DPRK the Drum Beat becomes louder

If Necessary, Strike and Destroy / North Korea Cannot Be Allowed to Test This Missile

By Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry Thursday, June 22, 2006; Washington Post.


" .....Therefore, if North Korea persists in its launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched. This could be accomplished, for example, by a cruise missile launched from a submarine carrying a high-explosive warhead. The blast would be similar to the one that killed terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. But the effect on the Taepodong would be devastating. The multi-story, thin-skinned missile filled with high-energy fuel is itself explosive -- the U.S. airstrike would puncture the missile and probably cause it to explode. The carefully engineered test bed for North Korea's nascent nuclear missile force would be destroyed, and its attempt to retrogress to Cold War threats thwarted. There would be no damage to North Korea outside the immediate vicinity of the missile gantry."

" .... We should not conceal our determination to strike the Taepodong if North Korea refuses to drain the fuel out and take it back to the warehouse"

Ashton B. Carter (Rhodes scholar in theoretical physics) was assistant secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton and William J. Perry was Secretary of Defense. The writers, who conducted the North Korea policy review while in government, are now professors at Harvard and Stanford, respectively. See Carter, Ashton B., and William J. Perry. Preventive Defense: A New Security Strategy for America, Russian Edition. Brookings Institution, 2003.

Preventative Defense Strategy - keep threats from emerging; deter those that actually emerge; and if prevention and deterrence failed, defeat the threat with military force.

Lord Patel has been maintaining an interest in the possibility that Uncle Sam might be up for re-arranging bits of the North Korean countryside, see previous posts here.

Thursday, April 20
North Korea - USAF keeps a watch

Wednesday, May 3
Sayonara Iraq, G'bye Okinawa, .. when do we bomb Pyongyang ?

When guys with these credentials write these sort of things in WAPO you begin to feel that something is happening...softening up the audience before they re-landscape Yongbyong.

Remember Dubya deosn't even have to declare war, because technically it is just a cease fire agreement.- ... and Congress don't have to be consulted having given him wide ranging powers after 9/11 to invade Iraq, intercept telephones en masse and obtain banking details.

What does a President do with these powers ? Anything he damn well wants. Gotta get those poll numbers up somehow.

POSTSCRIPT

Transcript of Fox News Special report discussing Cater and Perry's proposals for a pre-emptive strike

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: You know, dDmocrats have way of getting extremely hawkish after they have left office. As Mort indicated, these guys we're in office. Now we're in a post 9/11 world with wars going on all over the place with Americans involved with a lot of isolation for the United States. These guys are recommending a strike which undoubtedly will start a war and it would be the wrong war, the wrong place, the wrong time.

......

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO : What do you we think should do?

KRAUTHAMMER: Develop our missile defense system.

LIASSON: No, I mean about this?

KRAUTHAMMER: You've got to swallow it. Right now we are not in a position to do anything about it.

Krauthammer is possibly best remembered for his Time article April 9th 1999 about the Clinton Weltanschaung..

" The essence of foreign policy is deciding which son of a bitch to support and which to oppose--in 1941, Hitler or Stalin; in 1972, Brezhnev or Mao; in 1979, Somoza or Ortega. One has to choose. A blanket anti-son of a bitch policy, like a blanket anti-ethnic cleansing policy, is soothing, satisfying and empty. It is not a policy at all but righteous self-delusion."