dgmodel Posted December 24 Report Share Posted December 24 WASHINGTON (Dec. 23) - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned North Korea on Monday against seizing on Iraq to press a nuclear weapons program and said Washington could fight and win two wars at once.''I have no reason to believe that you're correct that North Korea feels emboldened because of the world's interest in Iraq,'' he told a reporter after Pyongyang took steps over the weekend to unfreeze a nuclear reactor.''If they do, it would be a mistake,'' he added at a Pentagon briefing, saying the U.S. military was perfectly capable of fighting two major regional conflicts at once, if necessary.''We are capable of winning decisively in one and swiftly defeating in the case of the other,'' he said. ''Let there be no doubt about it.''North Korea said on Sunday it had dismantled U.N. monitoring equipment at a nuclear reactor it had mothballed under a 1994 non-proliferation deal with the United States aimed at ending its suspected nuclear weapons program.Pyongyang said it was reactivating the Yongbyon reactor to generate electricity. But the International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. watchdog, said the North also had broken U.N. seals on about 8,000 spent fuel rods in a cooling pond at Yongbyon -- a possible prelude to recovering weapons-grade plutonium.The Clinton administration had been prepared to go to war in 1994 to bar the reclusive communist state from extracting plutonium that could be used to build as many as five or six nuclear bombs in as little as four or five months.Asked if President Bush's administration would stick to such a policy, known as the ''red line'' beyond which Washington would brook no North Korean brinksmanship, Rumsfeld said, ''The situation today is somewhat different from then.''Secretary of State Colin Powell consulted France, Russia and Britain on Monday and said the United States wanted a peaceful resolution, said State Department spokesman Philip Reeker.''We will not give in to blackmail,'' he said. ''And we're not going to bargain or offer inducements for North Korea to live up to the treaties and agreements that it has signed.''''PERFECTLY RATIONAL''Rumsfeld said diplomacy ''seems to me a perfectly rational way of proceeding,'' drawing a distinction with Iraq, where he said many years of diplomacy had fallen ''flat on its face.''''The situation in North Korea is a fairly recent one,'' he went on. ''The diplomacy that's under way there is in its early stages with the United States and the interested neighboring countries.''In Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov accused Bush on Monday of having goaded North Korea by branding it an ''axis of evil'' state along with Iraq and Iran. Bush did so in his State of the Union address in January.''How should a small country feel when it is told that it is all but part of forces of evil of biblical proportions and should be fought against until total annihilation?'' Mamedov told the Vremya Novostei daily newspaper.The State Department dismissed his comments as absurd, noting they contrasted with the official Foreign Ministry reaction.North Korea said it was unfreezing Yongbyon after the United States and other countries halted fuel supplies to sanction a once-secret highly enriched uranium program acknowledged by Pyongyang in October.Rumsfeld said the country had no need for the reactor, which was at the heart of a crisis defused by an oil-for-nuclear compliance deal known as the 1994 Agreed Framework.''They don't need a nuclear power plant,'' he said. ''Their power grid couldn't even absorb that.''Analysts said Pyongyang appeared intent on leveraging U.S. preoccupation with Iraq to press its demand for a nonaggression pact and an end to what it views as a U.S.-led economic isolation campaign.''The North Koreans probably have concluded that they have some flexibility now in committing provocative acts without a high risk of U.S. retaliation,'' said Larry Niksch of the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.Nicholas Eberstadt, a North Korea expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a policy research group, said Pyongyang may have concluded that a victory in Iraq would boost U.S. clout with reluctant partners, adding to its isolation.Peter Brookes, the Pentagon's former chief policymaker on the North, told Reuters Pyongyang was involved in a ''very dangerous game of brinksmanship, extortion and opportunism.'' Reuters 17:09 12-23-02 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sassa Posted December 24 Report Share Posted December 24 how very cocky of that old bastard rumsfeld...btw, off topic but i read somewhere that one of the guys sent over to Iraq with the inspections team is a huge S&M fan...mcgeorge i think his name was. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgmodel Posted December 24 Author Report Share Posted December 24 isnt this why hitler lost wwII??? didnt he try to fight a war on two fronts??? i dont know much about the guy, nor the wwII war... however i think that is something i heard in history a long time ago... not sure.. .correct me if im wrong please... