N. Korea threatens US; world anticipates missile
Hyung-jin Kim, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 37 mins ago
From Yahoo

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea threatened Wednesday to wipe the United States off the map as Washington and its allies watched for signs the regime will launch a series of missiles in the coming days.


Boy right now things are pretty bad so I hope we don't have to deal with this.

and sure hope Obama is up to it!

North Korea sole point of survival right ow is nationalism. The regime stays in power by portraying its tough stance against the US. I highly doubt N Korea would jump rigth to a missle. Of course if you believe Alex Jones it will happen on July 4th

The only one trying to start a war here would be dumb politicians in the US and the meddling of the UN.

North Korea has nuclear weapons. They can transport them via missile. We need to live and let live and move on and stop trying to escalate the situation. North Korea will not be giving up those weapons anytime soon so why keep trying to antagonize them?

Interesting.

Uh, they threatened to wipe the US off the map and launch towards Hawaii.

I'm not frightened by North Korean infrastructure anyway. Their people eat grass for fuck's sake. It'd fall apart before detonation.

North Korea is a fucking joke if your talking direct attacks from NK to US; they are talking out of their ass and have nobody big to back em up.

However, NK getting legit. nukes is an indirect problem to U.S. because they'd most certainly try to sell them to someone (Hello Iran) and if they get ahold of one, Israel is fucked and therefore the U.S. would almost certainly have to get involved...and hello world war 3.

Um, no. We may be antagonizing them but thats because we're top dawg and dont want to see little NK do something stupid. Bill Clinton did the right thing in bombing Iraqs nuke sights in the 1990's; Obama may very soon have to do it NK.

Yeah, seriously, Kim Jong-il and his cronies are not the victims here. Are you people forgetting their threats lately? It's almost certainly attention whoring, though. I won't believe it until I see a mushroom cloud off the coast of Hilo.

Kim cant start a war....he is too busy with himself ....see

They already have the weapons, so there isn't any point in continually isolating them imo. Kim Jong may or may not be nearing his death (who knows) but we should be planning on working with the new leadership rather than continually trying to force them into a corner. They're gonna test their weapons regardless and if they did actually use one then that's that. War starts and NK loses in the end. So then what...

Part of the pining you see now is about NK vying for its new leadership whoever that may be. Though I agree I think we need to remove the sanctions. Let the sunshine in and let NK deal with issues on its own. Right now NK is all huddled together. Let them loosen up themselves.

NK has weapons but they cannot reach us anyways (even if they could, heh we're so much more advanced we have weapons that will blast those nukes right out fo the sky before they can hit us anyways).

Again, if we can keep their nuclear activities contained (cough bomb their sites after this test cough) they will only be russia and chinas problem, and nobody elses.

I dont think a country has ever been more desperate to matter EVER. Theyre people are homeless and eatign grass for christsake...we think WE'RE hitting rough times, just wait and see what happens in NK.

Errr...............Excel's posted the story in a nutshell. I guess he has some knowledge I forgive the insults.

You're forgetting South-Korea and Japan.

Both of which are USA allies. And both of which are much more likely targets for a NK attack than Russia or China. They are also fairly easy targets for nukes thanks to close proximity.

Also I have to admit I'm a bit sceptical about claims that USA could shoot nukes down from the skies if they would travel towards the North-American continent. Sounds like Reagan's "Star Wars" program to me, and I don't think they ever got it to work. Is there nowadays some new counter-nuke defense system that actually works?

USA will have a VERY hard time not getting involved, if dozens of thousands of Americans die in the USA army bases in SK and Japan. And even if the attacks would not involve the bases in any way, it would be impossible for USA to not to do a counter-attack to protect its allies. Not doing anything would mean USA losing its face, losing the trust of its allies *everywhere* in the world, and losing pretty much all its credibility as a military power.

Not to mention that SK and Japan are very important for worldwide economy, and them getting bombed would lead to a worldwide economical crisis much, much bigger than the current one.

Obama's administration is more peaceful than the previous one, but this would be a clear case of USA going to a war - Against an opponent who has nukes. And as much as I hate wars, I would support USA in this. It would be the only option, really.

The good news would be that USA wouldn't be the only one. NK would get destroyed relatively fast from all sides, as China, Russia and SK would cross the NK borders immediately. Nobody likes a lunatic with nukes, especially when he lives in your neighbour.

But that's not to say it would be easy. It would be a massive bloodbath. NK has the 4th biggest army in the world, specifically trained to operate in the mountainous, hard-to-travel terrain of NK. Even when you hit them with massive force from all sides, it's going to be hard... And they have nukes, with several multi-million cities in the close-shooting range. We might well be talking about the worst military conflict since WW2 in terms of casualties.

Nuclear NK would be easier to defeat the Iraq was

I very much doubt it.

