Well friends, a real adversary (as opposed to the fictitious one represented by badman Saddam) is back to flexing its muscles in Southeast Asia. Yes, the North Koreans are getting ready to test their first ICBM. Now, adversaries testing their missiles was an old and honored tradition in the old Cold War days. Hell, we went up and sat off of Midway Island and watched the Soviets send ICBMs into the waters 300 miles or so north of there, they even had a task group with a missile-observation ship I think it was the Yuri Gagarin or something there to watch the results, we just bored holes in the ocean watching them watch their missiles, (and laughed at their inability to UNREP).
So, now we have a bunch of swaggering KaBoys in the Crew who are probably ready to send another group of young Americans off to die in another effort to enforce Preznit Deserting Fratboy's Preemption Doctrine.
The U.S. military yesterday moved ships into position off the coast of North Korea to detect the launch of any long-range ballistic missiles and prepared its new, unproven missile-interception system to attempt a response if necessary.
Oh, yeah. SDI. That little bit of Reaganesque Defense Contractor Welfare that couldn't hit anything without being told where it was.
they declined to confirm a Washington Times story yesterday that said the system had recently been activated, and that the Bush administration is considering shooting down the North Korean missile.
"The United States has a limited missile-defense system, but I'm not going to discuss status or capabilities," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.
Bryan Whitman...what part of "we all know how fucked up it is" don't you get? There's probably no part of SDI that hasn't been debated to death as responsible politicians have tried to drive a stake through it's heart.
There are nine interceptor missiles based in Alaska and two in California. They are at the core of a complex system that connects launch data from satellites and radars on land and aboard ships, and transmits the data to command-and-control facilities, where senior commanders make decisions about whether to launch interceptors. The system has not successfully intercepted a missile in its current configuration.
...
...Nor would the U.S. government want to risk an embarrassing failure of its system, they said, and it is possible that the missile could carry a satellite into space, rather than arc back to earth.
Yeah, let's see; the insurgency in its last throes, Katrina, the busted budget and oh yeah, the massive failure of SDI against an actual missile launched by a potential adversary in a test shot. Quite a record of achievement to add to, isn't it?
My worry would be that the ride'em cowboys in the 1600 Crew would decide that sending a few bombers in for a "surgical" strike (it's so easy, isn't it?) would be the perfect cure, Beloved Leader to Beloved Leader as an attention-getting mechanism.
We'll just have to see how this Strangelovian scenario plays out. Oh, and boys and girls there will be no fighting in the War Room.
posted by Jo Fish on 06.21.06 at 08:09 AM
Comments:
We should just be flattered that Kim Jong Il still sees us as a threat. Bush has screwed us so badly in the Middle East, there's not much we can do about N. Korea. Kim Jong Il might as well save his rocket fuel.
posted by: Tony on 06.21.06 at 08:37 AM [permalink]
Oh yeah, Saddam was a terrible threat, but this crazy bastard gets to keep starving his people because there's nothing under North Korea's soil that we want.
