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It's not the WMD, it's the thousands of artillery tubes the North has - and they're all pointed at and can hit Seoul. They don't *need* a nuke to trash much of the Asian economy (as well as seriously affecting ours).

From the Sep 10 issue of Asia Times:

South Korea is a small country of only 98,000 square kilometers. North Korean jets can reach the capital in six minutes from their forward bases. North Korea's 12,000 artillery tubes and 2,300 MLR (multiple-launch rockets/ medium-long range) hidden in caves and underground are all within striking distance [of] Seoul, while its medium range Nodong ballistic missiles can reach US assets throughout the South and in Japan. In the mid 80's North Korea managed to import 87 American-made Hughes MD500 helicopters, the same type South Korea uses as gun ships. The area between Seoul and the DMZ is heavily wooded and mountainous, perfect for guerrilla warfare.

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Personally, I can't think of *any* system that can stop 16,000+ simultaneous incoming rounds with 100% accuracy, can you? It is also an open secret that some of those shells will be carrying bio and chemical payloads, so that's even worse.

This is a very touchy situation, and the adminstration is right to handle it with a great deal of care. That said, I'm also of the mind that covert ops would be a great idea - say, perhaps, a large "accident" with their new reactor site along the lines of Chernobyl.....

Bush will call on the UN to either act or be considered impotent and irrelevant. I feel it's been a plan to let the NK's to paint themselves into a corner. It worked. Bush will have the UN and the "world community" to challenge America's (and Asia's) enemy. No clamoring from the Left that he "acted alone" and the fact the UN can do nothing about NK's ambitions, gives GWB credibility.

Regarding the Helicopters...Hughes was bought out by McDonnell Douglas in 1984 (thus the MD designation), BOieng and McDonnell Douglas merged in 1997. Boieng sold the MD Helicopter division (the commercial side) to a European susidiary in 1999 called MD Helicopters Inc. who continues manufacturing in Mesa, AZ.

I don't klnow where the N KOreans got the helos, but they probably got old, commercial ones (they started making the intital OH-6's in 1963) from some foreign user that was unloading them, and then converted them to military use. The ones they have are most likely not up to S> Korean standards.

In the gunship variety, here's a pic of the later MD530MG Defender and another of the MD530F variant (they were made in the 1980's):

Beyond that, everything you say about the vast quantities of N Korean ordinance pointed south is true and it is a very dicey situation. N Koreans are hungry and there's lost to eat just south of the border. My own personal opinion is that N Korea always has been and still is a puppet on a string for the ChiComms. All of the talk otherwise by both parties, IMHO, is just an extension of Sun Ztu's philosophy that all warfare is deception. But tha's just my opinion.

We better hope and pray that economic stagnation/starvation brings that system down like in the old U.S.S.R. Cause otherwise we're done. No military solution. But I'm thinking their economy will bring them down in time. Or am I only hoping that they exist in the same universe Adam Smith wrote about?

Airburst over Pyongyang.

The NoKo army will be lost without command and control from the top.

Esteemed Freepers:

North Korea is the least of your problems!

Seen the Iraq vote tally? At the cost of 1,500 American and countless thousands of Iraqi lives, President Sick-in-the-Head has successfully installed a HARDCORE SHI'ITE THEOCRACY, hostile to U.S. interests and destined to ally with Iran against the dreadful "next step" our chief toady-diplomat hinted at yesterday - invading Iran.

Wash the purple ink off your fingers yet??? Better pull 'em out of your arses and start dreaming up some lame-o reason to challenge Iraq's election results.

But I digress. Back to North Korea! See today's Times? Watch your boy Bush cower like a lil' Bee-YOTCH as Kim Jong-Il (who seems even loonier) flexes nukes that Saddam could only wet-dream about. Kim could bomb Seoul tomorrow. And probably, Honolulu.

But wait!!!! Back to the nettlesome past! Watch Scotty McClellan bob and weave like a winded cobra as he struggle to explain the 9/11 report addedum Bushie tried to suppress for so long -- and which, we learn today, says that Bush's FAA feared this attack for MONTHS while nothing was done. Why, it's almost enough to think the Administration KNEW OR PERHAPS ENCOURAGED Al-Quaeda as part of a strategy to establish a powerful culture of fear in America.

I smell treason, high treason...

(Okay, I know you all don't read the New York Times, biased liberal fishwrap that it is. Why don't you get your reporter/escort extraordinaire Jeff Gannon on the story? BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!)

Friends, the wheel spins faster and faster every day, and its axis - the true axis of evil - is beginning to crack.

As that happens, may you suck sorrow through a straw. Admit, in quiet tearful moments, the monstrous wickedness that led to your personal role in destroying America: her definitive civil liberties, economy and prestige, as we devolve into a despised warrior state.

The race to the bottom will have its felicites. I'll be glad to see your SUVs beached like whales in your cul-de-sacs when gas hits $5 a gallon and rationing begins.

I'll be happier to see you scramble to keep your sons and daughters out of the draft that will come, sooner or later (although I'm betting later; Rove knows that's when the merde will hit the fan).

You may miss your sons and daughters...but you'll always be able to revel in the monkeyshines of the daughters Bush, Jenna and not-Jenna, who'll never have to don cammies and spit-shined boots unless its a fashion statement en route to another drunken bender at Clyde's!

Ciao!

Personally, I can't think of *any* system that can stop 16,000+ simultaneous incoming rounds with 100% accuracy, can you?

Short of having them fired from the inside of a plasma ball caused by an H-Bomb, no. The question to Mr No-Dong is, how lucky do you feel?

The problem is, once they fire the cannons, you got about 2 seconds to deliver the blocking fire. So the only option is a first strike scenario.

Seems Kim has chosen the paint himself into a corner scenario.