On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 19:38:09 GMT, Charles Gray wrote:

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 20:53:21 GMT, "Kevin Brooks"


4. If the U.S. is gathering to attack, don't get cute hiding WMD's,
or being coy. Unless you can reveal that you have 20 SS-18's bought
war surplus and you can kill 50 major U.S. cities with them, WMD's
have proven to be less than useless.

Here's where I disagree somewhat. Let's compare Iraq and Korea

Iraq: "We don't have any weapons of mass destruction". Which
apparently they didn't, at least nobody's found any.

Korea: "Sure we have weapons of mass destruction. Wanna make
something of it?"

Compare the results. Iraq gets invaded. The US says "We will not be
provoked" to N. Korea.

Now allies may have made a difference, but Iraq had French and German
support, while Korea has Chineese support. So they both did have
allies.

BTW, on diplomatic grounds, I would say that the best response is not
Korea's very belligerent approach. I'm not quite sure how you say
that your nuclear weapons are purely defensive weapons and not
intended as weapons of mass destruction in diplomateese, but that's
basically the approach to take.

It might also be good diplomacy to point out, tactfully, that the US's
nuclear weapons aren't really WMD's either :-).