52 Comments

1. Habu:

No doubt we’ll send a strong letter of protest using six nasty adjectives instead of the usual four.

Apr 4, 2009 - 7:55 pm 2. whiskey:

Obama will apologize … to North Korea. For making them angry.

Apr 4, 2009 - 8:02 pm 3. Habu:

Well you can bet Bodhisattva Hoti isn’t as joyous as he normally is knwn to be.

Apr 4, 2009 - 8:03 pm 4. Dave:

Way to handle North Korea: Go sink the Pueblo.

Sink it without warning and without explanation before, during or after the event.

Do not discuss it at all. Just sink it and go about your business.

The Pueblo is their symbol of invincibility. It is their talisman, their anting-anting, their oversize rabbit’s foot. So long as it is there being shown off to select vistors,they believe nothing bad can happen to them.

Do away with it and you can start negotiating their surrender.

Apr 4, 2009 - 8:03 pm 5. Bob:

6 nasty adjectives? No way, can’t escalate the situation. They will save the 6-adjective note for when NK actually fires a payload into a Japanese city.

Five-adjectives will do for today, assuming that Obama doesn’t apologize for the way Bush creted all the tension between NK and the US.

Apr 4, 2009 - 8:13 pm 6. Habu:

5. Bob:
You’re right Bob. I got caught up in the moment.

I just hope the first stage didn’t hit a whale being hauled in by Japanese fisherpeople.

Apr 4, 2009 - 8:28 pm 7. Contrarian:

The North Koreans obviously won this game of chicken. The Japanese blinked and so did the USA. Neither had the stomach for a military confrontation with the Dear Leader. The champagne must be flowing big time in Pyongyang.

Wonder what Iran will pay for this technology? Or Syria?

Apr 4, 2009 - 8:30 pm 8. E. Nigma:

“Let’s dance!” – Madeline Albright

Apr 4, 2009 - 8:32 pm 9. Leo Linbeck III:

There once was a tyrant named Kim
Who, from what we could tell, was quite dim

But he fired a missile
So Obama would bristle

And blame Bush for a world oh-so-grim.

— —

L3

Apr 4, 2009 - 8:36 pm 10. Lifeofthemind:

The USS Pueblo is a United States Warship and is still in commission. There is a precedent in the 1804 destruction of the frigate Philadelphia,, which had been captured by the Barbary Pirates in 1803, by Lieutenant Stephen Decataur and the US Marines. Nevertheless I believe that lesson would not be clear to the North Koreans and it would be more effective to simply enforce a Naval blockade. Granted that would not control the land borders but as an incremental acknowledgement of the violation of the armistice of 1953. Remember that Korea is and has been for almost 59 years in a legal state of war.

Apr 4, 2009 - 8:40 pm 11. Habu:

“North Korea has been firing longer and longer ranged missiles”

The new Exteenz Long Dong missile next to be carrying a bigger load.

Apr 4, 2009 - 8:41 pm 12. Leo Linbeck III:

As the rocket ascended in stages
The UN started spitting out pages

Saying the US must halt
This egregious assault

On a nation trapped in the Dark Ages.

— —

L3

Apr 4, 2009 - 8:49 pm 13. vanderleun:

Tomorrow’s headline today: BANG! ZOOM! TO THE MOON HILLARY! THE MOON! America waits for Obama to launch Clinton over North Korea in retaliation.

Apr 4, 2009 - 8:53 pm 14. Habu:

13. vanderleun
“America waits for Obama to launch Clinton over North Korea in retaliation.

Have we got that kinda payload capability?

Apr 4, 2009 - 9:03 pm 15. Habu:

US to take ‘appropriate steps’
after NKorea launch
Reuters

What step is the Resident going to start with?

W.H. spokesman said the Resident will be doing his Michael Jackson “Moonwalk” step claiming that a step backwards was less provocative.

Apr 4, 2009 - 9:10 pm 16. Alexis:

It looks as though the penalty for defying President Obama’s aggressive diplomacy is…

… more aggressive diplomacy!

Barack Obama’s eloquence may be awe inspiring to some people, but his words don’t seem to have inspired France to send more troops to Afghanistan nor have they inspired North Korea to refrain from shooting missiles toward the United States.

Apr 4, 2009 - 9:14 pm 17. E. Nigma:

Obama has no clue, although he actually is sure that he does. A nuclear weapons free world! That’s the ticket. Peace in our time. It will be interesting to see what the official word from Our President is tomorrow, or his Assorted Spokespeople.

