"The test was neither to 'threaten' anyone, nor to 'provoke' someone for a certain purpose," KCNA said, insisting that the main focus was on providing a "sure guarantee" of the North's immunity from attack by hostile forces.
But in the same breath, North Korea claims to have a prime target for those nukes they are building:
Prime among those forces was the United States it said, offering an apocalyptic vision of how it would respond to US aggression.
That kind of steps on an obscures the message of not being a threat to anyone.
Remember, the good cop/bad cop routine works best with different cops.
Better to follow Iran's example and just deny everything:
Iran has rejected an assessment by the U.N. nuclear agency that it did past work on nuclear arms but is praising some aspects of the agency's investigation of the issue, reflecting satisfaction that the more than decade-long probe has ended.
Closure of the file means that some questions about the alleged weapons work may never be resolved.
You scoff, saying Iran's couldn't possibly deny a program when we detect nukes.
But you'd be wrong. The basis of the nuclear deal is that Iran pretends not to have ever had a nuclear weapons program--and we pretend to believe Iran.
If we detected seismic activity, Iran would claim they are suffering from earthquakes or that foreign instruments are faulty or that it is all a fabrication by the West. "Stop! Answer me these questions three!" they'll say when there are demands to inspect the suspected site.
And Kerry will go flying into the gorge as we try to cross the Bridge of Reset. And then we'll run away.
Which is why the Iranians are satisfied with the assessment and the deal--nothing in either will prevent them from going nuclear. Sooner than the end of the deal timeframe, I bet.
We're the idiom, I'm afraid. There is no holy grail of resetting thug regimes.
Have a super sparkly day.
