BANGKOK: North Korea is ready to go to war with the United States over the communist country's nuclear programme, a newspaper on Friday quoted a North Korean envoy as saying.
But O Song Chol, North Korea's ambassador to Thailand, also said his country was prepared to enter into negotiations to resolve the dispute.
"We are ready to talk peace and we are ready for war with the Americans," he told the English-language The Nation in an interview on Thursday.
Chol said his government has formulated a contingency plan in case of war and would hit back hard.
The envoy urged Washington not to refer the stalled, six-nation talks on Pyongyang's nuclear programme to the UN Security Council, saying the move would be tantamount to a declaration of war.
Chol said the talks could only resume if the United States apologised for labeling his country an "outpost of tyranny" and ended its hostile policy toward North Korea.
Dismissing reports that China has been pressuring Pyongyang to return to the multilateral talks, Chol said Beijing had only made "some suggestions" about the negotiations but no demands.
North Korea is part of China's "pré carré". They are fully dependent on foreign aid and notably the one of their mighty neighbour. It is another gesticulation from a regime out of breath - the more they threaten, the more they recognize in which desperate state they are. They are a puppet in the hands of the Chinese who would use them conveniently in their complex relationship with the Americans.
They have now shut down one of their reactors to make weapons grade nukes.
Maybe if we just keep talking, it will go away on it's own like it did with Saddam.
"Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those who say this are witless." ~Ayatollah Khomeini
North Korea is strongly Communist and the People are overflowing to the brim with Propaganda. It will not be as easy to break down a Country run by a personality cult with such patriotic followers. Half of Saddam's followers wanted him dead which was why the Iraqis had him hung in Iraq.
Why funny? Do you think it would be another cake-walk, like Iraq?
The actual war itself was short. Less then a week if I am not mistaken. It is the aftereffects in Iraq that are the problem. A war with North Korea would most likely be short. America's Military is designed for war with a large standing army. Look what happened in the Gulf War. A month and a half of bombing and a 4 day ground assault had the 4th best army in the world running away with its tail between its legs. Now i am not saying that war is the answer but I think that it would be a bad choice for the North Koreans.
Ooh-rah
4 years as a scout sniper in the USMC.
21 months in Iraq in two tours.
Best job in the world. (Sitting around with an M40A3)
Don't look at me like
I am a monster
Frown out your one face
But with the other
Stare like a junkie
Into the TV
Stare like a zombie
While the mother
Holds her child
Watches him die
Hands to the sky crying
Why, oh why?
'cause I need to watch things die
From a distance
The actual war itself was short. Less then a week if I am not mistaken. It is the aftereffects in Iraq that are the problem. A war with North Korea would most likely be short. America's Military is designed for war with a large standing army. Look what happened in the Gulf War. A month and a half of bombing and a 4 day ground assault had the 4th best army in the world running away with its tail between its legs. Now i am not saying that war is the answer but I think that it would be a bad choice for the North Koreans.
Calling the four years of violence in Iraq an "aftereffect" is an interesting way of putting what is actually a failure of US government foreign policy in the Gulf region. The only thing left for America is to find a face saving way out of Iraq, which isn't going to happen while Bush is in office because he is unable to admit, even to himself, that his policy is a mess.
Why would a war with North Korea be short? The US bombed the crap out of Vietnam for over 10 years and failed to impose its will on the Vietnamese people. The US has again failed in four years so far to impose its will on Iraq through military force. I don't see why you think North Korean would be so much different?
H@ts
I am talking about two standing armies meeting in an actual war, not the guerrilla warfare of Iraq. In 2003, when we invaded Iraq the ground invasion was over and Saddam was out of power in a week. The US Military has changed a lot since Vietnam. My uncle fought in Vietnam and he is dumbfounded by what I use every day. We are the most technologically advanced and well trained military in the world. We are designed to fight a large, standing army that has jets, tank, APCs and infantry; not a guerrilla war.
Plus America has Me... Ooh-rah!
Ooh-rah
4 years as a scout sniper in the USMC.
21 months in Iraq in two tours.
Best job in the world. (Sitting around with an M40A3)
Don't look at me like
I am a monster
Frown out your one face
But with the other
Stare like a junkie
Into the TV
Stare like a zombie
While the mother
Holds her child
Watches him die
Hands to the sky crying
Why, oh why?
'cause I need to watch things die
From a distance
USMC_Sniper said this in post #9 : We are the most technologically advanced and well trained military in the world.