Wait for the Japanese, South Koreans and Taiwanese, to politically stick their fingers in the wind in the next few weeks to see which way it is blowing. As someone said on a previous thread, China also works with Pakistan’s ISI to foment trouble, and North Korea is their idiot child cut-out. They spread their hegemony in mysterious ways, no?

Apr 4, 2009 - 9:26 pm 18. Lifeofthemind:

Obama is reducing the Armed Forces of the United States to the status of the French who permitted the Vice President of Bosnia to pulled from their armored personnel carrier and killed. Right now I am watching Hotel Rwanda in which the “UN Army” stood by without firing its weapons while massacres happened in front of them. They could not even defend their own men. That is the model that the Americans will now be held to.

Apr 4, 2009 - 9:30 pm 19. Walt:

L3

En fuego!

Apr 4, 2009 - 9:31 pm 20. Dave:

LOTM: Wouldn’t hurt to try though.

After the Philadelphia was burned, isn’t that when Preble took over and ran things right?

I seem to have misplaced my copy OF “Lydia Bailey”.

Apr 4, 2009 - 9:37 pm 21. Cannoneer No. 4:

The Japanese will have nukes in a few months.

We will be asked to leave Okinawa, Yokota, Misawa, Sasebo and Yokosuka. We are obviously serving no useful purpose there. The ROKs will do the same. American allies everywhere need to reevaluate what being an ally of America is worth.

The frontier recedes back to Guam.

Sayonara, Taiwan.

Gov. Palin may be provided with an opportunity to cover herself with glory. Priority of fedgov.mil effort will go to Hawaii.

If there are no CBRNE teams in the Alaska State Defense Force, there will be soon.

Apr 4, 2009 - 9:43 pm 22. Cannoneer No. 4:

Missile Defense Test a Success

FORT GREELY, Alaska … Alaska Army National Guard warfighters from the 49th Missile Defense Battalion launched and
directed a ground-based interceptor missile Dec. 5 that destroyed a target ballistic missile in space, miles above the Pacific Ocean.

The 13th live test of the nation’s ground-based midcourse defense system, designed to protect the United States from a
ballistic missile attack, provided an abundance of data for future system development. It was hailed as a success by National Guard officials here and Department of Defense officials at the Pentagon.
Guardmembers here say the system works, and Friday’s test proves it.

“This is an operational system that is guarding America. It is part of the first line of defense for America, and you have
Guardsmen doing that,” said Brigadier General Randy Banez, assistant adjutant general – space and missile defense, Alaska
Army National Guard.

Nearly two-thirds of the battalion’s Soldiers are military police who protect the missile complex. The remaining Soldiers are highly trained missile complex crew members as well as support staff.
“It’s probably one of the most unique battalions that you will ever see,” said Lieutenant Colonel Steve Carroll, battalion
commander. “It’s a challenging mission, but it’s also a rewarding one. There are 200 Guardsmen here that are defending 300 million Americans.”

Apr 4, 2009 - 10:05 pm 23. Leo Linbeck III:

Walt,

Just waterskiing behind your powerboat! Cheers,

L3

Apr 4, 2009 - 10:09 pm 24. bob from ideehoo:

Most Successful Launch That Never Happened?

Apr 4, 2009 - 10:11 pm 25. bob from ideehoo:

h/t to Rufus for #24, who is deep into music tonight.

Apr 4, 2009 - 10:18 pm 26. bob from ideehoo:

We’ve successfully pre-empted the Norks. On our way to the UN, telegraphing our wimpyness, before a missile has left the pad, if late reports are true.

Might as well continue the discussion in an ‘as if’ mode….

Apr 4, 2009 - 10:47 pm 27. Rob:

Obama’s calling for an end to nuclear weapons, while N. Korea is firing long-range missiles in our general direction; this forces one to wonder whether he would actually do something as insane as unilaterally disarming.

It sounds crazy, but if he really buys into that left-wing academia orthodoxy that everyone else in the world is hostile only because of US actions, who knows?

Apr 4, 2009 - 11:11 pm 28. NahnCee:

Anyone else wondering what the hell Bubba Bill is up to these days? He’s not accompanying Hillary, is he? Have they got him locked in a broom closet under military guard in the White House basement?

He wasn’t an Eisenhower, but at least he never pawed the Queen of England, grovelled before a Saudi king, and he did manage to bomb the Serbs into submission.

Apr 4, 2009 - 11:13 pm 29. JMH:

Five-adjectives will do for today, assuming that Obama doesn’t apologize for the way Bush creted all the tension between NK and the US.

