Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone may want to reassemble Team America: World Police (2004), because it is increasingly apparent that new North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is even crazier than his old man, Kim Jong-il -- this man-child is threatening a Korean Barbeque (nuclear war) to "settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists."
Reuters News Service reported on Wednesday, North Korea to cut all channels with South:
Reclusive North Korea is to cut the last channel of communications with the South because war could break out at "any moment", it said on Wednesday, days of after warning the United States and South Korea of nuclear attack.
The move is the latest in a series of bellicose threats from North Korea in response to new U.N. sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test in February and to "hostile" military drills under way joining the United States and South Korea.
The North has already stopped responding to calls on the hotline to the U.S. military that supervises the heavily armed Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and the Red Cross line that has been used by the governments of both sides.
"Under the situation where a war may break out at any moment, there is no need to keep north-south military communications which were laid between the militaries of both sides," the North's KCNA news agency quoted a military spokesman as saying.
"There do not exist any dialogue channel and communications means between the DPRK and the U.S. and between the north and the south."
Now, this has happened from time to time over the past 60 years since the Korean War, but this time has a discernable difference in tone and there is an unsettling unease that North Korea's man-child Kim Jong-un, for whom the world's intelligence agencies apparently know very little about, just may be crazy enough to walk the walk and not just talk the talk like his old man. He needs to prove that he is a bad-ass little dictator. But is he suicidal enough to actually use nuclear weapons?
Reuters News Service reported on Friday, North Korea readies missiles after US stealth bombers fly over South:
North Korea has cancelled an armistice agreement with the United States that ended the Korean War and cut all communications hotlines with U.S. forces, the United Nations and South Korea.
"The North Koreans have to understand that what they're doing is very dangerous," U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday.
"We must make clear that these provocations by the North are taken by us very seriously and we'll respond to that."
* * *
North Korea put its missile units on standby on Friday to attack U.S. military bases in South Korea and the Pacific, after the United States flew two nuclear-capable stealth bombers over the Korean peninsula in a rare show of force.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un signed off on the order at a midnight meeting of top generals and "judged the time has come to settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists in view of the prevailing situation", the official KCNA news agency said.
* * *
The news of Kim's response was unusually swift.
"He finally signed the plan on technical preparations of strategic rockets of the KPA (Korean People's Army), ordering them to be on standby for fire so that they may strike any time the U.S. mainland, its military bases in the operational theatres in the Pacific, including Hawaii and Guam, and those in South Korea," KCNA said.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported there had been additional troop and vehicle movements at the North's mid- and long-range missile sites, indicating they may be ready to fire.
* * *
KCNA said North Korea and the United States could only settle their differences by "physical means." The North has an arsenal of Soviet-era short-range Scud missiles that can hit South Korea but its longer-range Nodong and Musudan missiles, which could in theory hit U.S. Pacific bases, are untested.
China, the North's sole major ally, repeated its calls for restraint on the Korean peninsula at a regular Foreign Ministry briefing and made no criticism of the U.S flights.
"We hope that relevant parties will work together in pushing for a turnaround of the tense situation," ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters.
While China did not criticize the U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises, the effin' Russians decided to throw some gas on the fire:
Russia's foreign minister implicitly criticised the U.S. bomber flights.
"We are concerned that alongside the adequate, collective reaction of the U.N. Security Council, unilateral action is being taken around North Korea that is increasing military activity," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
"The situation could simply get out of control, it is slipping toward the spiral of a vicious cycle," Lavrov told reporters in Moscow when asked about the situation.
On that last point I can agree with the Russians. Too many wars have started with miscommunication spiraling out of control. As the Duke, John Wayne, famously said in Big Jake (1971):
“Now you understand. Anything goes wrong, anything at all… your fault, my fault, nobody’s fault… it don’t matter… I’m gonna blow your head off. It’s as simple as that.”
China needs to get a clue. China cannot have this impudent man-child threatening the world with nuclear war every time he wants to prove he is some kind of bad-ass little dictator. China created the problem that is North Korea, and China has an obligation to resolve the problem it created.
This Reuters News Service report is troubling, As US hardens line on North Korea, South may pay:
New leaders in Seoul, Beijing and most importantly, an untested 30-year-old in Pyongyang who has to prove he is capable of facing down a perceived threat from the United States, have raised the stakes in a month-long standoff that risks flaring into a conflict.
"It seems that Kim Jong-un is in the driving seat of a train that has been taken on a joyride," said Lee Min-yong, North Korea expert at Sookmyung Women's University in Seoul.
* * *
The missile threat to U.S. bases in the Pacific and certainly to the continental United States may be overstated, given the untested nature of North Korea's longer-range missiles. But the risk to South Korea is real.
Seoul is just over 40 km (25 miles) from the massed artillery and battle-proven short-range Scud missiles placed north of the demilitarised zone that separates the two sides. And North Korea has proved, as recently as 2010, that it is capable of launching strikes on the South.
A study by the International Institute for Strategic Studies says North Korea keeps 80 percent of its estimated firepower within 100 km (60 miles) of the zone. This includes approximately 700,000 troops, 8,000 artillery systems and 2,000 tanks, it said.
* * *
Deng Yuwen, deputy editor at the Study Times, a newspaper published by China's Central Party School which trains rising officials, believes neither side intends to wage a full-scale war in which the "Americans will stamp him (Kim) out like an ant and crush him" but says the risk of conflict has risen.
"This doesn't rule out the risk of misfiring, this kind of accident cannot be ruled out," Deng said.
While Pyongyang has a new Kim in charge, South Korean President Park Geun-hye and China's new leader Xi Jinping took office just this year.
* * *
China's Xi will have to navigate a tricky path that seeks to restrain and punish the North, as it did by backing United Nations sanctions imposed after the test. But, as the North's only major ally and its supplier of food and fuel, Beijing will not go too far.
"If the Chinese take too stringent measures, the situation in North Korea will be even more unstable," said Deng.
At some point, China will have to take these risks to bring North Korea to heel, or even to use military intervention to resolve the problem it created in North Korea. This should not have to be a job for Team America to clean up.
If only "Team America" acting as "World Police" stopped maintaining US soldiers and assorted instruments of mass destruction in North Korea then neither China nor North Korea would have any rational reason for worrying (or claiming to worry) about the defense of their country. The US government could save several billion dollars as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Forces_Korea
FYI, Team America is available at a RedBox near you..
http://www.redbox.com/movies/team-america-world-police-2004
Posted by: Thane "Goldie" Eichenauer | March 31, 2013 at 06:36 AM