"North Korea is not going to war," senior U.S. official says

no, shouldn't ever FEAR a potential opponent, but its best to assess ALL potential avenue's they can use to exercise a potential agenda. So say some opponent know they are not going to do well in face off so instead spike their opponents and potential other opponents drinks. Now the field is evened in a nefarious way.

Too bad, this would have made your 3 month prediction come true.

Also, I don't know about this, we all know intelligence releases what the masses want to hear right?

reply to post by Hefficide


My fear is that they have to give him a way to save face and back down. How are they going to do that. North Korea won't back down unless they can save face.

This statement is akin to calling NK "chicken". it's an obvious attempt to kick the hornets nest a bit harder. Hope everyone can see this for what it is. You do not call someone who is on the edge of launching nukes a chicken, I can see that this Kim jong guy has a huge ego..so making him lose face is a bad strategy..unless of course your willing him to launch them.

reply to post by Hefficide


Alaska is at far greater risk than Hawaii. Hawaii is almost twice as far as parts of Alaska are, so they're more likely to hit there, as there's a better chance of hitting.

If China can outmaneuver the West and end up with NK and SK under her control and at the same time tell the world the She and She alone managed to stop the madness of war on the Korean Peninsular then She will.

This is what the alternative scenario is looking like to me. China does not want the West to have a foothold on the Asian Land Mass. If Japan and Taiwan get badly mauled in the process, so much the better in China's view. China may even be in a position to occupy Taiwan, for humanitarian reasons of course.

China plays the long game and this has so far been a long game.

P

reply to post by Hefficide

Obama needs a leash and a dog house to keep his "Senior Aids" in so they may be out of range of these "leaks" to the media.

Kim has spent a couple weeks solid now blustering and puffing up like a big blow fish. He's unstable, by watching him and has an ego considerably bigger than Obama's.

Now this statement basically just said ...from our White House level of Government... 'Kim, your a two bit punk and we laugh at you! Ha Ha Ha Ha!'

If Kim is bluffing as I HOPE he is ....than we'll know very quickly. If he isn't (or had been UNTIL this), then this statement literally just gave him a boot to the family jewells and a slap across the face...back and forth a couple times.

I don't know what Washington is currently hiring for people to work in Government but if the concept of saving face has never been explained to them, it absolutely needs to be, IMO. If they slap Kim into a corner? This isn't like Saddam who will just light up a few radars and just shoot whoever joins in the smirks from the media. Asian Culture takes that public image thing deadly serious. They may as well have just dressed him up as a big clown with a red nose and put him out to play court jester by this.

I'm beside myself with disbelief. I mean, these are the same people who have said and promised a great MANY things with don't come to pass or actually make things worse. (QE-1, QE-2 and QE-3 come to mind.... Diplomatic breakthroughs with Iran no less than 3 times now promised and never delivered ... Syria's Assad "done for" at least 4 different times now ..and yet, there he still stands)

I respect the heck out ya Heff and it's not about your thread a bit ....but this put a chill down my spine I haven't felt since the early 90's. They really did just throw down the glove and DARE him to pick it up. :shk: He'd better be as weak as they THINK he is for will ...or South Korea will get the answer to Washington's challenge.

Originally posted by sparky31
i think china is more likely to side with nk if all this crap kicked off and russia too,they would join forces to take america out i think to them it sounds like a better deal which makes this situation scarier than americans think

edit on 2011 by sparky31 because: (no reason given)

Politically speaking... it is highly unlikely that either China nor Russia would side with NoKo in a war. Not in this day and age. There are five permanent members of the UN Security Council - we are discussing three of them in this single post. These five nations, coincidentally, also are the five largest arms dealers in the world. They make money from war - but not war against each other.

The truth is that America and China are the only two big dogs in the yard - and they both feed from the same bowl.

Originally posted by Hefficide
continuing to promote tourists visits to North Korea, even amid its banging of war drums.

Of course, maybe NK's president is doing this to deceive the war analysts.

reply to post by Hefficide


Well little Kim must have seen this conclusion since he is now threatening to shut down the Kaesong Industrial Complex. The poor little guy is trying so hard to be taken seriously.

White House responds to N. Korea's 'state of war' comment, says taking threat 'seriously'

North Korea said Saturday that the peninsula it shares with South Korea is entering a "state of war" -- a threat the White House is taking seriously despite the totalitarian country’s history of such “bellicose rhetoric.”

On Saturday, he also threatened to shut down a border factory complex that is the last major symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.

reply to post by elouina


From your article:

The threats are seen as part of an effort to provoke the new government in Seoul to change its policies toward Pyongyang and to win diplomatic talks with Washington that could get it more aid.

The moves also are seen as ways to build domestic unity as Kim strengthens his military credentials.

In addition to the military exercise, the U.S. will fortify its defenses against a potential North Korean missile attack by adding more than a dozen missile interceptors to the 26 already in place at Fort Greely, Alaska, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has also announced.

Now I am left wondering... I still don't think there is any chance for war. I am more wondering what dog we are wagging here and why.

Every single time we get one of these major distractions, something major gets sneaked past us.

Good... another US provocation.