Obama is currently negotiating to have our European allies contribute an adjective to the communiqué. So far, no luck. Gordon Brown is claiming that Daniel Hannon’s recent speech depleted the UK’s ready reserve of all parts of speech, but has promised to send a preposition immediately, and perhaps an adverb or two by the end of the year. The French are unable to contribute since their adjectives have never been grammatically integrated with NATO standards, coming after the noun as they do. Germany or course has a long-standing prohibition on deploying language outside continental Europe.

Hillary Clinton sounded an optimistic note though, saying she thought she could convince the Russians to send an article.

Apr 4, 2009 - 11:55 pm 30. Eggplant:

We blinked.
The missile should have been intercepted.

Why didn’t the Japanese intercept the missile?

Apr 5, 2009 - 12:08 am 31. Bob Murphy:

Good question, Eggplant.
Surely the Aegis could have done it, even before it entered Japanese airspace (if that is what you call it at that altitude).

Apr 5, 2009 - 12:44 am 32. Rob:

Because NK said such an act would be a declaration of war.

Apr 5, 2009 - 1:32 am 33. Lifeofthemind:

JMH,
Germany could supply a verb but it would have to found in volume 2 of the supporting documents.

The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it’s all together. It’s downright inhuman to split it up. But that’s just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German. – Mark Twain

Rob,
Legally they already are in a State of War, have been since June of 1950. All there is is a Cease Fire line, not even an Armistice. So legally the head of the UN Forces in Korea, the American Commander, could declare the Cease Fire broken and resume hostilities.

Apr 5, 2009 - 2:09 am 34. RAH:

S Korea and the US do not want to be in a hot war with N Korea. Japan should have shot this down. They had the ability with Aegis and not the will.

The US has the most powerful military and not the will. We are a paper tiger. Too bad that American voters voted on this pussy. However Bush did the same in 2006/

Apr 5, 2009 - 3:34 am 35. Roy Lofquist:

A couple of points:

1. Liquid fueled missiles are totally useless for military purposes. With satellite reconnaissance they can easily be destroyed during fueling. The US did deploy the Atlas-F in silos fully fueled but the system was extremely shaky. Actual availability numbers are classified but anecdotaly they were a very expensive bluff.

2. If hostilities were to break out it is feared, with good foundation, that several million people would starve to death. The situation is not good, but any solution that precipitates war would result in the greatest tragedy in human history.

Apr 5, 2009 - 5:02 am 36. Forklift:

Generally, a three stage missile would have a range of up to 3500 miles, or more, which could approach Hawaii. If the Norktards could get a little creative with weight reduction or fuel North America starts to come in range.

Apr 5, 2009 - 6:06 am 37. RWE:

Roy Lofquist:

The vast majority of Soviet ballistic missiles as well as most of the current Russian ICBMs (SS-6, SS-9, SS-18, etc.) are liquid fueled. As are their SLBMs, believe it or not.

We phased out the Atlas E’s and F’s in 1965 and the D’s before that but we kept the liquid fueled Titan II in service well into the 1980’s and even then replaced it because we had the new Peacekeeper. I used to launch those Atlas E’s and F’s converted to space boosters; in the mid-80’s they had the best record of success of any U.S. launch vehicle.

The Tapepodong uses Scud technology, at least for the first stage, which employs storable fuels. I can sit there fueled for quite a while.

Apr 5, 2009 - 6:11 am 38. Barry 0351:

Obama will send a strongly worded letter along with a Collection of the entire Sanford and son DVDs.

Apr 5, 2009 - 6:17 am 39. Roy Lofquist:

RWE,

The Russian missile forces achieve their effectiveness by sheer volume. They can sustain a 50% fail rate and still present an effective deterrent.

Regards,
Roy

Apr 5, 2009 - 6:46 am 40. 2ipa:

Barry-

That’s rich. I just heard that the State Department has reactivated the department of protocol and they insisted on sending along a compatible player…

Apr 5, 2009 - 10:38 am 41. joe buzz:

…who cant seem to get theirs up? The Persians. This was just a bit of NorKor marketing. Being reported that the payload was a satellite carrying songs…immediately brought Longfellow to my feeble mind:

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, who has sight so keen and strong
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Apr 5, 2009 - 11:46 am 42. Phil B:

If it went ovwe Akita from it’s launch site, it would have been on a heading to go a little south of Hawaii, rather than across Alaska and the Continental US…..speaking not as any kind of rocketeer, but as a Geography maniac (my globe is speaking to me, right here next to me).

Apr 5, 2009 - 11:58 am 43. whiskey:

Of course Obama wants to unilaterally disarm.

