Korea is getting worrysome.

[dannavy85]

This is probably the worst situation I've seen in Korea since the 1996-97 crisis when I was stationed in Iwakuni, Japan. F-22 fighters have been sent to Osan Airbase and the ROK President just gave the military full authority to retalliate to North Korean provocations without having to consult her first.

You get one trigger happy idiot over there an excuse and we could have a full scale war within minutes. There's no doubt the North will fire on Japan, that was made clear to us in 96.

Right now I'd say we're a hair from DEFCON 2 in Korea.

[Juanita]

Oh my. That's terrible. I'll be praying for Korea.

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

It needs to be made clear to North Korea that if they are stupid enough to nuke any US interests we will turn their country into a huge radioactive hole in the ground.

[Juanita]

Yeah they better be careful in their decisions. Remember Hiroshima?
We may not be too bright in some aspects, but we will blow you to pieces. (Not that this is necessarily a good thing, I'm just saying.)

[AprilSeven]

I'm praying for a peaceful resolution to all this . . . one of my dear friends is originally from South Korea (he's a doctor, and also conducts our local symphony orchestra).

I know he has family there, and it would be terrible if this escalates.

After seeing the horrors of war through Tezuka's eyes, let's pray and hope for a different solution.

[diehard67]

WHEN WILL THE HUMAN RACE LEARN THAT WAR ONLY BRINGS PAIN AND SUFFERING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Juanita]

MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY.

[dannavy85]

What we have now is a 28 year old who's only understanding of the world comes from two previous nut jobs.
Now you've got two missiles of unknown payload and capability on mobile launchers and my knowledge so far
says Jong Un will launch them.

Astro: Great! Toys!

Not that simple. There's clearly a few options, from not so bad to all out war, that we could do should Mister Kim decide to launch these puppies.

Astro: I beat em up then I go to North Korea and turn their rocket launchers into pretzels!

uh....wait. This is what I say Kim's going to do. He's going to shoot these missiles off shortly after the 10th of April. They won't have any explosives
on them, chances are they'll fall short or beyond Japan. Our response to this should be....yawn....very nice. We should not try to shoot them down.
We should not bomb North Korea. We should pay Kim just enough lip service to up his litte ego and all returns to normal. This is what I believe will happen.

Now for the What if....

1. What if Kim launches his missiles and they strike Japan? If Kim hits Japan and no lives are lost and the material losses are minor.
Japan should do nothing back. A strong warning should be sent to discourage a "next time". If Kim starts preparing another launch...
you take out the Launcher and nothing more. If an attack results in loss of life and property, Japan should be prepared to retalliate
but wait and strongly urge Kim not to get stupid.

2. What if Kim launches his missiles and they reach US bases on Guam and hawaii? My feeling is I'll laugh. "Ok so you're little sticks
can go that far...I'm impressed." No need to fly off the handle, go to Defcon One and decimate Pyongyang. We warn Kim not to put
another missle on another launcher, if he does...we take out the launcher.

3. What if Kim launches a missile on South Korea? This would make things extremely dangerous, especially if Kim were to hit Seoul.
That would depend on the famous patience of the South Koreans who have tollerated North Korean foolishness since the armastice.
A strike on Seoul could blow everything apart. This is the what if that if you pray alot? you should be praying alot not to happen.

I don't think, at least I serious hope, that things will escalate into an all out full scale war in Korea because it will be horrific. At that
point the North Korean elite will have nothing left to lose save face and the loss of Korean honor is far worse feared than it was when
we fought Japan. The regime and its die hard elites will fight like hell. The closest I could come to describe the ferocity we'll see is when
the US Marines invaded Iwo Jima Island in 1944, it will be a bloody catastrophe.

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

North Korea's missiles are at best clones of copies of old Skud designs. The Skud was lucky to get off the launch pad in the right direction, let alone hit anywhere near it's target. (Remember Iraq?). So it's not likely that they will do any real damage unless they actually managed to put a nuke in one (in which case the odds are at least 30% they would nuke themselves).

I'll say this again, if they actually DID drop even a small nuke on Japan or any US interest, we should drop at LEAST 100 MEGA TONS on them. (The Chinese would probably bad mouth us while they cheer behind their backs).

[Astro Forever]

The situation is very worrysome; I think everybody here agrees on that.

However, I would like to remind dannavy85 of this rule:

No Political or Religious discussions.
Though the General Discussion forum has been provided as a place to talk about almost anything, there are some threads that are just better left unstarted and such topics often only lead to heated arguments and offended members with hurt feelings.

If we had 1000 active members, I wouldn't mind - I have enjoyed political discussions myself elsewhere - but we're a small forum and most regular members, years ago, agreed that this wasn't the best place to have them. Dannavy85, as a longtime member, is well aware of that rule.