China has far more to gain from the US by working with us economically than going to war with us over a country as ultimately inconsequential as North Korea is. South Korea could handle North Korea on its own if we let them, and China would probably turn its back and whistle were they to be crazy enough to actually attack anybody.

China in its current state could not hold a candle to the US militarily, for the time being, and their ICBMs are not numerous enough to overwhelm the US in a first strike and prevent a counterattack that would probably completely destroy their country.

What seems the most likely is that if North Korea ever develops the technology to put a nuclear warhead on a missile, is that they'll target Tokyo with it. They would have to be pretty crazy to do this though.

The problem with every country having nuclear weapons is that the countries that do possess them understand that the entire point of having a nuclear weapon is not to use it.

Crazy people who don't believe the Holocaust happened, that Israel needs to be "wiped out" and think that 72 virgins are waiting for them in heaven if they kill all the white devils certainly don't need to have their hands on these weapons, as they aren't stable or rational enough to understand that the entire point of their existence is deterrence, and would go and use them.

The US does not use biological or chemical weapons, although it has a small stockpile of chemical weapons here in the states.

If you want to talk about a nuclear conflict with China, a scenario that would be far more likely to provoke such a confrontation would be an invasion of Taiwan. However, as I've said, the Chinese could not hope to destroy even half of America's land based missile silos, let alone bombers and subs. They would likely target population and infrastructure centers, but their ICBMs cannot reach the east coast, where a good portion of the country's population is, and a massive, crippling retaliation by the US is guaranteed.

In short, China and the US have far more to gain from working together than going to war. In the future, that may change, as China is catching up militarily.

The problem with patriot missiles, is that once a nuclear warhead has been released from the missile, it continues to its target on a ballistic trajectory, it burns no propellant, and hence cannot be targetted by the patriot. It's also moving at about 20,000 kph and is pretty high up in the atmosphere, another reason it can't be hit.

I don't think anybody takes North Korea seriously, and I think it would be absolutely hilarious to shoot their crappy missile out of the sky. I'd be interested to see how they would explain that to their population, but I'm sure their propaganda machine would come up with something.

Hey... kinda embarassing, but how do you put a picture ont the forum from your desktop?

IMO, the Star Wars program continued, but it got so good we had to let no one else in on it. So, if some of you on the west coast see a giant laser come out of the sky, Thank President Ragean.

If Star Wars worked, it would be to America's advantage to make that known, the same way it's to Iran's advantage to let us know they're developing nukes. The intimidation factor, and so that your allies know you're not leaving them out to dry.

I'm surprised at all the people who believe we have a chance of shooting this missile down. The proposed missile defense system has three stages. We've tested only the simplest stage, and it's not doing very well in those tests. [link="http://www.slate.com/id/2097087/"]Link">Link

I don't think any of you know what is happening. Bush goes to Iraq claiming that they have weapons of mass destruction. When he finds out there aren't any he invades and kills thousands of innocent people. Now he claims Iran has weapons of mass destruction and wants to move in and check it out. As soon as he finds out they arent a threat he will invade them to. Bush is just a puppet of the real powers that be. The real powers are manipulating all the world leaders for their own personal gain. These powers need control of the oil and that is the only reason Bush is in the middle east. If they were interested in ridding the world of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction they would have gone to north korea first. The NK's have had Nukes for a long time and they are a lot more powerful than you know. There whole economy has been driven with slave labour for over twenty years all aimed at developing their weaponry. The real powers that be Know this and probably are funding this just as they funded both sides of the first and second world wars. they control all the currency in the world. Every time there is a war they profit from the drop in the markets. They wait until all nations economies are depleted from the wars and then they finance them. It doesn't matter which side, they finance both as the longer the war goes, the larger their profit. Open your eyes Americans and realize that you elected a terrorist to office. Rise up and get him the hell out while you still can.. I know I am going to get blasted for this so fire away.

All right as I was saying.

Oh I could see it now.

[link="http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i14/jar_02/?action=view¤t=lolNKOREA.png"]http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i14/jar_02/?action=view¤t=lolNKOREA.png">Link

Check this out. It's kinda funny. YAY we surrendered

damn lets try this http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i14/jar_02/lolNKOREA.png

Oh I knew that Bush lied awhile ago. Anyone watch Dead Wrong on CNN? Really shows his dark side.

Wait wait wait "powers for their own personal gain"? who are these "people"?

I'm not gonna burn you for that Thebestaintyou, but your right Bush is a evil person. Worse than the Drengins...and just as dumb as one.

