Is this for REAL?

This one graphic is all you need to see to realize North Korea is a real threat to the US

by Jeremy Bender


Over the previous weekend, North Korea earned further worldwide scorn after it tested a highly technical long-range rocket system.

Pyongyang claimed that the test was part of a peaceful and benign space program.

However, the rogue regimes' latest launch is almost assuredly a cover for testing a ballistic and nuclear weapons program.

Gordon Chang, writing for The Daily Beast, notes that the satellite system that North Korea claims to have launched over the weekend would weigh essentially as much as a nuclear warhead. This satellite launch could thus dovetail with Pyongyang's claimed successful testing and detonation of a miniaturized hydrogen bomb.

Although there is still no indication that North Korea would be able to develop missile and nuclear warheads en masse, let alone successfully deploy them beyond tests, this latest rocket launch is alarming.

The Heritage Foundation

According to The Heritage Foundation, North Korea's new Taepodong 3 missile has an estimated range of 13,000 kilometers. This would place the entire continental US within range of the missile. Assuming that Pyongyang would be able to attach a warhead to a Taepodong missile and manage to launch it at the US, the missiles could be capable of delivering major damage to the country.

"If its warhead is nuclear and explodes high above the American homeland, an electromagnetic pulse could disable electronics across vast swatches of the country," Chang writes.

In October, Admiral Bill Gortney, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, also assessed that North Korea has "the capability to reach the [US] homeland with a nuclear weapon from a rocket," The Guardian reported.

Gortney also warned in an April 2015 news conference that he was confident that, according to a Pentagon assessment, Pyongyang would be able to place miniaturized nuclear warheads on its KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile.

However, Gortney did qualify this assessment.

"Should one get airborne and come at us, I'm confident we would be able to knock it down," he told reporters.

In the face of such a challenge, the US has agreed to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system to South Korea.

The missile system is able to knock enemy missiles out of the sky, hopefully limiting the utility of any long-range missiles in North Korea's arsenal.

End of Article… 

I'm no expert in diffusing this explosive situation which in my opinion is a mixture of blind man's bluff and potential reality. NK has nothing to loose except the lives of its 30 million mostly follow the leader, poor people, who have been fed propaganda since the end of the Korean war….and who seem to be totally brain-washed! I doubt if any of them are allowed access to the Free internet that is permitted in the West or if they are permitted to leave Korea freely to go seek the truth outside NK.   This is a tragic situation where only the eleit have "freedom of movement" and the means to do so… Even failing to perform your Government job to party rules and regulations can apparently bring you the death penalty and being a ruling party relative is no protection at all. Is this the extreme of a totalitarian state? And can be compared to the Nazi's of WW2?,  toe the line or else…….  Or have us in the west been fed a line of total mistruth and is it us who are the blind…. ?  

Im a peace loving liberal but i fear that the good old USA can't live with this new threat implied in the above article for much longer…. Sanctions are like a pimple on an elephant's backside…. they don't work… , have little noticeable effect…. there's always a way around them. USA posturing doesn't work and nobody in NK pays any attention to  Western words…  The proposed THAAD system scares the Chinese and Russians more as using it could create already nervous trigger fingers to mistakenly activate…something worse. Whats the solution?  Military might? Political? A hit team ? A targeted  strike? 

Whatever the solution is the actual situation is very scary….. Imagine what the ordinary NK citizen is secretly thinking and feeling?…. War isn't an answer as it will embroil the whole of North West Asia…. and millions will die. A PEACEFUL & WORKABLE solution must be found….. and soon before Western patience is exhausted. 

Do you have an opinion….?