On Mar 21, 2006, at 3:35 PM, Dan Minette wrote:
Or a couple of well-placed smart bombs from F-117s or B-2s, or covert
special forces, if the US do the right thing and Iran don't. That's
my point. THAT'S how to deal with the countries (insane dictatorships
or otherwise) that present clear dangers. Pick the threat targets,
and destroy them (hopefully without spreading too much uranium and
plutonium across the landscape...).
It had once been that simple, I think. Israel set Hussein back over a
decade with their bombing run. Now, countries often go to much
greater
lengths to hide their activities.
...and at the same time, we cut our humint budgets 'cause "we can do
it all with technology". D'oh. :(
For example, Lybia was only about a year
away from a bomb when Quadafi (sp)
Spell it how you like, it'll never transliterate properly! (Gaddafi,
Qadafi, whatever... nearly as many variants as Qaeda/Qaida etc)
decided to come in out of the cold.
Information we obtained after Gulf War I indicates that Hussein was
a year
or two away when he invaded Kuwait. India and Pakistan both
surprised the
US, and Western intelligence in general when they tested bombs.
Indeed they did.
While it
is unlikely that they could physically reach Seoul with their
armies, it is
within shelling range of thousands of mortars/artillery pieces
owned by
North Korea. The estimates of the death toll that I've seen range
from about
100k to 250k.
Yeah. I guess a fairly mammoth close air support operation (of the
order of the first 6 hours of Desert Storm) would have been needed to
protect Seoul. Maybe the cost of that was why Kim has nukes now. *sigh*
My understanding is that Clinton was persuaded to take half a loaf
by the
leader of South Korea, instead of putting millions in the line of
fire. In
a real sense, this type of death toll is consistent with what one
would
expect from the nuclear weapons that North Korea now has.....so it
has had a
mini-MAD capability for a long time now.
That's one way of looking at it.
Charlie
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