North Korea suggested Tuesday it had the ability to launch a pre-emptive attack on the United States, according to the North's official news agency. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the North had built atomic weapons to counter the U.S. nuclear threat.
"As we declared, our strong revolutionary might put in place all measures to counter possible U.S. pre-emptive strike," the spokesman said, according to the Korean Central News Agency. "Pre-emptive strike is not the monopoly of the United States."
Last week, the communist country warned that it had the right to launch a pre-emptive strike, saying it would strengthen its war footing before joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises scheduled for this weekend.
Amazingly, the North Koreans claim they want nukes to deter us. Because if you will recall, in the long years we've had nukes and Pyongyang did not, we've been lobbing a few atomic warheads across the DMZ every week just to shake things up and keep the North Koreans down.
If North Korea ever does strike us, it will be their biggest and last mistake. We will tell the South Koreans to take five steps back from the DMZ, face south on the ground with their ears plugged and mouth open, and stay there for about a half hour.
Then we will pave North Korea in glass from the Yellow Sea to the Sea of Japan.
Actually, we wouldn't do that. We wouldn't slaughter civilians even if North Korea nukes one of our cities and murders millions. But we would respond with nuclear weapons. We'd have to. As I've said, if we are ever hit with atomic weapons and fail to respond with atomic weapons, deterrence dies and we've declared open season on our cities.
The question is, how would we use nukes? It depends on whether the North Koreans hit us with an isolated strike or combine it with an invasion of South Korea.
If the latter, we'd hit lots of North Korean military targets in the region between Seoul and Pyongyang to rip apart the rear areas that support the invasion. And we'd hit any suspected nuclear facilities.
If the former, we might hit a small number of targets just north of the DMZ near Seoul to cripple a North Korean offensive option. Plus any nuclear facilities, of course. And then we should announce to the world that we will destroy a North Korean military unit at random until the North Korean military delivers Kim Jong Il dead or alive to a US base and announces a North Korean surrender.
We are dealing with Grade A nutcases in Pyongyang. God knows if they are serious in these threats. Or whether they are just feeling like nobody is paying any attention to them lately.
But with threats that can only lead to their destruction as a political entity, one must wonder if North Korea even has nukes. As I've said, they should smoke 'em if they've got them.
