Showing posts with label War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label War. Show all posts

Thursday, June 11, 2009

North Korea to Match U.N. Resolution With New Nuclear Test

Great if what Fox News says its true we're in a for a boat load of shit.



U.S. intelligence officials have warned President Obama and other senior American officials that North Korea intends to respond to the passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution this week -- condemning the communist country for its recent nuclear and ballistic missile tests -- with another nuclear test, FOX News has learned.

What's more, Pyongyang's next nuclear detonation is but one of four planned actions the Central Intelligence Agency has learned, through sources inside North Korea, that the regime of Kim Jong-Il intends to take -- but not announce -- once the Security Council resolution is officially passed, likely on Friday.

The other three actions include the reprocessing of all of the North's spent plutonium fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium; a major escalation in the North's uranium-enrichment program; and the launching of another Taepodong-2 intercontinental ballistic missile from the Yunsong military complex on the west coast of North Korea. The North last launched a Taepodong-2 on April 5; it conducted its second nuclear test in the last three years on Memorial Day.

The intelligence community only learned of North Korea's plans this week, prompting CIA to alert senior officials. Asked who would be briefed on this kind of data, a source told FOX News: "The top people: POTUS, DNI." "POTUS" is acronym for the president of the United States; "DNI" refers to the director of the Office of National Intelligence.

FOX News is withholding some details about the sources and methods by which American intelligence agencies learned of the North's plans so as to avoid compromising sensitive overseas operations in a country -- North Korea -- U.S. spymasters regard as one of the world's most difficult to penetrate.

A White House official, contacted by FOX News, declined to comment, saying only that the U.S. government never speaks publicly about intelligence matters.

As top Obama administration officials weigh this prized data and what actions they might take to counter North Korea's plans for a third nuclear test, American intelligence analysts have also encountered setback in their efforts to track developments in the reclusive Stalinist country.

Where U.S. officials had observed the arrival of the first-stage transporter for a Taepodong-2 at Yunsong by June 2, leading to predictions of an imminent launch by officials as high-ranking as Defense Secretary Robert Gates, sources now tell FOX News they see no significant activity consistent with an imminent launch.

"The TD-2 activity has been rather dormant," one source said.

As well, where American intelligence officials on June 9 observed components for the long-range Musudan missile leaving the Wapo-ri installation area, they have now "lost track of them," FOX News has learned.

"We spotted the TELs [Transporter-Erector-Launchers] and then we lost track of them," a source said. "NGA lost track."

NGA refers to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a unit the Defense Department that provides imagery and geospatial information for military and civilian purposes.

"It's disturbing," the source added.

As well, despite multiple tests, U.S. scientists have only reached inconclusive results in their efforts to use air samplings collected over the Korean Peninsula in the days after the Memorial Day detonation to confirm with 100 percent certainty that North Korea conducted a nuclear test, as is still widely believed.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Looks Like Real War For South Korea

So, North Korea has shocked the world again. Another Nuke Test, this time Big Boy sized. They are threatening the South with war over their joining of a UN Council against WMDs. I think they might be serious this time.


UN condemns North Korean nuclear test


SEOUL, South Korea – The United Nations swiftly condemned North Korea for its test of a powerful nuclear bomb, and South Korea announced Tuesday it would join a U.S.-led initiative to intercept ships suspected of spreading weapons of mass destruction.

Russian officials said the nuclear bomb that the North detonated underground Monday was comparable to those that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, raising fears that the communist country could spread such technology abroad.

The U.N. Security Council said the test was a "clear violation" of a 2006 resolution banning North Korea from conducting nuclear development, and that it would start work immediately on a new resolution that could result in even stronger measures.

South Korea, which previously stayed out of the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative in order to pursue reconciliation efforts with North Korea, set aside its reservations and announced it would join the pact immediately. The program involves stopping and searching ships suspected of carrying nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, materials to make them, or missiles to deliver them.

North Korea previously has warned the South that its joining the program would be considered an act of war.

President Barack Obama criticized Pyongyang's "blatant defiance" of existing resolutions. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown condemned the test as a "danger to the world." Russia's Foreign Ministry called it "a serious blow to international efforts" to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

On Tuesday, North Korea accused the U.S. of hostility and said its army and people are ready to defeat an American invasion, accusing Obama of attempting to "militarily stifle" the communist country.

"The current U.S. administration is following in the footsteps of the previous Bush administration's reckless policy of militarily stifling North Korea," the North's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency.

French officials said they would push for new sanctions, and even traditional Pyongyang ally China said it was "resolutely opposed" to the test, which Russian officials estimated yielded a powerful 10- to 20-kiloton blast — enough to flatten a city and far more than North Korea managed in a 2006 atomic test.

Pyongyang's unprecedented defiance has raised the stakes in the mounting standoff over its nuclear program.

Last month, Pyongyang launched a rocket despite international calls for restraint, abandoned international nuclear negotiations, restarted its nuclear plants and warned it would carry out the atomic and long-range missile tests.