Those of us condemned to remember history are familiar with the name of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North. He was involved in the Iran/Contra affair. In that infamous goat-rope, President Reagan’s merry men secretly sold arms to Iran, which was under an arms embargo at the time. Then they used the profits that they made selling arms to secretly support the “contras” in Nicaragua. How sneaky-cool is that? How unethical and treasonous is that? In any case, Colonel North famously fell on his sword to protect his superiors, and then went on the speaking circuit. I mean, it was the plot for a bad B-grade thriller.
I have always been ambivalent about Colonel North. However, he’s come into view again regarding our favorite Asian cousins, the North Koreans. The bad news is, the location where I live in California is now under nuclear threat from our favorite Asian insane uncle, Supreme Leader Whoa Fat, the famous North Korean Chairman and male hairstyle model. As you might imagine, nuclear missiles wonderfully concentrate the mind regarding thinking about the problem Whoa Fat poses …
Now, I’m serious about North Koreans being our favorite Asian cousins. Those poor bastards deserve every bit of sympathy and compassion that we can spare. Consider. We only have to face Chairman Whoa Fat from far away … they cower under the terror, torture, and death unleashed daily by Whoa Fat.
The problem is that Whoa Fat is a bull-goose loony angry vicious lethal megalomaniac. He had no problem killing his half-brother in an airport by hiring two North Korean women to spread poison on his skin as he awaited his flight … it’s not just that he’s battier than a British church belfry. The problem is that he’s sicker and more twisted than a rattlesnake with rabies.
Anyhow, what this has to do with Colonel Oliver North is that I came across his prescription for how we should respond to Whoa Fat, your friendly neighborhood chain-smoking nuclear-armed psychopath, and it was most interesting. He said:
I am a firm believer that the military option should be on the table. But before we do that, we should exhaust all other opportunities. And I’m not talking about months more of these so-called dialogues where they continue to build weapons while we talk to them.
What we have to do is convince President Xi in Beijing that we are deadly serious about this, because the only leverage we have is really China. So what the president needs to do is:
(1) Press President Moon in South Korea to let us bring in as many THAAD missile systems as we can deliver, and even press Israel to provide the Iron Dome or David’s Sling systems to deal with North Korean artillery.
(2) Return the tactical nukes back to Korea that we withdrew in the 1990s.
(3) Deploy another carrier strike group in addition to the one there, the Reagan, and more long-range strike aircraft and air-to-air tankers to Guam and Okinawa. These are visible activities that will get the attention of if not Xi, at least the Politburo.
(4) They need to deploy search-and-rescue assets. How about asking Xi if we can base some SAR assets in China to recover aircrews. Unlikely he’s gonna agree, but it may wake up the Politburo.
(5) Deploy the USNS Mercy, the hospital ship, from San Diego to Pusan, and the US Naval Ship Comfort from Norfolk to Japan. That shows we’re serious, and we’re getting ready.
(6) Deploy a US Navy/Marine Expeditionary Unit back into the region.
(7) Dust off the target lists, in other words, additional intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets.
(8) Deliver biological and chemical protection equipment to the Republic of Korea.
(9) Pray that Xi sees the light so we don’t have to use the military option.
Hey, that’s a whole lot more than I’ve been able to come up with. It’s been unsettling to suddenly find myself back in the nuclear threat of my 1950’s childhood …
My one consolation in this is our Secretary of Defense, General Jim Mattis, the man his friends call the “Warrior Monk” and the world calls “Mad Dog”. Here’s a Jim Mattis story. When he left the military, General Mattis bought a car. He drove that car from north to south through many states on his long slow way from New York to California. And what was he doing?
He was visiting the families of the men and women who had died under his command.
Until I heard that story I’d never really understood the anguish of knowing that some of the men and women that you order into battle will die there. And I truly cannot imagine what it meant to the families of those who gave their lives under his command, for him, a General, to come to face them and answer their questions and hear them speak of their sorrow and loss.
Nothing can fill that hole, but we can console each other as we stare into it.
I also cannot imagine the depth of compassion of General Mattis, because it would be so, so hard to go day after day talking to another, and another, and yet another of the mothers and sisters and husbands and wives and fathers and brothers of the irrevocably, unalterably lost …
From that story of an honorable and decent man paying painful homage to mortality, I learned that there is a colossal difference between an armchair general like you or me or the President, and a general who is a true warrior monk. Unlike the armchair generals, the last thing that General Jim Mattis wants is another war. He knows far too well what war costs, in a way that I never can or will.
And I also know that the reason General Jim Mattis was called the Warrior Monk by the men who knew him best was that he had shelves and shelves of books on the arts, crafts, sciences, logistics, and costs of war, the black-and-white and the unavoidable red of war … it was and is his life’s study and his path, and he was and is damn good at it.
So I sleep much better knowing that General Mattis is at the helm. However, there is still an ugly fact we have to deal with.
Our Deeply Respected Leader and Resplendent Winner of the Dim Sum Lookalike Contest, Chairman Whoa Fat, could wake up tomorrow morning and have a bad hair day … well, OK, poor metaphor, but you know what I mean, his piles might flare up and he might press the nuclear button and fire a missile at Tokyo or Tacoma no matter what we do or President Trump does or what General Mattis does.
Word.
And since that ugly and frightening fact is undeniably true, the various prescriptions of Colonel North seem like common-sense precautions in an uncertain world.
With best wishes for peace, and that our dear Uncle Whoa Fat might also rest in eternal peace … and soon would be good …
w.