Suggested video for Bush haters:
1)Ferenheit 9/11

I'm probobly gonna get tatooed for this, but cmon. If you don't know what Bush is doing behind our backs, your a blind Lemming walking off a cliff to your certain doom.

We aren't all dumb Thebestaintyou.Infact Bush has a super low approval rating.

Ferenheit 9/11 is just the tip of the iceburg as to what the organization that controls Bush has done to this world. Oh, and cheney and clinton belong to the same oraganization. This Organization has caused and financed almost every major war in the last 250 years. The next election you will get Hilary Clinton. Same organization controls her also. Enough negativity for one night. Bye for now TBAY.

A super low approval rating for not much of a reason at all. If y'ask me, we haven't lost anything in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan... 3-4k soldiers is laughable, and I don't even think we've officially hit the 3k mark yet. Don't get me wrong, it's not good that our people are dying... but, seriously, look at the numbers. Vietnam, for example: 58,000 deaths. The Civil War was at least 618,000. For crying out loud, we lost 42,000 people to CAR ACCIDENTS last year, and we're complaining about 3-4,000 that we lost in wars against definitively bad people?

Yes, Bush went into Iraq claiming WMDs... which didn't exist. Yes, Saddam's own generals thought the man had WMDs somewhere. Yes, we had treaties with Iraq after Desert Storm giving many rules, like range restrictions. Yes, on the first day of battle in Iraqi freedom, Saddam used weapons with longer ranges than those on us.

So, no, the war wasn't justified under the reason Bush gave. But the war was justified from other standpoints.

Yeah, but Bush LIED to us Rasori. It wouldn't be good if your friend asked you to go see Predator(no not the new one the original) and you went to see the Titanic. you get all pumped up to see a shooter movie and it's the biggest chick flick ever.

Not exactly the best example ever, but you get the point don't you?

Rasori, I was not talking about the soldiers you lost. I was talking about the innocent Iraq citzens that have been slaughtered and/or had their livelihood taken from them. The Bush family supplied 60% of the steel needed for the Nazi War machine. This is documented truth. The bush family and the Binladens have been best of friends for many years. The Binladens financed some of the latest Bush's early endeavors. The reason they cant find Binladen in the middle east is because he is sipping pina coladas on the Bushes back porch.

Hey Thebestaintyou, can you provide a link to bush and the nazis?

These powers need control of the oil and that is the only reason Bush is in the middle east. If they were interested in ridding the world of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction they would have gone to north korea first. The NK's have had Nukes for a long time and they are a lot more powerful than you know. There whole economy has been driven with slave labour for over twenty years all aimed at developing their weaponry.

Sounds to me like you're the one who's fooling yourself if you believe North Korea could stand up to any modern military power, let alone the US. North Korea also has a powerful ally/friend in the Chinese, and staying out of therer probably has more to do with not provoking/endangering relations with them. If North Korea has a nuclear weapon, it would be in their best interest to test it to demonstrate this capability, and prevent any future action being taken against them.

(Note that this missile is not a nuclear test; the North does not possess the technology to miniaturize a warhead to be placed on a missile, and still get a worthwhile yield out of it.)

I also fail to see how slave labor could be of benefit to nuclear weapons production, as the processes involved are fairly complicated, and you need scientists specialized in it to produce a working nuke. I'm guessing the average "slave laborer" doesn't have a degree in nuclear physics. If the North Koreans were mining tons of uranium and turning out weapons constantly, I might see a need for them in the mining sector, but its debatable that they even have enough for a single warhead, and even then, its coming from a reactor.

As to your oil comment, this is as old as time itself, and I think you'd be interested to know that most of America's oil comes from countries well outside the middle east, and that Iraq's oil fields are barely in working order, let alone exporting a relevant amount of oil. Iraq provides roughly 5% of America's oil imports, so please try again. The US also gets ZERO oil from Iran. If this war were about oil, it would have made more sense to invade Nigeria, as they supply 12% of America's oil, or Venezuela that provides almost as much.

Care to guess where America gets most of its oil?

It's Canada and Mexico, at ~18% and ~17% respectively. Wow, and they're bordering us too! Would have made a lot more sense to just go ahead and invade them and annex them then go all the way over to Iraq if this is truly about oil!

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_epc0_im0_mbbl_m.htm

Bush has never said anything about invading Iran, and the most what you can expect would be airstrikes. The US military is stretched thin as it is, and an invasion of Iran would be a political suicide for him, at home and abroad.

I'd also like to know how anyone profits from a drop in the markets.

