Gates: No doubt of North Korea’s hostile missile launch intentions

Here we go again.   Secretary of Defense Gates is demonizing North Korea and hyping its threat to Hawai’i.    It must be that time of year to shakedown Congress for more funding for missile defense.   There’s no justification for North Korea to feel threatened.  It’s not like the U.S. has any intercontinental ballistic missiles or has threatened to use nuclear weapons preemptively.  And of course North Korea, party poopers that they are, would only want to bomb Hawai’i because it exports all those alluring tourist fantasy images of people having fun in the sun.   North Korea couldn’t possibly feel threatened by PACOM that annually holds joint military exercises in South Korea to poke a stick at North Korea.  They just don’t want others to have fun while they starve their own people.

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March 29, 2009

Gates: No doubt of North Korea’s hostile missile launch intentions

WASHINGTON (CNN) – There is little doubt that a planned North Korean rocket launch next month is designed to bolster that country’s military capability, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday.

He also indicated that the U.S. military could be prepared to shoot down a North Korean missile if the rogue regime develops the capability to reach Hawaii or the western continental United States in a future launch.

The North Korean government says it will launch a commercial satellite atop a rocket sometime between April 4 and April 8.

“I don’t know anyone at a senior level in the American government who does not believe this technology is intended as a mask for the development of an intercontinental ballistic missile,” Gates said during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”

Gates noted that while the United States believes it is North Korea’s “long-term intent” to add a nuclear warhead to any such missile, he “personally would be skeptical that they have the ability right now to do that.”
Japan recently mobilized its missile defense system – an unprecedented step – in response to the planned North Korean launch, Japanese officials said.

The move, noteworthy for a country with a pacifist constitution, is aimed
at shooting down any debris from the launch that might fall into Japanese territory.

In a concurrent response, U.S. Navy ships capable of shooting down ballistic missiles are being moved to the Sea of Japan, a Navy spokesman said Thursday.

Gates said that the U.S. military could shoot down “an aberrant missile, one that was headed for Hawaii … or something like that, we might consider it, but I don’t think we have any plans to (do) anything like that at this point.”

He does not believe North Korea currently has the technology to reach Alaska or Pacific coast.

Gates said that impending missile launch is a clear demonstration of the failure of the recent six-party talks to disarm the North Korean regime.

“It’s very troubling. The reality is that the six-party talks really have not made any headway any time recently,” he said.

“If (the missile launch) is Kim Jong-Il’s welcoming present to a new president … it says a lot about the imperviousness of this regime in North Korea to any kind of diplomatic overtures.”

Gates said that he believes economic sanctions are the best tool to getting countries like North Korea and Iran to the negotiating table. Both countries are believed by the United States and other Western nations to be trying to acquire nuclear capability.

Source: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/03/29/gates-no-doubt-of-north-koreas-hostile-missile-launch-intentions/

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One Comment

Ricardo Bailey

If The North Koreans Launch any Missiles Equipped With any form of Biological,Chemical ,or Nuclear War Heads towards The United States Of America or any of her Allies,Make no Mistake They Will Be Hastily Rewarded with a level of Devastation To There Cities and People On A Biblical Scale.

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