Skating Under The Ice 
I like it.
Somewhere along the line of preparations the loons in congress will demand a stop to all actions.
The media will create such an uproar, you will think the missing 18 minutes have been found. It’s their job, excepting a few eras, American media has been a popularist debacle from the county’s birth.
LikeLike
Thank you Willis for a wonderful post.
While we might feel very far away from North Korea where we live in South Africa, if this stand-off grows into a flame, then a big fire, we are all going to feel the heat.
Best wishes
John
LikeLike
Thank you, Willis. Col. North was a man who cut his teeth as a young lieutenant in the jungles of Vietnam. He was mocked by many for his insistence that his men wear their helmets al all times. But he had seen the statistics for death by head injury and he had seen how lax the requirements were and he wanted, above all else, for his men to go home alive.
I see the same ethos expressed in his list of preparations that we should be making.
PBH
LikeLiked by 3 people
Reblogged this on HiFast News Feed.
LikeLike
Why not try something totally different for a change, like Trump has a sit down with Xi and change the dynamic by agreeing that China will invade the North to solve the problem with this loon. Then, on behalf of the North Koreans, China signs a final peace treaty ending the Korean “conflict,” recognizes Seoul as the head of a unified, Neutral Korean peninsula (sort of a Swiss republic of the Orient), and the U.S. gets to pull its troops out. Except for the loon, everyone wins … China gets to trade with a stable country and the U.S. is off the mainland of Asia (a real thorn in China’s side), the North Korea people win on so many levels, a decades-long drain on the U.S. is ended as we won’t have to provide security to a unified country.
That does, of course, still leave a much bigger problem for long-term monitoring … China, which is communist in name only; it’s now evolved into more of a fascist state, which is even more of an explosive potential for the future.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve commented before that I believe if North Korea is reading current events then they cogently and sanely understand that if you give up your nuclear capability that you’re almost positively going to get invaded, overthrown and potentially sodomized with a bayonet. (that’s some motivation if you ask me)
The US steams around and flies around and huff’s and puff’s and accuses NK of being paranoid in spite the fact that we openly claim we’re out to get him. Similar to the way somehow Russia got they’re country inside all of our bases.
So, Willis, since you have experience with crazy people, I ask how would you propose to deal with Uncle Whoa Fat? It doesn’t seem to me that it’s wise to go to start poking the homicidal sociopath in the chest.
We played this game with Cuba about 60 years when Castro’s claim to power that he was resisting the US and it apparently worked.
I say, walk away and let the Koreans fix themselves. That program seemed to work in Vietnam.
If NK pulls the trigger on something then Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. I believe they understand that.
LikeLike
taz1999 August 9, 2017 at 1:56 pm
Thanks, Taz. Not sure who you are calling “North Korea”, but Whoa Fat doesn’t “cogently and sanely” understand anything. That’s the problem.
I don’t think that’s accurate history. For decades after the Korean war, for a half century, we basically ignored North Korea. But then he popped off a nuclear bomb … and then another … and another … then a short range missile … then a long-range missile …
So no, we’ve not said we’re out to get him. For half a century we basically ignored him. We’ve been clear that we wanted him to stop his nuclear weapons program, but that’s on him, not on us.
As I said above, the danger exists whether or not we poke him in the chest. That’s why Colonel North’s prescriptions are on the money. I always advise the no-regrets option. If we do what the Colonel recommends, if he does go off the rails then we’re prepared, and if he doesn’t, we’re still prepared.
The Vietnam War was eventually won by Ho Chi Minh, another warrior monk who had already been fighting to throw out the foreign invaders (China, Japan, China again, and the French) for fifty years before the Americans foolishly became the latest, and eventually the last, in the long list of foreign invaders.
The idea that the Vietnam situation is somehow parallel to this doesn’t survive close examination.
I agree with you that he understands that … however, I fear he simply doesn’t care.
My thanks to you, always good to hear different viewpoints.
w.
LikeLike
My father in law fought in the 51 hot war. His parents kept his letters home and I’m slowly transcribing them.
texaninkorea.com He was in quartermaster so it’s not war porn; but he like Willis really was not fond of the army.
US foreign policy is a cascading disaster. If the goal was to suppress Iran, Saddam should have been your best friend not your second target. Bush jr was the straw that broke my faith in any US President and they seem to getting worse as time goes on. Early I was bad about making my predictions from my projections. I figured Bush would be smart enough (having seen what happened to the USSR) to go in and get out of afghanistan. Declare victory and bring em home. Yet 16 years later, here we are.
One of the problems with continuing to beat the war drums is that by design or accident a war goes off.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And if you believe the US (despite repeated evidence otherwise) and be considered an honest player. From lewrockwell.com (interestingly today)
The Korean Armistice Agreement of 1953 brought the hostilities to a close with a cease fire. The U.S. broke the agreement in 1956:
“Paragraph 13(d) of the Armistice Agreement mandated that neither side introduce new weapons into Korea, other than piece-for-piece replacement of equipment. In September 1956 the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Radford indicated that the U.S. military intention was to introduce atomic weapons into Korea, which was agreed to by the U.S. National Security Council and President Eisenhower.[34] However paragraph 13(d) prevented the introduction of nuclear weapons and missiles.[35] The U.S. unilaterally abrogated paragraph 13(d), breaking the Armistice Agreement, despite concerns by United Nations allies.[36][37][38] At a meeting of the Military Armistice Commission on June 21, 1957, the U.S. informed the North Korean representatives that the United Nations Command no longer considered itself bound by paragraph 13(d) of the armistice.[39][40] In January 1958 nuclear armed Honest John missiles and 280mm atomic cannons were deployed to South Korea,[41] a year later adding nuclear armed Matador cruise missiles with the range to reach China and the Soviet Union.[37][42]”
5:05 pm on August 9, 2017 Email Michael S. Rozeff
LikeLike
Thanks, Taz. Yes, the US broke the Armistice once the North Koreans refused to sign a Peace Treaty, and I would have as well if I were in charge back then. Papers unreleased until 1984 discuss why:
Not an easy question, but bear in mind that the North Koreans started the war. After the Armistice, they refused to sign a peace treaty. For me, at that point all bets are off. The Armistice was not designed to last forever, only until a peace treaty was signed.
