North Korean Nuclear MLBM Confirmed By South Korean Intelligence

by JASmius



Once again, we see the dynamic of proximity to an existential threat doing wonders for focusing and sobering the mind:

North Korea has a nuclear warhead capable of being fitted on a mid-range missile that could reach U.S. military bases in Asia, CNN reports.

While the United States is skeptical of North Korea's claims, South Korean intelligence and some American analysts....

Who will be fired in short order for not toeing the party line.

....believe the communist nation is telling the truth, CNN's Jim Scuitto reported Wednesday on The Lead With Jake Tapper.

North Korea's Rodong ballistic missile is capable of delivering a one-ton warhead up to 1,200 miles, which puts South Korea, Japan and U.S. military bases in Asia within reach of a nuclear strike, Scuitto said.

"We believe they have the ability to mount a nuclear warhead on a Rodong," an unnamed South Korean official told foreign reporters. "Whether they will fire it like that is a political decision."

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The prudent course is always to err on the side of caution, which means it's better to overestimate an enemy's capabilities than underestimate them.  With the former, the worst that can happen is that you liberate a country and turn it into an ally, as happened (until Barack Obama threw it away) in Iraq.  With the latter, you wind up suffering devastating surprise attacks, the to-date worst example being the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor seventy-five years ago, the very thing of which the Roosevelt administration considered the Japanese incapable (for largely racist reasons).  "Sunday, December 7th, 1941; a date which will live....in infamy" taught them, bitterly and lethally, otherwise.

With rogue regimes like North Korea crash-building ballistic missile and nuclear weapons stockpiles, underestimating them is a mistake we simply and literally cannot afford to make.

And yet the Obama Regime's complacently, condescending, dare I say racist attitude is summed up in this statement:

"We know that they've said they have that capability and we have to take them at their word," [Obam]agon Spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said of the claim. "But we have not seen them demonstrate it." [emphasis added]

And you know how they would demonstrate it, I hope: on Seoul, and Tokyo, and Taiwan, and Guam.  And that's with the modestly ranged Rodong.  If they can mount miniature warheads on it, they can mount them on their ICBMs, and "demonstrate it" on Honolulu, and Seattle, and Portland, and San Francisco, and Los Angeles.  I mean, it's not like they have a lot of room to "demonstrate it" other than in an actual nuclear strike.

What deterring countermeasures we could take, I couldn't say.  We've never had any good options with the NoKos.  But to sit here, Chip Diller-esque....



....and pretend that "all is well" because the NoKos couldn't possibly do what they claim they've already done because....I dunno, tree-bark-eaters are underachievers or something, is practically inviting Kim Jong-Un to "demonstrate it" in the only way that they can: a twenty-first century Pearl Harbor that will leave a helluva lot more than 2,403 pushing up daisies.

That's an engraved invitation he's unlikely to turn down for long.