Farenheit 9/11, while it did make some valid points, used footage of people that had been edited against their will, specifically some military service members, to make them look like they supported Moore. As a matter of fact, there's a lawsuit going on over it right now. Basing your beliefs on that kind of thing makes about as much sense as basing your beliefs on what you hear on FOX news.

Now that I've said this, I will also say that I don't like Bush at all, and I am against the war in Iraq, if for no other reason than the lives of the soldiers over there. But I think that saying that is was for oil is narrow minded, as 5% of the oil that is imported isn't possibly worth the amount of money or lives or loss of public approval that has resulted from this war. I'm positive that there ARE ulterior motives behind it, but I can't pretend to know what they are, and saying that Bush is being manipulated by some kind of secret society sounds utterly ridiculous. Now being manipulated by Cheney, that's another story.

PS: Internet argument lol



edit: Good God, you really are a nut case. I'm not sure why I bothered writing a rational response after the craziness you just posted. How ironic that you think we're the ones being manipulated when you're the one buying into conspiracy theories. So, this organization apparently exists to:

Stage 1.) Take over world leaders, cause wars and "market collapses."
Stage 2.) ?
stage 3.) $$PROFIT$$

I guess you have won, though, because you made me feel like an idiot for attempting to dissuade someone who has believes this nonsense so wholly as to think that Bush is actually intelligent enough to somehow bring about the end of the world.

As to your oil comment, this is as old as time itself, and I think you'd be interested to know that most of America's oil comes from countries well outside the middle east, and that Iraq's oil fields are barely in working order, let alone exporting a relevant amount of oil. Iraq provides roughly 5% of America's oil imports, so please try again. The US also gets ZERO oil from Iran. If this war were about oil, it would have made more sense to invade Nigeria, as they supply 12% of America's oil, or Venezuela that provides almost as much.

Oil is "fungible" -- it's all the same, so it really doesn't matter where you buy it. The price goes up everywhere when it goes up anywhere. So even if we buy 100% of our oil from Canada, if Iran stops selling its oil, we're still in trouble. Russia or whoever was buying from Iran will come shopping for oil in Canada and our price will go up just the same as if we bought from Iran directly.

So for the war to be about oil would mean more about maintaining the stability of the oil supply than actually profiting from the oil itself. Our economy can make a lot more profit making stuff out of the oil than we could make by just confiscating it and selling it.

I don't think oil is the only reason why the US invaded (or freed?) Irak, but it's quite obvious that nobody would care about the middle east if they didn't have any oil.

America doesn't get that much oil from the middle east right now, but they could need it in the future. There is many (or some?) people (see peak oil theory) who think that in the near future the world will have to buy an increasing portion of its oil in the middle east, as oil production elsewhere has already peaked, in other words, the only place in the world that can increase oil production to cope with the increasing demand is the middle east.

And by oil, i mean cheap to extract and transform oil, but i'm not gonna explain the whole peak oil theory here, there's plenty of information about it on the net, and i don't buy it all.

Anyway, i just wanted to point out, that although the US don't get much of it's oil from the middle east, the oil reserves have a crucial strategic importance for the US and its allies, because, like Noumenon72 said, oil prices are set globaly and we are heavy oil eaters.

The US buys oil to Venezuela because they have a very fine oil over there and it's cheaper to ship it from there than from Arabia, but when this fine oil starts to scarce, Chavez will start to pull out its huge reserves of bad quality oil, and maybe then, it will be more profitable to bring that fine iraki oil all the way from Mesopotamia to America.

If oil peak theory is right, and i have some doubts about that, although i think they make some very good points, whoever controls middle east oil reserves in 10-20 years will have a huge strategic advantage.

Thankfully it is highly unlikely for WWIII to ever happen. We're living in an interconnected world where all countries are dependant on each other. An attack against an other country would be as attacking yourself. Western countries don't want to live without cheap products from china and china is hihgly dependant on western technology and companies. America's and Europe's economy would collapse if they would cease all economic ties etc etc.


Rasori wrote:

The Civil War was at least 618,000. For crying out loud, we lost 42,000 people to CAR ACCIDENTS last year, and we're complaining about 3-4,000 that we lost in wars against definitively bad people?

Something as bad or good people doesn't exist. there are only different people on this world, and sometimes ideologies contradict each other, this is the point where one party calls the other "the bad people".

Rasori wrote:

So, no, the war wasn't justified under the reason Bush gave. But the war was justified from other standpoints.

