser system has always had the problem of a spinning highly polished war head is pretty much immune to it. Most of the light is reflected and you can't build up enough heat in one spot because of the spinning. Those problems might be able to be overcome but the power of the laser has to greatly increased. Probably have to be space based too to not have atmospheric interference which would violate present treaties.

au1929 wrote:

13:47 15 February 2005
NewScientist.com news service

A test of the controversial US missile defence system failed on Sunday - the second time this has happened in recent months. The failure has once again drawn condemnation of the programme from critics.

An interceptor missile sited on an island base in the Pacific Ocean was meant to obliterate a test ballistic missile in mid-flight, but it failed to launch, officials from the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) revealed on Monday. "Preliminary indications point to a fault with the ground support equipment, not the interceptor missile," it says.

The target missile, carrying a mock warhead, did launch from Kodiak, Alaska at 0922 local time. But the interceptor missile - a rocket carrying a "kill vehicle" that detaches and homes in on the target - failed to get off the ground at the Ronald Reagan Test Site on Kwajalein Island in the central Pacific.

The US defence shield was to go live in September 2004, but the programme has fallen months behind schedule. A test in December 2004 also failed because the interceptor failed to launch.

Oversensitive to errors
The MDA revealed on 14 January 2005 that this was caused by the interceptor's internal safety system preventing lift-off. The safety software was found to be oversensitive to small errors in data flowing between the missile and the flight computer.

That was hardly a failure of the test.

That is a case of the test not happening due to an unrelated problem.

oralloy wrote:

au1929 wrote:

13:47 15 February 2005
NewScientist.com news service

A test of the controversial US missile defence system failed on Sunday - the second time this has happened in recent months. The failure has once again drawn condemnation of the programme from critics.

An interceptor missile sited on an island base in the Pacific Ocean was meant to obliterate a test ballistic missile in mid-flight, but it failed to launch, officials from the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) revealed on Monday. "Preliminary indications point to a fault with the ground support equipment, not the interceptor missile," it says.

The target missile, carrying a mock warhead, did launch from Kodiak, Alaska at 0922 local time. But the interceptor missile - a rocket carrying a "kill vehicle" that detaches and homes in on the target - failed to get off the ground at the Ronald Reagan Test Site on Kwajalein Island in the central Pacific.

The US defence shield was to go live in September 2004, but the programme has fallen months behind schedule. A test in December 2004 also failed because the interceptor failed to launch.

Oversensitive to errors
The MDA revealed on 14 January 2005 that this was caused by the interceptor's internal safety system preventing lift-off. The safety software was found to be oversensitive to small errors in data flowing between the missile and the flight computer.

That was hardly a failure of the test.

That is a case of the test not happening due to an unrelated problem.

Well, the test happened. The ballistic missile did launch. The interceptor didn't. A failure. Duh.