Way to go US... so you'll have your war or not. Because everyone can hear you breathing down the kid's neck by now...

reply to post by Hefficide


I thought those missile interceptors were already planned about a week ago? Remember how they talked about it costing the US millions to cease the project? And now they have to dust it off and get it going again? Or are they talking about even more above that?

reply to post by FraternitasSaturni


Of course, because only the US has been provoking this. North Korea has been sweet and innocent all along and hasn't done anything wrong.

This hasn't been handled well, but the US isn't the only one involved here. Before you say "sanctions are an act of war", a technical state of war has existed between the DPRK, the ROK and the US since the 1950s. Just because they haven't been actively involved in wartime operations, doesn't mean everything has been peace and love until recently.

reply to post by elouina


They are adding 14 interceptors to the Alaska and California facilities after the most recent missile tests in North Korea. They hadn't shut the program down, but they were shopping for other contracts. This just gave it back to Boeing to build a system that's not....great. They're 50/50 in actual intercepts. System tests, they're almost 100%, but when it comes time to actually hit something, not so much.

they just spoke about the industrial complex on the NY news here. they said if those folks get pulled out, then time to worry a little

and LOL at the tourism stuff

reply to post by syrinx high priest


I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Watch McGuire AFB, Tinker AFB, Altus AFB, Fairchild AFB, Offut AFB, and probably Seymour Johnson AFB. If you see them moving, it's going to go up. If they stay ops normal, then all is good.

Lets look at how easy it would be to package such a delivery system.
A little pic I made up to illustrate.



The delivery system comprises a side saddle rocket. The warhead’s weight on one side of the rocket is balanced out with the avionics power, and fire control equipment on the other side of the rocket.

The rocket will be a high thrust quick burn rocket. It only has to push the load to an altitude of 2000 feet or so.

The top doors are hinged and the seams are foiled and painted over so that nothing is visible until the doors open.

They have way more than enough technology to deploy such a delivery system.

The delivery system looks like a normal cargo container from the outside. You can ship it through a couple third world countries, and reroute it to the us. Make sure you have a couple people working for you in a dock yard to put it on the top of the cargo ship stack when it heads out to a port in NY.

It was in the news today that NK has threatened to shut down Kaesong.

I'm still not sure that Kim would start something that he knows he can't finish. However, while relations have always been tense, in the recent past, NK has been able to sink a SK vessel killing people, and shelling and island, killing people, with the SK showing great restraint here.

However, those events did not have all the recent threats that NK has been making now. No lines of communications were cut off, like they are now. The truce was not ripped up, like it is now, nor did NK make statements that it considers itself in a state of "war" and would respond as such to SK, like they have now.

About the only thing left, is for Kaesong to be shut down. Or, some idiot general on the NK side decides to start shelling and island again, or have another SK vessel sunk.

If, any time soon, one of those "incidents" were to happen as of now, I'm afraid that SK has been spun up enough that that it might retaliate quickly and before "cooler" heads could prevail.

Yes, NK has done this in the past many times before, but not quite like this, not with this intensity.

And as been pointed out in many threads, over and over, NK is not responding like they have in the past, which is refusing aid and coming to the table. Instead, they spun up the threats.

I also can't remember the last time the US government said: "We are taking these threats very seriously." and at the same time is also saying "Oh, don't worry, there is nothing to see here, move along, this is absolutely nothing to be concerned about."

When my government, the US government starts telling me "there's nothing to worry about." That's normally when I DO start to get worried.

There are way too many "itchy" trigger fingers right now, and way too much pushing and shoving going on. If it does not settle down soon, something IS going to happen: air craft are going to go "bump", ships might also bump, someone starts shooting across the border without authorization, you name it. That's all it would take at this point to light this keg off.

So sorry Mr. Obama WH Leaker, I'm not going to sit here and "not worry" about it. I lived in SK for a few years, and have always kept tabs on what's going on over there, and I'm here to tell you: this time, it's different.

Jeezuz they could ship the friggin thing Fed Ex for THAT matter.............
Heff i dont think this is gong to end peaceably somehow....
NK say shoots a few shells at an island...
SK shoots a few counterbattery rounds and makes a good hit....
The secondaries take out some bunker or a few guys....
NK lobs a few more accurate rounds and so on.....
The fever pitch of the rhetoric leaves little room for "hot lines" or second guessing either, and the SKs are getting cocky too perhaps cockier than ever....
I just cant relax and think they cant touch the US or west coast when i know they possibly could in many ways not dependant on missiles....or perhaps with a sublaunched one....
Thinks Iran here for a second boys.....are they not in bed with Kimmy on nukes and missiles?
Do they not have a stake in seeing the great satan tied up in another bloody mess right now?
Maybe they slipped Kimmy a nuke or a set of shahab3 plans or whatever....
(those flying stealth attack boats maybe...............)


I just think China, Iran, NK all play deeper than we seem to fathom sometimes....
I utterly fail to imagine how fifty or sixty years of the political situation in NK has actually held together.....
Thats a looong struggle.....These people are capable of great efforts over far longer time spans than westerners as a rule....
Anyways im not sounding the war alarums but just saying......
WHOSE game are WE being played?