Yes but the fact that everyone knows the US is more technically advanced than any other nation means no-one is ever going to attack America in anything like a conventional style of war.
9/11 was a trap set by Bin Laden to drag the US into an unwinnable war in the Middle East, with the hope of setting the place on fire. Your swaggering superiority was used against you, and you believed it was going to be a cake-walk, so stepped right in.
Yes but the fact that everyone knows the US is more technically advanced than any other nation means no-one is ever going to attack America in anything like a conventional style of war.
9/11 was a trap set by Bin Laden to drag the US into an unwinnable war in the Middle East, with the hope of setting the place on fire. Your swaggering superiority was used against you, and you believed it was going to be a cake-walk, so stepped right in.
This thread is about North Korea not The Middle East. but since you brought up the middle east... What constitutes winning. Is it casualties? or something else? Here are the Casualty stats on the Iraq war as of April 4, 2007.
Iraqi Insurgents Killed, Estimated - 55,000
US Troop Causalities - 3,266 US troops
Almost a 17 to 1 ratio.
We might not be winning as easily as we thought we would. But we are not losing. And the only reason people say we are is because there are spineless people in this world that think we should pull out. Pulling out would lead to nothing more than higher Iraqi death tolls from full out civil war. At least with the US in Iraq there is a chance. The truth is, h@ts, that we have be invoved in the middle east for many years, and we will continue to be involved there for many more years.
Ooh-rah
4 years as a scout sniper in the USMC.
21 months in Iraq in two tours.
Best job in the world. (Sitting around with an M40A3)
Don't look at me like
I am a monster
Frown out your one face
But with the other
Stare like a junkie
Into the TV
Stare like a zombie
While the mother
Holds her child
Watches him die
Hands to the sky crying
Why, oh why?
'cause I need to watch things die
From a distance
USMC_Sniper said this in post #11 :
What constitutes winning. Is it casualties? or something else? Here are the Casualty stats on the Iraq war as of April 4, 2007
The US attacked Iraq. Winning is achieving goals not counting how many people you can kill.
Apart from the staggering profits some companies have made in Iraq, everything else is a complete mess. There is a government with no power or control. There were no WMDs, no links to Al Qaeda, no links to 9/11, no terrorism. Now there is nothing but hell on earth for many Iraqis and terrorist attacks every day.
What does it mean to you to know that a majority of Iraqis support the killing of US troops? When a squad is blown up in a road-side bomb, crowds of onlookers, many of them kids pick up trophies and cheer the deaths.
quote:
We might not be winning as easily as we thought we would. But we are not losing.
And you can if you carry on "not losing" for years and years. The Soviets carried on "not losing" in Afghanistan for 10 years. How long did you continue to "not lose" in Vietnam, 15 years was it? Once you can't win, what does not losing actually mean? Sometimes there is no military solution to some problems, and pretending there still is is a betrayal of the troops.
quote:
And the only reason people say we are is because there are spineless people in this world that think we should pull out.
In this case the real spineless behaviour is being taken by those who refuse to admit the mistake they've made and so continue it, regardless of reality.
quote:
Pulling out would lead to nothing more than higher Iraqi death tolls from full out civil war.
Maybe, maybe not. How do you know? One thing that is certain is the US presence in Iraq is the causes célèbres, a magnet for militant radical Islamic extremists in the Middle East. Iraq is the perfect training ground for terrorists, far better than Afghanistan ever was.
quote:
The truth is, h@ts, that we have be invoved in the middle east for many years, and we will continue to be involved there for many more years.
Everyone's involved in the Middle East. That's where the oil is.
USMC_Sniper -
Do you think what this guy is saying is true?
"if Afghanistan was a school of terror, then Iraq is a university of terrorism"
quote:
By Firouz Sedarat
DUBAI (Reuters) - The head of an al Qaeda-linked group in Iraq said the country had become a "university of terrorism", producing highly qualified warriors, since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
In an audio recording posted on the Internet on Tuesday, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, said his fighters were successfully confronting U.S. forces in Iraq and have begun producing a guided missile called al-Quds 1 or Jerusalem 1.
"The largest batch of soldiers for jihad ... in the history of Iraq are graduating and they have the highest level of competence in the world," Baghdadi said.
"From the military point of view, one of the (enemy) devils was right in saying that ," said the leader of the group set up last year by al Qaeda's Iraq wing and some other Sunni groups.
03-26-2005 01:30 PM
