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China-Japan-Koreas
US Hesitant In Condemning North Korean Launch
2012-12-13
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is drawing no "red line" for North Korea after a successful long-range rocket test, tempering the public condemnation to avoid raising tensions or possibly rewarding the reclusive communist nation with too much time in the global spotlight.
Now imagine Champ's reaction if Israel launched a satellite...
The U.S. has told the world that it won't tolerate Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons or Syria's use of chemical stockpiles on rebels. North Korea, in some ways, is a trickier case.

The U.S. wants to forcefully condemn what it believes is a "highly provocative act," and that was the first public reaction from the White House late Tuesday. But it also is mindful of the turmoil on the Korean peninsula and treading carefully, offering no threat of military action or unspecified "consequences" associated with other hot spots.
We somehow managed to have a (mostly) straight spine around the Soviet Union for 50 years...
Just two years ago, the North allegedly torpedoed a South Korean warship and shelled a South Korean island. Some 50 South Koreans died in the attacks that brought the peninsula to the brink of war.

North Korea already has the deterrent of a nuclear weapons arsenal. The U.S. is bound to protect next-door South Korea from any attack, but has no desire now for a military conflict.

Raising the rhetoric can even serve as a reward for seeking attention to a government that starves its own citizens while seeking to leverage any military advance it makes into much-needed aid.
That might make sense to Rachel Maddow...
"No doubt Pyongyang is pleased.
Yes, Pudgy had a huge election...
It again has unsettled its leading adversaries. And it is in the news around the world," said Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "The allies should have responded with a collective yawn. After all, the plan is nothing new. The DPRK has been testing rockets and missiles for years."
Only the success is new...
The United States remains technically at war with the notoriously unpredictable North Koreans, whose opaque leadership has confounded successive American administrations. With no peace agreement, only the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War keeps the U.S. and the North from hostilities. Some 28,500 U.S. troops remain in South Korea to deter potential aggression.

Wednesday's surprising, successful launch raises the stakes, taking North Korea one step closer to being capable of lobbing nuclear bombs over the Pacific. As the North refines its technology, its next step may be conducting another nuclear test, experts warn.

The three-stage rocket is similar in design to a model capable of carrying a nuclear-tipped warhead as far as California. The rocket launched a satellite into space. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the U.S. would study the launch.
You bet. Let's all put our thinking caps on and take our stupid pills. Then we'll be experts...
"I think we still have to assess just exactly what happened here," Panetta told CNN in an interview Wednesday. He said part of the assessment would examine the final stage that launched the satellite "to determine, really, whether or not that did work effectively or whether it tumbled into space. I mean, that's the issue that we need to assess."

Despite its technological advances and military bluster, it's doubtful that the North intends to strike first against the U.S.
We know that how, exactly?
Even so, Panetta said the U.S. has the capability to prevent such a strike.

"I'm very confident that American defense capabilities are able, no problem, to block a rocket like this one," he told CNN when asked about the capability of U.S. missile defense systems.
Isn't that the ballistic missile defense we were told would never work?
North Korea has spent decades threatening but avoiding a direct confrontation with the tens of thousands of American forces in South Korea and Japan. The government has remained firmly in power despite a drought-plagued agricultural sector that leaves many North Koreans in search of food and a crumbling economy that affords few any chance of social betterment.
Goes to show what brute force, complete amorality and rat-shit insanity in the right combination can do...
"It is regrettable that the leadership in Pyongyang chose to take this course in flagrant violation of its international obligations," White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters. He said the U.S. would try to further isolate North Korea in response.
Shaddup, Jay, you don't know what you're saying.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland called the launch "highly provocative and a threat to regional security." It will only further impoverish North Koreans, she said.

Neither Carney nor Nuland elaborated on possible consequences.
Because they don't know of any...
The White House's initial statement referred only to potential action at the U.N. Security Council, which condemned North Korea on Wednesday and said it would urgently consider "an appropriate response." The threat of sanctions is unclear; China, North Korea's benefactor, holds veto power.
North Korea does nothing that China forbids...
Analysts were mixed on whether a tougher reaction was appropriate.

"There has been an unspoken tendency in the United States to discount these tests as yet another foolish attempt by the technologically backward and bizarre country," said Victor Cha, a Korea expert at Georgetown University and former White House policy director for Asia. "This is no longer acceptable. The apparent success of this test makes North Korea one of the only nonallied countries outside of China and the Soviet Union to develop long-range missile technology that could potentially reach the United States."
Posted by:Steve White

#4  "...determine, really, whether or not that did work effectively or whether it tumbled into space. I mean, that's the issue that we need to assess."

Horse hockey. Supposing it is in perfect orbit. So what? Tumbling out of control? So what? How about we assess the throw weight of the vehicle? Maybe its' circular error probability?
Posted by: Bobby   2012-12-13 06:36  

#3  Let's see where it is tumbling to
Posted by: European Conservative   2012-12-13 02:42  

#2  FREEREPUBLIC has an NBC News Artic where US Officials are quoted as saying that North Korea's new satellite is "tumbling of control".
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2012-12-13 01:38  

#1  Eh, North Korea is not a Chinese puppet. The Chinese have tried to persuade the North Koreans to do an economic opening up like they did, but the Norks will have none of it. Several highly invested investment parks are tits-up after the Norks ripped off the Chinese.
Posted by: gromky   2012-12-13 00:11  

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