It’s easy to be a Monday-morning quarterback, but I think Ike made the right decision.
w.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Taz, a further note from CNN, March 11, 2013:
Note that this is tantamount to a declaration of war …
w.
LikeLiked by 1 person
”This, said the President, would mean all-out war against Communist China,” the document continues.
This is probably still true. and now add Russia because we seem currently to be antagonizing the countries that can guarantee this could go world nuclear. It seems that Whoa Fat is clearly enjoying his meals more than he wants to become a piece of radioactive glass or he’d just go ahead and do it without talking about it.
Now he’s supposedly threatening Guam. Guam is way more useful for a US false flag than as a Whoa Fat target since he’s already holding Japan and South Korea hostage. US confidence in US abilities far and away exceeds it’s military/foreign policy accomplishments in the last 15 years.
LikeLike
China and Rusia are not going nuclear to save Whoa Fat’s crazy butt, and we don’t have to go nuclear to blast his butt off. Nor do we need to invade, just use conventional weapons to pull his teeth. China and Russia are concerned about a North Korea refugee problem, and surgical removal of offensive military capacity would minimize that.
LikeLike
> Nor do we need to invade, just use conventional weapons to pull his teeth. > China and Russia are concerned about a North Korea refugee problem, and > surgical removal of offensive military capacity would minimize that.
sorry, when they have had 70 years to dig in their artillary, you aren’t going to have a ‘surgical removal of their offensive military capacity’. You vastly over-estimate the ability to knock them out and under-estimate the amount of armament that North Korea has deployed.
Even with Nuclear strikes against the mountains that they are dug into, you aren’t going to be able to prevent them from unleashing their artillary against South Korea. Tunneling and Concrete reinforcement is not high technology, it really hasn’t changed a lot since WWII.
If it comes to a shooting war, South Korea is going to get hammered and thousands, if not millions of people are going to be hurt (even if North Korea doesn’t use chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons in the process)
David Lang
LikeLike
“and surgical removal of offensive military capacity”
Boy it sure sounds purty (and we’ll be home by Christmas) when you say it like that. Experience in the past 16 years would seem to falsify that. So suppose you’re correct and we win, what have we really won? A poop hole of a country with starving refugees, probably still nuclear armed and no chance of accepting any leader associated with round eyes. Might make king Pyrrhus proud.
LikeLike
We don’t invade, which is one of the problems of past military endeavors. Air superiority is established immediately and surveillance allows quick responses to attempts at large rocket activities. Don’t fight the last war when technology makes fighting the next one more effective. And don’t send in ground troops. Not needed.
LikeLike
Taz, I prefer not to live under the Illustrious Supreme Leaded Mr. Kim. You and your ilk had a plenty of time since 1953 to handle the Kim family state peacefully. Look at the results. Mr. Kim wants everybody to be just like you.
LikeLike
majormike1
Don’t fight the last war when technology makes fighting the next one more effective.
Totally agree with you here. My fear is that 20 years of absolute air superiority has crept into US military doctrine and this might not always be the case. Particularly if Russia or China throw in some assets. One of the issues with essentially infinite military budge is the defence contractors have stopped engineering weapon systems are are now engineering profits. Lockheed in the Kelly Johnson days were turning out advanced aircraft. Now they’ve created an invincible aircraft. The F-35 project can’t be killed. At huge expense the F-35 is going to fail in all it’s roles against any aircraft specialized for a particular role. It’s been compromised since inception.
http://www.stopthef35.com/pentagon-f-35-wont-have-a-chance-in-real-combat
I contend if we want true defence rather than boondoggle then cut the defence budget in half. Then put a bunch of the savings toward Veteran’s programs because they are getting the raw end of a really bad deal.
LikeLike
Willis.
Whet you have displayed here is a fine example of “fisking”. Well done, sir. A masterly example of taking apart BS, and displaying it for public instruction.
LikeLike
The leadership issue cannot only be Whoa Fat as we always see the “I’ve got more medals and a bigger hat” brigade standing steadfastly behind him. How many generals does it take to remove one megalomaniac and bring some sense to the country? Even Chinese rule must be better than the current regime.
Watch this young lady (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufhKWfPSQOw) explain why North Korea needs a dose of salts put through it.
LikeLike
John in Oz August 9, 2017 at 2:03 pm
One general with huevones grandes would be enough … a hundred generals without them wouldn’t be sufficient …
w.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“condemned to remember history” — nice. I like reading about history (NOT the same as a history course!); that way you don’t have to suffer through actually being there as it happens.
