Looks like they fired six missiles in total, with one being a TD-2 ICBM. Anyway, the last two long-range missiles they tested, the TD-1 back in ’97 (I think) and the TD-2 today…both blew up in-flight. What’s there to worry about? If they want to pour their resources into developing an ICBM that we could blow up with the AL-1 or down with NMD, let them go for it. Eventually they’ll either nearly starve and revolt, or they’ll irritate China to the point that they’re dealt with politically (finally). They don’t want anything to do with us, so ignore them. If they want ot be belligerant and threaten the US, why should we continue to care about their continued existance or survival? If we gave up and ignored them entirely we’d be better off. Any military action would be a joke anyway.

Is there definitive proof that it was a TD-2? I was hoping for some spysat images to be released to prove the type, but so far nothing. Just ‘according to experts’.

As for China ‘dealing’ with NK, well, I think the leavers at Beijing’s disposal are a little too powerful to be used lightly, and so might be too blunt an instrament to be used in such situations.

The last thing Beijing wants is for NK to implode as that would cause China major problems in the North East, however, to get Kim to do anything he doesn’t want to would seem to require China to threaten just that to get him to respond (the suspention of oil supplies being a recent example). Carrots just doesn’t work on this guy, and China’s ‘stick’ is a little too large to be used too often.

The Chinese have less practial power in controling NK then many in the west seem to think/hope.

Yes…but it failed. So, are you saying US can fire a missile across China and have it failed half way so it can fall into the Pacific. That would be a-ok with you right :rolleyes: There’s always two, the apprentice and the master 😡

How did a simple question over whether or not NK fired missiles over Japan today become, ‘yes, its perfectly fine for the US to fire missiles over China’ in your mind? :rolleyes:

Also, what is this Star Wars quote meant to mean exactly?

Anyways, you have still not shown any reason why the international community needs to do anything. NK did not fire missiles over Japan today as far as I know, and last time I checked, it was not against international laws to testfire missiles into the sea.

It doesn’t even seem to be clear how many missiles NK fired, let alone the types involved. You only have speculations about what NK planned to do, and here you are, treating speculation as if they were facts. One would have thought Iraq was lesson enough to not jump the gun when there is no proof.

Anyway would Russian special forces not qualify as part of the Russian military. This thread is titled Putin orders Russian special forces into Iraq.

Yes the Russian SF are part of the Russian military, but that does not mean that the shortcomings of the largely conscription based army can be attributed to Russian SF forces.

And yes, we all know the name of the thread, which makes your decision to used examples of the regular Russian army’s poor performance more perplexing. I recall reading articles in which taliban fighters showned great respect and even fear when discussing Russian SF units operating the Afganistan, and Im sure there are similar reports regarding Russian SF in Chechnia.

As to my suggestion that the Russians lack the skill and the weapons mix necessary, it was made in the context of the situation in Iraq where the Russians have had no combat or special ops experience

So how are Iraqi cities so different from cities anywhere else on the world that the nature of urban combat changes there? The insurgents in Iraq are not going to be sitting in the middle of the desert under a plam tree sipping juice waiting for a coalition helo to pass overhead so they can shoot at it(well some of them might be, but they are not the ones the Russians are after). They will be in cities and towns, and in such places, the location of the cities matter little. You do not have to have fought in every city on earth to qualify as having experience at urban combat ops.

Also, these won’t be wide-eyed conscripts that the Russians are sending in, my money is on them being seasoned veterans of chechnia who have been hunting insurgents for years, and they must have done something special in that time to be picked from the hundreds, if not thousands of other potential candidates.

…and selling weapons decades ago dosn’t qualify.

What kind of SF troops do they have where you come from who ‘sells weapons’? I have never heard of ‘weapons selling’ as being a role of SF before.

Given the experience the U.S. and the UK has had in tracking down and killing or capturing specific terrorist leadership or groups, it takes more than just sending in teams with small arms.

And how did you come by this insightful peice of US and UK SF operational experience? It would be interesting to know because as far as I know, all SF units guard the secrets of their ‘playbooks’ jealously.

It would require some kind of base from which to operate, supplies, air and ground transport, surveilance capabilities (UAVs?), cooperation from the new Iraq government, local knowledge and contacts that are willing to help, local intel, language skills, etc, and a lot of time.

And what makes you think the Russians lack any of that except air support (which is not a critial element of most operation they are likely to conduct anyways)?

It would be a major enterprise to track down and kill even one small terrorist group independent from the coalition forces that have all the experience.

What makes you think the Russians have no experience at anti-insurgency ops? And whoever said it would be easy?

Iraq is a big place. Their best bet would be to work directly with U.S./U.K. forces and that would require a level of cooperation, learning and humility I suspect the Russians don’t have.

If the experience of the coalition forces are so ace, why haven’t they taken out all the insurgents yet? How does doing exactly what the US and UK have been doing for the past couple of years going to help the Russians nab people that have been able to elude the coalition’s best efforts to date?

