North Korea claims U.S. planning imminent "pre-emptive nuclear war"

[Sean]

Well clearly this is just North Korea seizing on any invented excuse it can come up with to bolster it's nuclear arsenal (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1907626,00.html), but it's hard not to feel some concern over for me. How many times do they cry wolf like this before they actually act on it in some way? That Kim Jong Il sure is a nut!

[cacophony]

every time they make a statement like this and take another step towards inevitable war i'm just baffled. i don't understand what their reasoning is. they know they're publishing lies to the populace, like when they said their downed satellite was broadcasting anthems from space. they knew that was a lie, so by the same token they know what's truth.

so why do they keep pushing things closer and closer to inevitable war by saying things they know are lies? like, i wish i could understand the reasoning going on in whoever's mind is inventing these things. it stands to reason that their aggressive stance means they would have already made the first strike if they really had confidence that they could win. which makes me think they know they can't win, which makes me wonder what in the hell they think they're doing with this strategy.

[Strangelet]

every time they make a statement like this and take another step towards inevitable war i'm just baffled. i don't understand what their reasoning is. they know they're publishing lies to the populace, like when they said their downed satellite was broadcasting anthems from space. they knew that was a lie, so by the same token they know what's truth.

so why do they keep pushing things closer and closer to inevitable war by saying things they know are lies? like, i wish i could understand the reasoning going on in whoever's mind is inventing these things. it stands to reason that their aggressive stance means they would have already made the first strike if they really had confidence that they could win. which makes me think they know they can't win, which makes me wonder what in the hell they think they're doing with this strategy.

me too. my best guess is the entire country functions as one big jonestown, where they will pass around the kool-aid as soon as their chosen path that's divorced from reality draws down to its inevitable conclusion.

[//\/\/]

pissing contest continues (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529393,00.html)

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

me too. my best guess is the entire country functions as one big jonestown, where they will pass around the kool-aid as soon as their chosen path that's divorced from reality draws down to its inevitable conclusion.

Wait, I'm confused, who are we talking about?

[BeautifulBurnout]

Pissing contest indeed.

What the hell good does it do launching an ICBM towards Asia from the West Coast? Idiots.

All that does is add grist to Kim Jong Il's mill so he can point and say "see, I told you they are preparing for war!"

Or maybe we are still on the Keynesian Acid Trip from Hell where there are too many guys coming home in handbaskets from the Middle East, so public opinion is utterly against any further engagement there because too many of their sons and daughters have lost their limbs and their lives for no fucken reason, yet war is a wonderful way of keeping the military-industrial complex going.

So we'll pull out of Iraq and eventually have to concede that we fucked up in Afghanistan too (all those old Soviets must be laughing their asses off at us). But we need another theatre of war.

Keep on producing weapons, keep on using weapons, keep on spending government money on weapons - keeping people in work, and keeping more people in the army than on the welfare lines...

Or am I just confusing real life with 1984?

Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

[Deckard]

The problem there BB is that NK appears to have initiated this, at least that's how it appears to me through the prism of our western news media. Plus I actually don't think the US (and its poodle states like the UK) need a threat of this magnitude right now. Militarily it may not be beyond the bounds of reason to respond, but from a propanda 'the country is facing a threat' pov, it makes zero sense. If we can expect an age of 'the yellow peril' then surely it makes sense to launch that phase only after we've fully democratised/neo-liberalised Iraq, Iran and Syria and finished with the Muslim boogeyman?

Either way, from Pyongyang's point of view, this provocation just seems bizarre to me. But then the appearance of acting counter to logic is an established weapon in itself, as we see from Israel's 'reactions' from time to time.

[Strangelet]

Either way, from Pyongyang's point of view, this provocation just seems bizarre to me. But then the appearance of acting counter to logic is an established weapon in itself, as we see from Israel's 'reactions' from time to time.

Agreed. In my mind it really isn't justifiable or useful to reduce the entire problem to another case of western aggression for profit. The north korean flag should have a picture of a baseball and a screw, because starting with their leader they are up at night batshit crazy. That's not the western media telling me that. Its *their* media telling me that when they say "the sun came out of the clouds and the rain stopped when our beloved leader appeared". The dude can control the weather. This is a nuclear-armed proletariat cult that has proven complete incapacity to mediate its ways under the pressure of prudency.

That said, I don't think the americans should respond to this problem past defending hawaii. Especially when Japan and South Korea are poised to be the big losers here.

[Deckard]

"the sun came out of the clouds and the rain stopped when our beloved leader appeared".
Haha! Good grief, I'd not heard that one.