Do we, don’t we, that is the question. Either way there’s going to be lots of dead cats. It’s rolling the dice big time. Some duke you’ve never heard of somewhere you’ve never heard of gets shot; it turns into WW1. Remember, all sides thought WW1 would be quick and easy. On the other hand, everybody could see the later German arms build-up, but nobody did anything about it (Churchill warned, at least), and then it turns into WW2, which I might add was almost lost.
So here we have NK, again. Time to bone up on NK.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Juche
“Korean-flavoured variety of Stalinism”, “borrows from Maoism”, “very large racist component”, “North Korea only has a population of 24 million people, but has over 1 million in the military, and another 8 million in reserve, making it the largest country by military personnel (and the largest military spender) per capita.”
http://www.billionbibles.org/north-korea/juche-religion.html
NK is secular, anti-religion, but Juche is a socio-political ideology which might as well be a religion. According to this website:
“Juche is modeled after Christianity. Instead of God the Father, Juche worships Kim Il-sung, the founder of North Korea who died in 1994 yet continues to rule today as North Korea’s “Eternal President” and official head of state. Juche teaches North Koreans that upon death, they will be reunited with Kim Il-sung and live with him forever.”
It goes on. Wow!
“the Iran/Contra affair”. What do we know about the Iran-NK links? Maybe Iran is selling the arms this time; they seem to agree on who the Great Satan is.
LikeLike
c4c
LikeLike
Thx Willis for the good post. I look forward to reading your blog postings. I think that NK is just playing the role of the Junk Yard dog for China and to a lessor extent Russia. It is a sphere of influence technique which expresses itself in “I can poke you in the eye and you can’t do anything about it”. NK is also aided and abetted by Iran and to a lessor extent Pakistan – two countries that would love to seriously diminish the U.S. in any way possible. Having previously lived and worked in Seoul, my heart goes out to the S. Koreans who continually live with the threat of nuclear confrontation literally at their front door….. similar to Israel & their unfriendly neighbors…. that’s a dose of reality.
LikeLike
Colonel North has the right approach. North Korean artillery can cause havoc up to six miles but the attrition rate for it would be about two percent per hour, given resources already in place. A South Korean withdrawal from the DMZ would get Whoa Fat’s attention. If nothing comes from that step quickly, then nuclear sites should be blasted, and any response by Whoa Fat would unleash a firestorm all along the DMZ. At no time should any attack be launched from South Korea across the DMZ. Hopefully, North Korea would launch a counterattack leaving their tanks, ships and planes exposed. This should have been done yesterday, or better yet, twenty years of yesterdays ago. Letting hope triumph over reality will only make the inevitable worse.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Heard about one to several weapons tests at Eglin perhaps 30 years on the problems posed by the Nork HART sites. Each site has large steel doors that are opened. They roll the arty piece out a bit, fire for effect, and roll it back, closing the doors. The piece, ammo & crew are on the other side of the door.
In the test, they fired an AGM-65 Maverick, about 100# of shaped charge at the door. The weapon is a centroid tracker, and hit the line of closure for the two doors. The shaped charge drilled thru and went some distance behind the door. So you kind of get a three-fer – you weld the door shut, and blow up everything behind it. Given the use of PGMs these days, I expect you can do the same thing with a MK-82 or larger bomb with a guidance kit and a delay fuze. Wouldn’t take a long time to strip this threat to Seoul. Cheers –
LikeLiked by 1 person
using million dollar missiles to destroy thousand dollar artillary is not sutainable.
North Korea has over a thousand artillary pieces aimed at Seoul, while some will sit tight until ordered to attack, many will start attacking when they see other NK forces being attacked, you are not going to be able to kill them all in anything cose to a reasonable timeframe.
Just the number of aircraft missions that would be needed to fire a thousand missiles would be a matter of days, not hours to launch
LikeLike
The distance from Seoul to the DMZ is 35 miles, out of range of most of the thousands of artillery pieces North Korea has on the DMZ. This analysis is pertinent: “While the sheer number of artillery tubes could theoretically kill a large number of civilians, operational issues complicate matters and push the number of civilian casualties greatly downward. Despite the thousands of artillery pieces, only 700 heavier guns and rocket launchers, plus the newer 300-millimeter MRLs, have the range to strike Seoul. Only a third would normally be fired at once, and notional rates of fire would be slowed tremendously by the need to withdraw guns into their hardened artillery sites (HARTS) to shelter them from counter battery fire.
Other factors reduce the projected loss of life in the greater Seoul metropolitan area. The city has extensive air raid shelters for civilians that will quickly reduce the exposed population density. The North will struggle to keep these heavy artillery units supplied with shells, particularly with its aging supply system. Finally, U.S. and ROK forces will quickly begin hunting down units participating in the bombardment, causing their numbers to drop almost immediately.”
And “Rocket Man” is dead by the end of the first day.
LikeLike
so instead of “over a thousand” artillary pieces that can hit seoul, we should be reassured that it’s “only” 700 plus some unknown number of newer MRLS???
As for the “normal practice” of only firing 1/3 at a time and withdrawing to their bunkers, if they are under attack and get word that their fellows are being killed in their hardened bunkers, what makes you think that they will follow that “normal practice”, they will either give up and bug out, or they will try to do as much damage as possible before they are killed.
LikeLike
They are very precisely targeted. If they stay out and fire, they won’t last long.
LikeLike
Unit cost of the AGM-65 is in the vicinity of $17 – 110k depending on the variant (IIR / Video / laser). MK-82 unit cost is in the vicinity of $2k. Put a guidance package on it and cost rises to $21k.