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nycmuzik Posted December 25 Report Share Posted December 25 Originally posted by dgmodel isnt this why hitler lost wwII??? didnt he try to fight a war on two fronts??? i dont know much about the guy, nor the wwII war... however i think that is something i heard in history a long time ago... not sure.. .correct me if im wrong please... Thats true...Its one of the biggest reasons as to why Hitler lost WWII....He tried to take on the Russians from the East and everyone else from the West.....But I dont think that we can compare what Hitler did to what might happen now with the US in regards to Iraq and N. Korea.....The technology available these days allows a country like the US to spread itself out over the world in prolonged wars and still have a chance to win both.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brickhouse Posted December 27 Report Share Posted December 27 Originally posted by nycmuzik2000 Thats true...Its one of the biggest reasons as to why Hitler lost WWII....He tried to take on the Russians from the East and everyone else from the West.....But I dont think that we can compare what Hitler did to what might happen now with the US in regards to Iraq and N. Korea.....The technology available these days allows a country like the US to spread itself out over the world in prolonged wars and still have a chance to win both.... But why would we want to???I don't know why Rumsfeld and Bush et al haven't realized that the more they flap their traps, the more the rest of the world is going to get pissed off.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dnice35 Posted December 27 Report Share Posted December 27 we should just nuke Iraq and Korea..... problem solved! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charrails Posted December 27 Report Share Posted December 27 Originally posted by dnice35 we should just nuke Iraq and Korea..... problem solved! and that wouldn't open up any other problems either!!!I find it interesting how we're playing it off like this is a new problem vs. Iraq being an old one.....haven't we been at war with N. korea since the 50's? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dnice35 Posted December 27 Report Share Posted December 27 Originally posted by charrails and that wouldn't open up any other problems either!!!I find it interesting how we're playing it off like this is a new problem vs. Iraq being an old one.....haven't we been at war with N. korea since the 50's? thats why we should nuke the bastards and get it over with once and for all...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgmodel Posted December 27 Author Report Share Posted December 27 Originally posted by charrails and that wouldn't open up any other problems either!!! yeah theyd follow in japans foot steps... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kramadas Posted December 27 Report Share Posted December 27 Haha...and the irony of all this is that the US wants to prevent other countries from attaining nukes because its scared they'd use them...whereas the only country in history to have used and is still willing to use nuclear weapons is the United States! :laugh: And thanks to our wonderful Republican government, almost a million ppl will cease to receive unemployment benefits because Congress failed to extend these before adjourning! http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/12/27/job.benefits.ap/index.htmlI really wish someone would effect a "regime change" in the US, and install a truly democratically elected government! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dnice35 Posted December 27 Report Share Posted December 27 Originally posted by raver_mania Haha...and the irony of all this is that the US wants to prevent other countries from attaining nukes because its scared they'd use them...whereas the only country in history to have used and is still willing to use nuclear weapons is the United States! :laugh: You are correct my friend, what the fuck was the US thinking retaliating against Japan, and theres nothing wrong with nukes, as long as its an american pushing the buttons. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kramadas Posted December 27 Report Share Posted December 27 Originally posted by dnice35 You are correct my friend, what the fuck was the US thinking retaliating against Japan, Ahhh, finally, you agree...finally beginning to see da light! :D:Dand theres nothing wrong with nukes, as long as its an american pushing the buttons. Riiiigght...I mean, nobody should steal the title of "only country to use nuclear weapons against poor innocent defenseless civilians" from the US, should they? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgmodel Posted December 27 Author Report Share Posted December 27 Originally posted by dnice35 You are correct my friend, what the fuck was the US thinking retaliating against Japan, and theres nothing wrong with nukes, as long as its an american pushing the buttons. lol... i thought i was the only one who found that funny... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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