Sunday, May 01, 2005
An extremely dangerous COLD WAR holdover
North Korea test-fired a short-range missile that landed harmlessly in the Sea of Japan, today.
Those of us who follow North Korea and that country's whack-job of a premier, Kim Jong Il, know that this is not a new or an unusual development. What is unsettling is that the launching comes on the heels of recent reports that North Korea might test-detonate a nuclear weapon in the very near future. And on Thursday, U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told a Senate committee that North Korea may now have the capability of arming and firing a nuclear-tipped missile. Worse, the Communist state may have the capability of launching a missile that could reach the West Coast of the United States. Not to mention the oft'-considered War-on-Terror question: Who might Kim Jong Il decide to sell a nuke to (That bird needs the money. His country is starving, though he's certainly not missing any meals.)?
Interestingly, today's missile test-firing - a dangerous Cold War holdover that now has a direct connection to the War on Terror - comes exactly 45 years to-the-day after one of the Cold War's most dramatic events - the Soviets' downing of one of our U-2 spy planes and the capture of its pilot, Francis Gary Powers.
WTSjr
Those of us who follow North Korea and that country's whack-job of a premier, Kim Jong Il, know that this is not a new or an unusual development. What is unsettling is that the launching comes on the heels of recent reports that North Korea might test-detonate a nuclear weapon in the very near future. And on Thursday, U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told a Senate committee that North Korea may now have the capability of arming and firing a nuclear-tipped missile. Worse, the Communist state may have the capability of launching a missile that could reach the West Coast of the United States. Not to mention the oft'-considered War-on-Terror question: Who might Kim Jong Il decide to sell a nuke to (That bird needs the money. His country is starving, though he's certainly not missing any meals.)?
Interestingly, today's missile test-firing - a dangerous Cold War holdover that now has a direct connection to the War on Terror - comes exactly 45 years to-the-day after one of the Cold War's most dramatic events - the Soviets' downing of one of our U-2 spy planes and the capture of its pilot, Francis Gary Powers.
WTSjr
# posted by W. Thomas Smith, Jr. @ 12:42 PM 