Note that when you use one of these on a HART site, you not only take out the piece, but everything behind the doors you just welded shut including some or all of the crew.
Figure each airframe can throw 4 of these things, you only need 250 sorties for the first wave. A single 24 UE A-10 squadron can do that turning the jets 11 times apiece. Based on surge rates in the 1980s, would only take a couple days, probably less if they surge around the clock. And there will be a lot more than a single squadron prosecuting the festivities should the balloon go up. Cheers –
LikeLike
The Clinton’s gave them fuel for energy some years ago. How did that work out?
LikeLike
With each passing day, as things stand now, the day that Uncle Whoa Fat has a deliverable nuclear weapons gets one day closer. The time to assure that Uncle doesn’t possess deliverable nuclear capabilities is before such capabilities are developed. All policy prescriptions for the North Korea problem need to include that constraint in the first sentence of the recommendation.
LikeLiked by 1 person
From what I experienced in combat, there really are not many gung-ho “I want to kill, kill” types. Those that are of that nature either get killed or eventually get weeded out; it is an attitude that gets your own killed. That Mattis feels the burden of sending men to their death is the soul of one who understands that the nature of combat is a brutal but necessary job. Anyone who has been in combat has the burden of enemy deaths, but officers carry the extra burden of their own men’s deaths. A really good officer reconciles these facts and incorporates them into decisions – decisions that get the other side to die for their country while minimizing our losses. Mattis is precisely the kind of commander I would want leading me and he is the right man for the job of SecDef at this time of history.
Like you, Willis, I was conflicted with regards to North. The Iran-Contra affair was deplorable and dishonorably contrary to his military oath, yet part of his oath states he will obey the President. Hence falling on his sword carried a certain honor with it. I’ve been impressed with his comeback and generally agree with his military assessments of things. Some of his political stances leave a little to be desired but he usually sticks to military assessments.
LikeLike
I remember, years ago, reading an American write the comment that:”The aim of a good military is not to die for your country; rather to ensure that some other silly S0B dies for HIS country”.
LikeLike
Just a note, the proper spelling is Wo Fat, circa Hawaii 5-0 original series. But I lime your take as in “whoa is me.”
The dilemma is whom do we sacrifice at the hands of an irrational leader with nuclear capabilities so we can justify that leader’s annihilation. Shall we wait until thousands of U.S. citizens die just to be righteous in our own minds? Do we sit and hope it is only a few in Guam or Alaska so we don’t feel so bad due to the lower number of killed? We all know it is going to happen eventually as long as Whoa Fat is in power. Better to end the threat now, take the international heat (although privately the world will rejoice) and move on. A less threatening future is good for all humanity. In addition, perhaps the somewhat more rational Iranians will also finally get the message.
LikeLike
Woe is me … whoa mule!
LikeLike
Oops! Coffee low.
LikeLike
Started to read this and didn’t finish. I am not all that much into name calling for no reason, so it didn’t appeal to me. North Korea is a product of stupid American diplomacy. It has been under heavy sanctions for so long that it is amazing that it exists. From the time of Clinton leaving office, with no support from outside, North Korea supposedly has gone from a nation barely able to maintain a nuclear power plant to a nation that, during Bush’s years, struggled to present a realistic atomic bomb. Yet miraculously has not only got a few bombs like the one’s we dropped on Japan, but now have literally dozens – if you assume they are going to obliterate the US. They went from having SCUD missiles while Bush reigned in the war room, to short to medium range missiles barely capable of reaching Japan with Obama, now to ICBMs capable of reaching any part of the US homeland. And not just ONE ICBM, but apparently dozens of them – enough to match the dozens of miniaturized warheads that they have built. If this isn’t the biggest load of fear mongering crap I have ever read, I don’t know what would be bigger.
You slur Kim left right and center, but you accept what “generals” and “former colonels” have to say like they actually know something. Hasn’t been an American general since MacArthur died that knew how to win a war, and you want to listen to them? I don’t consider what was done to Iraq or Libya “wars” in the sense of what would be faced going into North Korea. And I have no doubt that Kim is blustering and making threats only because US politicians – including the current resident of the war room – are doing exactly that. Every year we practice “invading North Korea” on his doorstep, and you wonder why he might be a bit irritated?
As for Ollie North, I am sure he “fell on his sword” to cover his backside and get immunity from prosecution, not for any other purpose. Just like John Dean in Nixon’s administration, he probably was up to his neck in the creation of the issue, then “went public” to avoid having the fallout hit him.
As for North Korea, the one thing that they have demanded through the years that we do was stop practicing the invasion of North Korea – after all we are still at war with them, and it isn’t necessarily easy to determine when one is just practicing or actually ramping up. IF we are going to have that “Hard rain is going to fall” on our heads, it won’t be coming from North Korea, it will be coming from those that see our constant stirring of the pot on the Korean peninsula as the obvious last step towards an attempt to destroy them as well. Kim may be making the mistake of playing the part of “mad dog,” but he is far less dangerous to me than the war crowd in Washington. I expect it is far more likely that I will die at the hands of my government than I am at the hands of a North Korean action. This reminds me of the silly buildup to the war with Hussein and Iraq, but I don’t think for a second that North Korea is the target of this buildup, and I doubt if those that are the target are fooled either. The American public? They’ll believe anything the government and MSM seem to want to say when it comes to “the rest of the world.”
LikeLike
Tom O August 10, 2017 at 6:26 am
You say that as though you are proud to be commenting on something you didn’t read … a curious stance, celebrating your ignorance of what you are about to discuss.