And what reasons are these? I tend to believe what is most obvious and NOT what I want to believe. All theses claims of the Bush administration for invading iraq because of WMD's and iraq's terrorist connections vaporized into air. What remains? Oh yeah.. Bush wanted to liberate the iraqies from this evil man...of course....
Who really believes that he gives a shit about how the people in iraq feel? If it was for liberating opressed people, the US could have invaded other countries where people are opressed far more. If he was such an man-loving guy he'd increase assistance to africa or something like that. But no, of course it's coincidence that he wants to help the people which live ontop some of the largest oilfields in the world.
Face it: The oil reserves are getting smaller and smaller every day, and in a not to far distant future the oil output will decrease, while the demand for this ressource increases due to the rising powers China and India.
So it seems just logical that gaining control on these oilfields is a tempting thing.

Only problem I have with it, if we do shoot the missle down (guys you do know that they intend the missle to reach US soil for test) is if we miss. Talk about embarassing.

We need to keep The North where they are, they will implode eventually. The people of North Korea will eventually revolt. May take another 20 years but will happen.

overexadurating

Jesus Christ!         At least he tried to "sound it out"       

North Korea funds it's military and WMD programs as it's own people starve.

Rasori, I was not talking about the soldiers you lost. I was talking about the innocent Iraq citzens that have been slaughtered and/or had their livelihood taken from them. The Bush family supplied 60% of the steel needed for the Nazi War machine. This is documented truth. The bush family and the Binladens have been best of friends for many years. The Binladens financed some of the latest Bush's early endeavors. The reason they cant find Binladen in the middle east is because he is sipping pina coladas on the Bushes back porch.

YIKES! do you also believe that pack-of-lies "Loose Change"? What a crock-o-crap.

Ferenheit 9/11 is just the tip of the iceburg as to what the organization that controls Bush has done to this world. Oh, and cheney and clinton belong to the same oraganization. This Organization has caused and financed almost every major war in the last 250 years. The next election you will get Hilary Clinton. Same organization controls her also. Enough negativity for one night. Bye for now TBAY.

Further proof the intelligent life does not exist on planet earth.

Its hard for the US to assume any moral high ground when they act like the Dregnin on the world scene.

Star Dagger


P.S. if you are getting your information from CNN (Comical News Network), ABC, CBS, NBC, or goddess forbid Fox (Faux) News, just reboot your brain. Look for the truth its out there, but its usually misreported or not reported. Remember the massacre of 3000 afgans by the US Army? No, never heard about that, interesting. Search under Mazar-i-Sharif and massacre.

Strange thread, is this missile launch big news in the US? In europe its not making the news at all, not even as small news item at the end. Loads of countries test missiles all the time, why the big deal? Perhaps because North Korea could hit the western US with one? It won't, so long as the US leaves it alone and stops sabre rattling...

I've spent some time reading the North Korean news website, and I think that Kim Jong Il really is crazy enough to launch it. I don't think it will end well for him if he does, so hopefully (or not) he has some advisors who can talk him out of it.

His news website constantly refers to US imperialists, his 'immortal works', and reports when his works are published in various backwater countries. He claims that a double rainbow and a bright star marked his birth.

While I would like Kim Jong Il to provoke others into sorting him out, I am worried how it will affect his own population. I don't want to see a war, but he really is a nutcase and shouldn't be in power.

The funny thing though, is that when I was reading up on human rights violations and news articles from North Korea, there were links on the page to the Lonely Planet North Korean Travel Guide.

1 irag didnot attack us but they paid for it

2 nk is trying to make some cash

3 if iran gets hold of the nukes they will use it remember they get 47 virgens if the die for the couse

4 the united states, russia, and the uk would never use theirs (also a politacal statement)

5 only reason isreal would use theirs is after someone like iran used thiers

6 personal feeling on this but the usa needs to pull out of the un mainly becouse the next major war will be the us vs the un (the un is already trying to tax everyone so it can build its army)

7 china is a member of the un

8 it seems that everything that the un does these days has to include some slight toward isreal

9 as far as i have seen isreal has never started any of these attacks they are just defending themselves

there is more i just can't think of it at moment

P.S. if you are getting your information from CNN (Comical News Network), ABC, CBS, NBC, or goddess forbid Fox (Faux) News, just reboot your brain. Look for the truth its out there, but its usually misreported or not reported. Remember the massacre of 3000 afgans by the US Army?

guess you never heard of the massacre in new york at about 2500 people

anwar has more oil than irag

the 48 states has more oil than the rest of the world combined

reason for using thier oil and not ours is (why us ours when we can use theirs)