If forced to bet one way or the other, I would bet that you're right. The more I read about it, the more I get the sense that Kim Jong-Il is less crazy-like-a-fox than just insane.

One addition: sometimes they end up eating things even worse than tree bark.

You're thinking like a rational human being with compassion for fellow humans ... and not like the dictator of a Stalinistic country. That's a serious flaw. Fearless Leaders spends tens of thousands of dollars a year on Hennessy alone (not making that up)... so why wouldn't he dump all of the country's money into the nuclear program.

And if you're a scientist/military guy working for Fearless Leader, wouldn't it be great motivation, that fear of ending up like one of the bark-eaters.

I guess I should have expounded on my thought - it's not that Mr. Kim doesn't want nuclear weapons, and isn't working on them (obviously he is), it's just that, when you've built your whole government entirely on yes-men, it's hard to get much of anything done: who'll report to you if you take the wrong course of action somewhere down the line?

Of course, maybe he does have nukes despite all that.

This is all just a sinister Chinese plot to discover just what it takes to get nuked by the US.

Well, they are able to shoot missiles over Japan and do *something* preannounced that registers on the Richter scale.

In any case, their GDP per capita is estimated at $1700 per, and if it isn't going into feeding people, it's being invested *somewhere*.

the way i understand it, NK didn't have to develop nukes. bill clinton, madeleine albright, and jimmy carter gave them the technology... like a box of parts. the NK's just had to figure out how to put them all together.

I think the nuclear bomb test was fake and was actually non-nuclear material exploding. North Korea wants to show more power than they exist.

North Korea blackmailed the nations around them by threatening invasion or destruction of their cities. In response to this blackmail, NK received materials, money and supplies to keep their economy and weapons program running.

Bush has convinced these nations to stand together and not give aid to North Korea unless they give up their nuclear program. So now NK says they have the bomb so they have new blackmail power to hold over the countries close to them.

Will it work?

Soviets? China (the most favoured nation) is the supplier to North Korea.
Blaming Clinton, how novel. That dog is getting old. It would be just as easy to blame Truman for not letting McArthur use a nuke when the USA actually had superiority.

I don't think North Korea has the capacity to enrich Uranium. They may have enriched uranium stockpiled but they wouldn't want to waste any. They def. have the missile tech to hit Japan and at least get close to the West Coast.

Just for the record Bush told Kim of N. Korea that he couldn't develop Nuculear weapons, he mentioned nothing of a nuclear arsenal. It might be semantics but......

Bryan,

The U.S. stil has superiority, the problem is that you can't just light up any rogue nation you want to with nukes because you think they have nukes.

What is stoping the US from Nuking a couple of cities in NK? The UN? The only think that is stoppint the US from nuking NK is our stupid moral hangup.

Using nuclear weapons on a country because you think they may be developing nuclear weapons is sort of backwards. Being afraid they will use them so the U.S. uses them first and not to mention the environmental fallout for S.Korea, Japan and China (some people...man).

Then you find out all of your intelligence was wrong alla Iraq.

The U.S. cannot just pull an Israel and wreck shop and then say it's the world's problem when finished.

Anh, maybe it's the moral hangups, or maybe it's the fact the nuclear weapons are very bad, both at the time of use and (as far as we are aware) for at least 61 years later.
Dan, during the Korean war, McArthur wanted to deploy nukes. China had none, Russia had (at best)2, and the USA had about 20 (this I'm guessing). The point was that, had Truman given it the nod, there would have been a Cuba like backdown, and today Kim Il Jong would be in a loony bin in a united, japan-style Korea. I don't think the use of the weapon was necessary, but the standoff could have worked. This is what I meant.

Bryan, McArthur wanted to use nukes. He had forty cities all picked out in southern China. That sort of thing would have convinced every country in the world there was no safety without a large nuclear arsenal.

In any event, we could probably take the Nokos out without resorting to nuclear weapons, but then what? Will we invade every country on the cusp of nuclear weapons, but not if they actually succeed in the acquisition? Is there a better way to insure every country on earth has a nuclear arsenal?

I do believe Macarthur wanted to nuke China. Patton wanted to invade the Soviet Union using German soldiers as allies right after WWII. Bush wanted to invade Iraq immediately after the twin towers were bombed....

hmmmmmm, maybe patience is the better part of valor.

"Institute a draft that would get our boys home in 2 weeks. "