So you are not into name calling but you are happy to call American diplomats stupid … say what?
It exists because both China and Russia have ignored the sanctions and provided them with support. Is this somehow a mystery?
I don’t understand this. It sounds like you’re claiming that they DON’T have nuclear bombs and long-range missiles. They have fired the missiles, we have pictures. They have set off the nuclear bombs, we have seismic records. They have threatened to use the nuclear weapons against their enemies, we have recordings.
So it is totally unclear just what you think is “a load of fearmongering crap” …
I haven’t “accepted” what anyone tells me since I was about ten years old. Instead, I assess their ideas and think about the implications. I thought the advice of Colonel North was good, NOT because he was a Colonel, but because I found his ideas to be reasonable prescriptions for a parlous situation.
Now, you may well disagree with me, but to do so you need to tell us exactly what is wrong with those prescriptions. Instead, rather than discuss the ideas at hand, you waste everyone’s time with a string of ad hominem attacks on WHO came up with the ideas. I don’t care whose ideas they are, I don’t if they were found written on a bathroom wall—the only relevant question is, are they good ideas?
Tom, Whoa Fat has thousands and thousands of artillery pieces along the DMZ ready to pound Seoul into submission. Not only that, but he, his father, and his grandfather have all said, over and over, that they would crush the South militarily, drive them into the sea, destroy their cities.
When your neighbor threatens that and has the military capablility to do it, when his country is dirt-poor and despite that he spends ten percent of his GDP on military hardware to pound your ass into the ground, you’d be an utter fool to not practice how you would defend against that ever-present threat.
As I said and you seem to have missed in your eagerness to not read what you are discussing, for the reason you state and other reasons I have always been ambivalent about Colonel North. He was up to his neck in some sordid illegal business … but as a US Officer he was duty bound to obey orders that came directly from the President.
I’ve looked and looked and I find no evidence for this claim. Please provide us with some examples of NK making the claim that IF we stop trying to figure out how to defend South Korea against three generations of militaristic madmen who have sworn over and over that they would push the South Koreans “into the sea”, THEN they would crawl back into their caves and stop making threats.
I’ve never heard such an offer from him, his father, or his grandfather, and I simply don’t believe that is true.
And you say “we are still at war with them” … not true.
They are still at war with us. We were willing to sign a peace treaty back in 1951. They were not.
The North Koreans were very slow to even sign the Armistice, and they totally refused to end the war. They’ve threatened to abrogate the Armistice six times since then … like I said, they are at war with us. So the idea that this is a reaction to our actions simply doesn’t agree with recorded history.
Hey, if you want to be more afraid of John McCain or General Mattis than of a man who is willing to poison his own half-brother to a hideous death, and to condemn his entire country to poverty and starvation, that’s on your head. Your fears are your business.
Me, I have a different perspective, but that’s what makes horse races.
I would suggest that you dial back the aggro, however. It’s not helping either your cause or your reputation …
In friendship,
w.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Started to read your reply but changed my mind. Nothing to do with ignorance, just lack of tolerance. Your website, say what you want. Nothing requires me to read it.
LikeLike
Don’t read it, and don’t pollute it.
LikeLike
Tom O August 10, 2017 at 6:26 am
Tom O August 11, 2017 at 5:18 am
To summarize …
1) You didn’t read the head post, but you wrote at length to tell us you thought it was wrong, wrong, wrong.
So I replied to your lengthy comment, at length.
2) You didn’t read my reply, but you wrote a brief note to tell us you thought my reply was wrong, wrong, wrong.
Now I remember you. You were the guy in high school who turned in the book report … but who didn’t bother to read the book, and then boasted about it afterward.
I suppose you are unaware of how such foolishness makes you look to the rest of the world, or you wouldn’t persist in it …
What’s next? You gonna review movies that you’ve never seen?
Sadly,
w.
LikeLike
Another master class in “fisking”; I dips me lid, Willis.
LikeLike
taz1999 August 10, 2017 at 7:15 am
Thanks, taz, but the goal was never to “suppress Iran”. Not sure where you got that idea, but it contradicts history. Our goal was to overthrow a madman who was killing his own people at a rate of knots, and more to the point, vowing to use his oil billions to drive the Jews into the ocean … and our problem was that we won the war but we lost the peace …
Not sure where you’ve been, but we’ve tried “getting out of Afghanistan”, only to see it returning to being a haven for savage Islamic terrorists. What’s your brilliant plan for not allowing the terrorists to use it as a base and a safe haven for Islamic suicide murderers that doesn’t involve US troops?
Because I can assure you, if you have such a plan, our leaders are desperate to talk to you …
w.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Could we start by cutting off their income stream and “Agent Oranging” their poppy fields?
LikeLike
Because I can assure you, if you have such a plan, our leaders are desperate to talk to you …
Well I’m pretty sure that they are not desperate to talk to me. My solution is simple, cheap and quick (3 steps); walk away, walk away walk away. These are not our fights and no matter how many people we kill, are not going to fix the problems. I’m sorry people are oppressed and agree with you that Islam is brutal but I don’t think the 1000th bomb is going to cure that. 999 was ok, but you got me at 1000.
Let’s defend ourselves from Mexico and Canada. Let’s defend the Coasts. Let’s remove the incentives from illegal aliens; Then anyone else gets a lead dose at 1100ftps.
LikeLike
taz1999 August 13, 2017 at 11:14 am Edit
Thanks, Taz, but I fear you haven’t followed your trail to the end.