Smart people are humble enough to realise that there is often more then one way of doing things, and approaching the same problem with a different method may yield better results.

Lastly, please explain why you think the Russians lack ‘cooperation, learning and humility’.

yes they do…consider US firing a missile over China without declaring the test…heck, even if it was declared you would see millions demonstrate in the streets. So, Japan has every right and should raise diplomatic hell in UN on this. Imagine France launch a IRBM test over Britain…with or without warning :rolleyes:

And they fired missiles over Japan this time?

Does these missiles tests by NK violate any international laws? It is perfectly within their rights to test what missiles they want, I don’t see why the international community need to respond.

Sending tents is also politcally motivated. It is clear that you win more
hearts with tents then bombs, but then again not every one gets tents
or any help when there is disaster. winning hearts in Muslim indonesia
is more important then hearts in El Salvador or Africa and you know the
reasons for that. I’m of the Atari generation.

You know what? Some of us give to charity out of charity, and even governments sometimes do that. You need to make one hell of a case to convince people that the international aid effort to help the tusnami affected countries were just a ‘politically motivated’ PR ploy. If anything, I seem to remember a few governments, who shall remain nameless, increasing their aid pled after the public response put the sums they originally promised to shame.

And I suggest you have a check first before suggesting that ‘El Salvador or Africa’ don’t get any aid.

I don’t think you understand what hypocrisy is. A nation or a person have the
right not to give a crap about another nation or person.
That doesn’t give anyone the excuse to attack them for no reason.

And who do you mean by ‘them’? If in ‘them’ you are refering to the Russians, then I would agree with you, what does that have to do with Russian hypocrisy?

So this troops are going to land where? They will be co-ordinating their moves with who? I wonder it terrorist going to see the Russian forces
“Not part of the Occupation”.

Have you not read my previous posts, in which I stated exaclt what I think the Russian responce would be?

What exactly do you think the Russians are going to do in Iraq? Take it over from the Americans?

If the US doesn’t attempts to remove them and gives them money, training,
weapons and shelter then of course they should be removed by force.
You are to smart to miss such an obvious point.

‘Removed by force’ by a foreign power?

Is this a Yes or no question? I think it’s both for selfish reasons and a true
desire to change the middle east. On the other hand we know thew UN
opposition to the war was clearly due to the fact that it will hurt their
dirty deals with Saddam.

And the fact that the US and UK didn’t make a very convincing case by flatly refusing pleas from the chef UN weapons inspector in Iraq who was confident that he could remove all WMD from Iraq given more time had nothing to do with it? :rolleyes:

I also look foreward to seeing some evidence of these ‘dirty deals with Saddam’ that everyone opposed to the war was supposed to be doing.

It was the people who were in charge of the Iraqi
civilians health that were killing them for profit and yet it is the US and Britain
that are evil, right?

And who exactly said any of that? If you got an axe to grind about something, feel free to start a thread on it, but what was the point in randoming venting your grevinces here?

When the entire world recognized their full right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, there is absolutely no reason why should anyone place an embargo over them, as long as they really do just that. Iran knows that, the West knows that, Israel knows that. No one will try to embargo/attack them at any way. If the US will embargo them for some odd reason, the Europeans/Russians will still be helping them.

Like the US can’t use its economic, political and military might to ‘convince’ other nations to do what it wants. Cuba, Kosovo (in terms of pacifying the Russians), China (lifting of the EU arms embargo), Iraq war…

There are just as many examples of the US government punishing commerical companies for ‘breaking’ their self-imposed sanctions and embargos on various nations ranging from freezing those offending companies’ assets to ruling them out of future US government contracts etc.

On a different level, the reliance on imported nuclear fuel would be like a leash on Iran, with which the west can in effect use to leverage Iran into doing what they want, or at least try to prevent them from doing some things the west doesn’t like. While this might seem like a pretty good thing to you, I doubt the Iranians will see it that way. Neither will you if the roles were reversed (which it might actually be in a few decades) and Iran was using its oil leverage to force the west to do what it wants.

The piece of the program that the West is willing to give Iran is exactly the piece that they officially want – civilian nuclear energy. If they refuse to that, clearly they got something to hide, and it’s not that hard to see.

And these reactors can make electricity without fuel? Iran wants at the very least a self sufficient civilian nuclear programme, one which is not dependent on anyone else’s permission or help to continue operating, and given its past experience with the west and America in paticular, one can hardly blame them for prefering self-reliance.

Iran may well want more then just civilian nuclear tech, in fact, I think their ultimate goal is a nuke because thats what I would go for if I was in charge of Iran. But that does not mean that you are actually proving that Iran wants the bomb just because it is rejecting the european offer, because its not a very good offer, and Iran (or anyone in its position) would most likely reject it even if they don’t want nuclear weapons.