1. NK has nukes

2. NK has a much bigger, stronger, better equipped and better trained army than Iraq had circa 2003.

3. NK terrain is much easier to defend, and harder to conquer (open desert of Iraq compared to heavily mountainous NK)

4. The NK armed forces are much more loyal to their leadership than Iraqi's forces were to Saddam.

I wouldn't agree there, the North Korean army and airforce seems to be heavily reliant on old 50s Soviet hardware like T55s or MiG-19s. Even the Iraqi's could spring for donkey model T-72s

I'm not a specialist on the issue, but:

Iraq had SOME of the T-72s, but they were less-capable export versions that had not been properly upgraded, were firing inferior ammunition, with crews that lacked proper training.

Majority of the Iraqi equipment was seriously out of date, mostly 50's and 60's soviet and chinese manufacturing: T-55's, Type 59's, Type 69's. The equipment had not been updated properly to meet modern standards, it was in poor condition, and the army didn't have proper training.

NK has similarly old-fashioned equipment, but it's generally more numerous in numbers, in better condition, with better trained and motivated crew, and with better updates.

As for NK Air Force, they use some of the F-6B's, the chinese variant of MIG-19. They also have a lot of MIG-23's and MIG-29's, with MIG-21 being the most common type of fighter - All updated, of course. It's worth noting, thought, that NK puts little value to offensive capabilities of their Air Force, and it exists for defensive purposes. They have arguably the MOST dense air defense network in the world (If we leave out tiny miniature countries), with a lot of very effective equipment such as upgraded SA-13's, SA-6's, SA-17's and SA-5'.

NK army doesn't retire old models, as they always try to maintain the biggest possible equipment stock. This means they keep the old models along with the new ones - This skews the numbers a bit and might make their army seem more old-fashioned than it actually is. Most of their equipment is from 80's or later.

The entire North-Korean infrastructure is built around two things: Keeping the small elite as wealthy and powerful as possible, and keeping the army as big and dangerous as possible. It's the most militarized country in the world. Iraq was peanuts when compared to North-Korea. Yes, people eat grass in NK. But those people are not in the army.

The nukes, though? Well, if they did use any (which I seriously doubt), I'm sure one would be used (and not necessarily by us) that would take out a solid part of the military infrastructure.

Considering how technically advanced South Korea, they could put up a good fight as well. Remember Iraq had a supposedly scary huge army in 1991 (again, fourth or fifth largest), but look how long it took for us to tinpot them.

I don't think anyone is doubting that NK would lose the war.

But let's say, if they nuke SK, killing a few million people, and then someone nukes NK, killing a few million people (mostly civilians), would you say that it was an easy war when compared to Iraq war, like Excel does? Would you still say that if they manage to nuke an American city?

Remember - Nobody actually has any reason to attack NK unless they start nuking others. So the whole premise of this discussion is that NK might use nukes. For the record - I don't believe they are ever gonna use them, either.

Yes, SK has a formidable army. But along with them, I'm pretty confident that China and Russia would be the first in line to take out NK. Beijing probably wouldn't like the idea of someone throwing nukes around close to Chinese border. And war would also give them a good excuse to expand their territory.

USA would win against NK, obviously. But USA wouldn't fight this war alone - Couldn't, in fact. But regardless of how many countries would together annihilate NK in the war, the amount of killing and destruction would be the same. The dead people would just be of a more varied nationality.

I don't really get where these Iraq comparisons are coming from, since I have stated already many times, why the two countries are not comparable. Hell, we could just as well bring up Vietnam (Which is not comparable either).

Military size. That's about it.

Though I never said "easy war", there's no such thing, especially with fuckin' nukes. But if you want me to play devil's advocate...well, the DPRK wouldn't exist after a war like this, and there's no useful skill the people could bring and the resulting humanitarian crisis of them fleeing, yeah, might as well thin the herd out. No, I don't want to view sentient beings like that.

Military size means nothing; its not ww1; there are not frontlines. Its all technology.

Do you mean that Iraqi comparisons come from military size?

Even that is not comparable in any way. While it can be tricky to find reliable and accurate numbers, Iraqi army in 2003 was roughly half a million men strong, with additional reserves of roughly 650.000. NK army is 1.2 million strong, with additional reserves of 4 million.

No, it isn't. Real world isn't a videogame.

You can't conquer with planes. There has never been such war. Like I said earlier on, you still can conquer only with infantry. And infantry means frontlines.

Also, like I said earlier on, NK has the arguably the most dense air defense network in the world. So even sending bombers to their air space is tricky. It's not like Afganistan or Iraq, where they had very limited air defense capability (non-existent in the first case).

Mountainous terrain with many rivers and cut roads (cutting done by defending forces) means slow travel with tanks and other heavy equipment. It also means better odds for the side which would use guerrilla war tactics, which would in this case be NK. Remember, that they have one the biggest special forces in the world, specifically trained for guerrilla warfare. Not only that, but the entire army of NK has been trained with guerrilla warfare and mountain tactics in mind.

Generally speaking, American military forces have experience of open fields. A lot of the equipment and crew training is badly suited for rough, hard-to-travel terrain, which is consistently cut down by small mountains and rivers.

I said Iraq in 1991.