So … we walk away, and Whoa Fat keeps making bombs. Once he has enough, he’ll share them with his pals in Iran, plus of course any rogue state or terrorist group he wants to help …
Hey, what could go wrong with a plan like that?
Perhaps you’ve never heard the old expression, “An ounce of prevention is worth a megaton of cure” …
w.
LikeLiked by 1 person
If we go with the official narrative of 9-11 (which of course I don’t) we should have retaliated against Saudi
Arabia with a side of Egypt and maybe Germany and South Florida. So who’s on first, Afghanistan. Then if we’re considering Iran as a threat then removing Sadam was not even wrong. Now we’re essentially stale mated everywhere by light infantry in pickup trucks. Maybe someone else can point it out but i don’t see any success but a cascading series of problems. All being met with the same broken solutions and no end in sight.
About 6 years ago, I was with a military program manger at the National Infantry Museum & Soldier Center at Fort Benning. (pretty cool, I highly recommend) I was biting my tongue when in fact he stated the irony of having galleries for both Afgan and Iraq that hadn’t been concluded yet.
If the megaton of cure doesn’t end up causing what we’re trying to prevent my guesses are that Fat unleashes his military into the south a refugee crisis in China to the North. And many remaining factions some of which may end up with a nuke or 2.
Germany invaded Poland in self defence. That logic didn’t hold up well at Nuremberg.
Throwing a sucker punch in a bar fight is the most reliable way to win but it’s a little late to say maybe we should talk about this afterward.
LikeLike
> Germany invaded Poland in self defence. That logic didn’t hold up well at Nuremberg.
when did Poland attack Germany?
> If we go with the official narrative of 9-11 (which of course I don’t) we > should have retaliated against Saudi Arabia …
so did the government of Saudi Arabia support the attackers?
We invaded Afganistan, not because of where the attackers were born, but because they were part of a particular organization and that organization took over the country.
Saudi Arabia may not have cracked down on the Taliban as hard as they could have, but they were hardly supporting them.
David Lang
LikeLike
when did Poland attack Germany? I should have put a sarc tag on that. Some sources clam that was the official given reason for the German invasion.
My logic was; I think 11 was the number of Saud hijackers and the remainder were Egyptian. (conveniently, miracle passports survived) Of course the great bogey man Bin Laden was Saud. The attacks were organized in Germany. The high jackers trained in South FL. and being a FL resident I figure the rest of us might be better if South Fl was nuked (also sarc)
LikeLike
so if someone from your town attacks people, you think that you should be held responsible rather than the organization that they are part of?
LikeLike
btw see http://www.texaninkorea.com for short letters home. Though I’ve only gotten as far as basic training in California. Then Japan, then briefly in Korea.
LikeLike
This is slightly off topic but an open question to the Group. So Trump had a tantrum over a false flag event and launched 59 cruise missiles at Syria. Why 59 (when 58 just won’t quite do) I expect that number 60 failed it’s pre-flight testing.
So here’s the question. 20 some odd missiles were said to have hit their targets. My question is what happened to the rest of the missiles?
Once you’ve passed the pre-flights I would have thought numbers north of 90% at the targets. Anymore it’s not that hard to fly the missiles to targets. The Arleigh Burke loads out with 56 Tomahawk missiles so it’s fairly safe to assume multiple ships involved. Ideas?
LikeLike
taz1999 August 14, 2017 at 9:13 am
Don’t know the answer to your question of where the missiles went, Taz, but I’m very happy to see someone else who realizes that the so-called chemical attack by Syria/Russia was actually a false flag event designed to make the US into the Al Qaeda air strike team … not many folks know that.
w.
LikeLike
so if someone from your town attacks people, you think that you should be held responsible rather than the organization that they are part of?
First disclaimer is that I believe very little of the official 9-11 narrative. Secondly I agree with you above. My point being at least you might be justified attacking the offending town. I think you’re pretty much off base if you go attacking some other random town.
So basically the Afgan war was to get Ben Laden and provide women’s rights. Ben Laden who probably died in late 2001 from the kidney disease, keeps looking younger in his provocative videos, Later is discovered in Pakistan, next to a military base, Supposedly killed a 2nd time by a famous Seal Team of whom most members are really killed in a helicopter crash. Can’t make this stuff up.
LikeLike
you are the one who said that we should have attacked Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others instead of Afganistan on the basis that those are the countries the 9-11 attackers came from.
That’s attacking your town because someone from there was bad.
Attacking a country that is run by the people who claimed responsibility for an attack is very different.
you only know a little about what you are talking about (I also only know a bit on these topic, but I know enough to see holes in your viewpoint), but this is really not the right place to debate conspiracy theories (on either side)
LikeLike
Hitler did claim his invasion of Poland was in self-defense. When you control the media, that’s all you need to say to your own people. To convince the other countries, he had some SS troops put on Polish uniforms and damage some German installations and leave behind some dead concentration camp prisoners in Polish uniforms. A false-flag operation.
LikeLike
> My solution is simple, cheap and quick (3 steps); walk away, walk away walk > away. These are not our fights and no matter how many people we kill, are not > going to fix the problems.
we tried ignoring them, that lead to 9-11, what makes you think that leaving them alone in poverty will result in them leaving us along as opposed to just building more capabilities to attack us and continuing the fight.
Obama attempted the “declare victory and pull out” only to find that it really did cause us more problems.
Given people who are fighting you a base that is never under attack is a sure way to loose the fight over the long haul.
