North Korea to resume missile tests, calls for 'holy war'
Interesting, isn't it, how Kim Jong Il's regime cannot feed their own people, and yet somehow they can muster the wherewithal to conduct a "holy war" against the US? Why do the words "f*****g morons" come to mind?
One day after the communist North announced it was quitting an anti-nuclear pact, government leaders staged a rally in Pyongyang to declare they would seek "revenge with blood" toward any country that violates their sovereignty.
A crowd of 1 million people -- neatly packed into the capital's main plaza, adorned with anti-American banners and huge portraits of President Kim Jong Il -- erupted in chants and pumped fists toward the winter sky, shouting in unison, "We wholeheartedly support it!"
The hostile rhetoric and threats to resume nuclear programs were likely to increase tensions as a chorus of international condemnation grew toward the North's withdrawal from the 1968 pact limiting the spread of atomic weapons.
New tests would be the first since 1998, when North Korea fired a missile over Japan into the Pacific. Pyongyang later imposed a moratorium on tests which was to last into 2004. But the North's ambassador to China, Choe Jin Su, said today that tests could resume if the United States doesn't take steps to improve relations.
"Because all agreements have been nullified by the United States side, we believe we cannot go along with the self-imposed missile moratorium any longer," Choe said in Beijing.
Son Mun San, in charge of Pyongyang's relations with the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, said in Vienna that spent fuel rods were locked down after a 1994 deal with the United States under which Washington promised big oil deliveries and two light-water nuclear reactors in return for North Korea shutting down its Yongbyon nuclear facility. Spent fuel from that type of reactor is more easily coverted to materials for nuclear bombs. Both sides have stepped back from the deal since the North allegedly told the United States in October it had a secret nuclear program.
Son said the reprocessing plant now stands in a state of "readiness."
He said the reactor at the site would be up and running in a matter of weeks, roughly in line with earlier forecasts by the Vienna-based nuclear agency.
Today, a newspaper commentary carried by the North's state news agency KCNA warned: "If any forces attempt to encroach upon the sovereignty and dignity of the DPRK, it will mercilessly wipe out the aggressors and mete out stern punishment to them."
DPRK stands for Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the country's official name.
Since the nuclear standoff resumed, the North has removed seals placed on the Yongbyon facility by nuclear agency monitors and expelled two inspectors as part of its rununciation of the 1994 agreement struck with the Clinton Administration.
By dropping out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty effective Saturday, the world community could take the case to the United Nations Security Council where economic and political sanctions could be imposed on Pyongyang as punishment.
The North has said it would take such a move as "a declaration of war."
What befuddles me more than anything else is how the corrupt, myopic North Korean could possibly think they have ANYTHING we would want. Poverty? No thanks. Repression? Nah, John Ashcroft's taking care of that. Famine? Thanks, but Shrub's tax plan will take care of that. As poor as the country is, a mere blockade would like bring the entire country to it's knees in a matter of weeks or months.
This renewed saber-rattling is likely intended, as previous similar episodes have been, to wring new promises of aid and political concessions from the US. Kim Jong Il's regime is no doubt quite aware of it's "major pain in the ass" status in the international community. They've certainly become quite skilled at using that status to maximum advantage. At what point does enough become enough, though? At what point do we finally decide to take out North Korea's nuclear capability? Or do we simply allow the North Koreans to maximize and exploit their irritant status?
Appeasement is always an option, and one that successive US governments have employed in the past. It beats the hell out of actually DEALING with the problem, I suppose, but eventually there is going to have to be a day of reckoning. I wonder if Shrub has the cojones to do the dirty work necessary to deal with this problem? Or is it simply easier to just bomb Iraq back into the Stone Age and hope that North Korea will recede back into the swamp?