He HATES America, it’s mostly made up of Whites and Non-Muslims, both of whom he HATES with a passion. Just read his book, he’ll tell you in his own words.

About 57% want a military response to North Korea, but Obama would LOVE for North Korea to say, nuke Seattle or Anchorage. Both of which are full of White people.

Obama’s vision for America is to turn it into the vision his father had for Kenya, a debased. “Volk Socialism” run by Blacks for Blacks, basically “Big Man Society” institutionalized by pseudo science and debased Marxism, with racial supremacy overtones. The similarity between him and a certain Austrian Watercolorist cannot be overlooked, though there are big differences. The Watercolorist loved the military, being a combat vet himself, and was ruthless in his application of well, killing people. Obama is strange mixture of “SWPL” Yuppie and Louis Farrakhan. He’d rather make a “West Wing” speech.

Apr 5, 2009 - 2:38 pm 44. RAH:

This missile was a sales sucess and the Iranians and Chavez will buy it. Think if we had a sucessfil intercept , how many intercepts systems we could have sold. I heard that the Saudi have ordered the Patriot 3 THADD, 7 box trucks with launchers already.

Apr 5, 2009 - 5:25 pm 45. Ray:

Guess what? The rocket failed!!

http://i.gizmodo.com/5199611/north-korea-intercontinental-ballistic-missile-fails-miserably

I wonder if the Iranians realize that the North Koreans are not really rocket scientists.

Apr 5, 2009 - 6:56 pm 46. Lifeofthemind:

I sneezed a sneeze into the air
It fell to the earth I know not where
But hard and froze were the looks of those
In whose vicinity I snoze.

- I thought this was by Ogden Nash but I’m getting Anonymous on line. For my money I prefer Nash.

Apr 5, 2009 - 7:23 pm 47. buddy larsen:

“Time Flies Like an Arrow,
Fruit Flies Like a Banana”

Apr 5, 2009 - 9:03 pm 48. Eggplant:

Roy Lofquist said:

“Liquid fueled missiles are totally useless for military purposes. With satellite reconnaissance they can easily be destroyed during fueling. The US did deploy the Atlas-F in silos fully fueled but the system was extremely shaky. Actual availability numbers are classified but anecdotaly they were a very expensive bluff.”

After Atlas, the United States deployed a few Titan-I ICBMs that were cryogenic liquid fueled missiles. The Titan-I’s design was converted to the non-cryogenic Titan-II ICBM that was fueled with Aerozine 50 and dinitrogen tetroxide (very nasty and toxic chemicals). Many hundreds of liquid fueled Titan-II ICBMs were deployed in silos. The Titan-II was non-MIRVed and carried the largest warhead of any US ICBM, i.e. W-53. The W-53 had a yield of about 8 megatons. The Titan-II/W-53 (though never used in anger) was a highly effective weapon with terrifying destructive capability. The Soviet SS-18 ICBM was of a similar design to the American Titan-II. The Titan-II became obsolete after development of the solid fueled Minuteman ICBMs and the Polaris/Poseidon/Trident SLBMs.

The Norks are trying to reinvent the Titan-II/SS-18.

Apr 5, 2009 - 11:47 pm 49. JG27+AD:

“Hokey smokes, Bullwinkle they’ve got the formula for our top-secret rocket fuel!”

AD

Apr 6, 2009 - 12:06 am 50. Roy Lofquist:

Dear Eggplant,

I spent a year at the USAF Missile Repair Depot in Newark, Ohio as a tech-rep/engineer for the Minuteman II guidance system. They also handled Atlas and Titan there. As I stated, the actual reliability stats are classified but my general comment on reliability is in the ballpark.

Regards,
Roy

p.s., I also spent a couple of years in the middle east monitoring the Russian missile program.

Apr 6, 2009 - 7:42 am 51. Peter the Bubblehead:

The UN is useless. Get the US out of the UN, then tell them they can go move their HQ over to Switzerland or Paris or Berlin or someplace that might give half a care and at the same time open up hundreds of new parking spaces in NYC.

Apr 6, 2009 - 9:06 am 52. Eggplant:

Roy Lofquist said:

“I spent a year at the USAF Missile Repair Depot in Newark, Ohio as a tech-rep/engineer for the Minuteman II guidance system.”

If you worked with RVs, particularly with decommissioning them, you should be mindful about thyroid cancer. Also a good book about the Titan-II is:

“Titan II: A History of a Cold War Missile Program” by David K. Stumpf.

Apr 6, 2009 - 11:15 am

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