You claimed that Israel didn’t use nukes in 1973 because it knew it could prevail conventionally – which isn’t true. As I said, in the early days of the war, Israel thought it couldn’t win conventionally.

So did the Israeli army just lie down and give up? Does the Israeli government have a hive mind that agree absolutely on everything all the time?

There will always be at least two sides debating on the best course of action in situations like this – those who say ‘nuke the ba$tards’ and those who say the army can hold them back.

Just because some people thought that they were going to loose does not mean that it was the provailing belief on the government.

What is beyound debate is the fact that if Israel spent so much resources developing nukes, they must have been propared to use them when they deemed they had to.

Had the ‘tipping point’, whereby all hope was lost, been reached (eg, the Israeli army had been destroyed, not beaten, not shattered but utterly wiped out), do you honestly think Israel would not have used nukes and to hell with the consequences? If not, why bother getting nukes at all?

Israel is ahead of the Arab world in quality – not quantity. Even when excluding Jordan and Egypt out of the title of “hostile neighbours”, there are still many other nations there that won’t recognize Israel’s right to exist. Israel’s nuclear ability is meant for deterrence – deterrence against a possible attack by an Arab coalition against it, because while on the paper it seems to be able to deal with a number of invading forces at the same time, we have almost failed to do this before, and there’s always a chance of failure in the future – so nobody is willing to take that chance. If Israel will be invaded like this in the future, the invaders will have to take the chance of having their capital cities destroyed.

I think you just answered your own previous question regarding how Israel have benefited from its nuclear arsenal. And how exactly can Israel ‘deter’ an attack if its ‘enemies’ does not beleive it will use its nukes?

And I would suggest that you are a little naive if you think and the suspected several hundred nuclear weapons Israel possess is meant merely to threaten the capital cities of would-be attackers. Several hundred warheads. Thats MAD capacity against, at the very least, Israel’s biggest neighbours, and depending on yeild, could be sufficient to wipe out all cities in the ME.

As for the ‘Arab’s’ quantitative advantage, well even with superior numbers, the Arabs have not been able to mount a credit threat to Israel’s conventional superiority for many decades, and today, more then ever, quality can easily overcome quantity. And with the ME stablising, why does Israel still need its nukes?

If Israel offered to give up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for Iran to make verifiable moves to never develop nuclear weapons, I think that’s an offer the Iranians can’t refuse. Hell, with such a momentous move, Israel will probably be able to get the US to throw in an ‘Israel Act’, which commits the US to fight for Israel if it was attacked.

Its a simple enough thing to do, and Israel will be able to gain a level of security not even its nukes can afford, while none of its neighbours would have reason to develop nukes. But do you really think any Israeli government would agree to such a deal?

If Iran truly wanted nuclear energy, it could have got it. No one undermines Iran’s right for nuclear energy. Their refusal to accept the very thing they supposedly ask is in itself worrying.

What is the point in having a nuclear energy programme that is totally dependent on the whims of others? What good is a nuclear power plant that can’t produce electricity because the nuclear fuel that needs to be imported is under embargo?

The west is saying, give up this programme, and in turn, we will give you a piece of the programme, which is totally unless on its own, and which you would have developed by yourself anyways. How could anyone turn down such a generous offer? :rolleyes:

Iran’s refusal of the west’s offer is perfectly understandable and logical. Most rational people is Iran’s position would not accept such pointless offers either, because these offers are less the worthless. The west is trying to get something for nothing here, and you are suprised when it doesn’t work?

Some of their official statements are here:
http://www.memri.org/iran.html
Otherwise, Google is your friend.

The most, and only damning statement on there seems to have been made by an advisor. I’m not 100% sure what exact role Iranian presidential advisors perform, but if it anything like their counterparts in the rest of the world, then his statement is hardly an example of offical policy.

Where and when exactly have Iran offically threatened to wipe Israel ‘off the map’? You are treating speeches strictly meant for internal consumption as if they were offical mission statements for the government. Need we dig up some gaffs Bush have made at private dinners to realise that things said at such events need to be taken with a giant grain of salt?

Israel was on the brink of defeat. Especially in the early days of the war, most Israeli officials didn’t believe Israel’s ability to win the war conventionally.

And how does that address my question? Merely repeating yourself does not lend your argument any more weight.

Well, according to Global Security, the reactor in Dimona has been active since 1964. The way from that to a bomb is short. So, let’s say that Israel seems to have nuclear weapons for about 40 years.

I would call that a very optimistic assessment. But that hardly changes the original point – why does Israel need nukes if it will never ever use them and it is effectively telling everyone as much?

Look at the Middle East map and see for yourself:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped…/MiddleEast.png

Your point being? Militarily, Israel is head and shoulders ahead of any one of its neighbours conventionally, and have been so for decades. Where is this overwhelming conventional threat that need nuclear weapons to redress?