LikeLike
There’s an interesting chronology of the nuclear issues with North Korea here.
Best to all,
w.
LikeLike
What is scary here is that Tom O and Taz with their history rewrite viewpoints are prime examples of the wests failing education system. The so called uneducated deplorables thankfully can see the BS.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well you’ve made some assumptions here. More than I would like to admit
, but my education system came quite a bit ago ;I’m assuming previous to yours. So I’ll invoke the Willis rule. Example my error re-points and I’ll show you my sources and we discuss.
LikeLike
I must assume there are 2 or 3 submarines plying the waters just off the coast.
Talk about itchy trigger fingers, those crews have been training for years, and never got to fire a shot in anger.
People do “suicide by cop”, this crazy man wants to raise the bar.
LikeLike
NK has subs too. So nobody is out of range. And WF probably is not “crazy” in the disoriented, hearing voices, talking-to-himself sense of the word. Sociopathic, paranoid, narcisistic — most likely by the evidence. This makes him somewhat predictable for skilled profilers whose talents are sorely needed right now.
LikeLike
James Bond movies aside, I believe the culprits behind the escalation to war and the impoverishment of citizenry reside in the military leaders who direct this puppet show from stage right. The NK military has been preparing to fight ever since the Armistice 60+ years ago. Brought up in the hard-knocks schools of the military, there is nothing to glorify their existence than mortal combat. The NK military along with the Chinese Volunteers couldn’t eject the US military back then so the US military presence is an open wound, festering; their humiliation every day.
Someone in the line of command will kick-start a war no matter what the Country’s cost. Go back to when a Korea, before the end of the 19th Century, humiliation at being annexed by Japan in 1910. The glories of almost a 1000 years of self rule, gone.
Whoa-fat is a lineage pawn in a feudal military state reminiscent of a time of the counter-part of Samaria in Japan. Korea is complicated. Having a titular head is the way things were. The Warriors were the political leaders then as now. The military long for 1 AD to make it similar to 2017.
The way to emasculate a military is to deprive then of money for their war games and toys. Defeating warriors in battle and letting them otherwise escape will not change any mindset. Strangling the purse-strings of the military will require strangling the people of NK. Pick your poison.
LikeLike
Major Mike above suggests it would be easy to take out their facilities. He should read up about the Balkan conflict where, with much less time to prepare, the Serbians managed to hide their equipment/set up dummy gear for the invaders to waste their ammo on. It took a long time to dislodge them.
LikeLike
You don’t have to dislodge them (translation = invade). You just prevent them from attacking. When you pull the snake’s fangs, you don’t have to kill the snake or put it in a cage. The bloodiest battle of WW II was on Peleliu, and it never should have been fought. After the first day’s bombing and shelling, the Japanese force on Peleliu had no offensive capability and could have been bypassed and left for the duration of the war. We stupidly made a landing and almost all the Japanese and a large number of Americans died unnecessarily. On Peleliu “it took a long time to dislodge them” but was totally unnecessary. We can’t learn if we don’t look back and critically review past accomplishments. In retrospect the great victory at Peleliu was a great mistake. North Korea cannot sustain an invasion of South Korea, but it would greatly shorten a war if they tried.
LikeLike
“it’s not just that he’s battier than a British church belfry. The problem is that he’s sicker and more twisted than a rattlesnake with rabies.” No doubt about the evil part, but the crazy part … Yes, from our point of view, he’s a character out of a cartoon or Hollywood movie. But he is in power, in total control, so just maybe he’s smarter than he looks. It’s a crazy game he is playing, but he plays it well. He wins against Obama, Clinton, Merkel, and almost everybody else. Trump? I don’t know; people call him crazy too.
Nuclear weapons, what are they good for? 72 years ago this month, two were used in anger, and despite temptation they have not been actually used as a weapon since then. I have a hard time imagining how they would have helped in Vietnam, or any other conflict. There only purpose seems to be to wipe out cities and civilians.
Even in the case of their use in Japan, there is no consensus on whether they helped end the war, saving the thousands of lives that would have been lost in an invasion. Almost all other Japanese cities were firebombed (roughly equivalent) but that didn’t stop the war. This article makes the case that the Japanese surrendered because the Russians were about to invade:
http://nationalpost.com/news/did-the-atomic-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-really-end-the-war/
What makes nukes so desirable as weapons is the threat. Like using a gun to rob a bank — you didn’t go into the bank to shoot people, but just showing a gun gets results.
What makes nukes so undesirable is the possibility of mistakes, human errors, poor judgement in critical moments, software glitches. It’s Russian Roulette. You don’t want to know how many times WW3 almost started. Not to mention that some crazy might get a hold of one with an evil intent.
LikeLike
Hi Willis.
A couple of years ago I was lent a book called Dear Leader by Jang Jin-Sung – an account by an official in WF’s administration who managed to escape the country and make his way back through northern China to South Korea. A fascinating story with interesting insights into the people around WF and how the oppression thing works. Firstly the population is completely cut off from any real news from outside3 and the leadership cult is medieval. Hang Jin-Sung was a propaganda official and part of his job was to read news from outside Korea. As a result of this he become convinced he should escape. Recommended for background – it makes a nonsense of the comments above from the person who failed to read the stuff he was criticising – Duh…
Stu
LikeLike
Nuke trivia — the biggest man-made explosion ever, The Tsar Bomba, 1961, 50 Megatons. Google “Tsar Bomba” for more.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170816-the-monster-atomic-bomb-that-was-too-big-to-use
LikeLike