UrbanSwirl.com - Lifestyles of Color

This country has nuclear power. This country has and boast to have Weapons of Mass Destruction. And this country has threatening to retaliate if the US provoke and attack them. Link

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea boasted of being a "proud nuclear power" and threatened Monday to harm the U.S. if attacked as tensions mounted over a possible crackdown on exports of suspected missile parts from the North.

President Barack Obama said the U.S. is ready to cope with "any contingencies" involving North Korea and vowed not to "reward belligerence and provocation."

South Korea's YTN news network reported Sunday that a U.S. Navy destroyer tailing a North Korean ship suspected of carrying missiles and related parts was headed toward Myanmar in what could be the first test of new U.N. sanctions against the North over its recent nuclear test.

The sanctions — punishment for an underground nuclear test North Korea conducted May 25 — firm up an earlier arms embargo against North Korea and authorize ship searches in an attempt to thwart the regime's nuclear and ballistic missile ambitions.

On Monday, North Korea's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper called it "nonsense" to say the country is a threat to the U.S., and instead claimed Washington was the one threatening the North. The paper also warned in a commentary that the country is prepared to strike back if attacked.

"As long as our country has become a proud nuclear power, the U.S. should take a correct look at whom it is dealing with," the editorial said. "It would be a grave mistake for the U.S. to think it can remain unhurt if it ignites the fuse of war on the Korean peninsula."

The Rodong Sinmun also denounced Obama's recent pledge to defend and protect South Korea — even promising to keep Seoul "under the U.S. nuclear umbrella" — as an attempt to attack the North with atomic bombs. Obama made the commitment in a joint statement after a summit last week with South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak.

North Korea calls its nuclear program a deterrent against the U.S., which Pyongyang routinely accuses of plotting to topple the communist regime. The U.S., which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, has said it has no such intentions, and has no nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula.

Obama said the U.S. is prepared for any North Korean provocation, including the regime's reported threat to test-launch a long-range missile toward Hawaii.

Japanese media have reported that the North Koreans appear to be preparing for a long-range test planned sometime around July 4, the Independence Day holiday. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered additional protections for Hawaii as a precaution.

"This administration — and our military — is fully prepared for any contingencies," Obama said Friday during an interview with CBS News' "The Early Show" to be broadcast Monday.

"I don't want to speculate on hypotheticals," Obama said. "But I want ... to give assurances to the American people that the t's are crossed and the i's are dotted in terms of what might happen."

A North Korean cargo ship, the Kang Nam, is expected to travel to Myanmar via Singapore, YTN said, citing an unidentified intelligence source in South Korea.

Myanmar's military government, which faces an arms embargo from the United States and the European Union, reportedly has bought weapons from the North in the past.

Bush supporters have always outlined that Iraq is a much deadlier threat than North Korea.
The argument (if you recalled), Saddam had WMDs and that is the catalyst for invading this country and to topple this regime. After how many years later, trillons of dollars spent, lives lost and with no end in sight - Iraq doesn't seem much of a threat after all (as compared to North Korea).

Weapons of Mass Destruction!

North Korea's acknowledgment that it has a uranium-enrichment program appears to confirm that it has a second source of bomb-making materials in addition to plutonium.

North Korea is believed to have about 110 pounds of plutonium, enough for half a dozen bombs, Yoon Deok-min, a professor at South Korea's state-run Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, said Saturday.

Reprocessing 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods stored at North Korea's Yongbyon complex could yield additional 18 to 22 pounds of plutonium — enough to make at least one more atomic bomb, he said.

More than a third of the spent fuel rods have been reprocessed and the rest of its plutonium will be weaponized, North Korea said Saturday.

Those moves would mark a significant step away from a disarmament pact between North Korea and five other nations in wake of its first nuclear test in 2006. Link

North Korea's rapid push to continue to build their uranium enrichment programm is a response they view as a defense from the West. Their refusal to abandon their nuclear ambition because they are

compelled to go nuclear in the face of the US hostile policy and its nuclear threats.

This country is dangerous and a major threat to the US and our Asian allies.
Would this country be the threat that will test the Obama presidency?
Our military is so stretched right now - I dread to see any offensive military action against this country.

Such a mess!