North Korean Nuclear Facilities, From 30,000 Feet 182
Harperdog writes "Niko Milonopoulos, Siegfried S. Hecker, and Robert Carlin analyze terrific overhead photos of North Korea's nuclear facilities, discussing the rate of building and what the photos show. Also points to options for dealing with North Korea and their energy needs."
Re:North Korea vs. Iran (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously, you don't understand Iranian politics. The president of Iran has a bit of power. A little bit, that is. Real power rests with the "Supreme Leader", Ayatollah Khomanie (spelling). The Ayatollah draws his power from his circle of Ayatollahs, who run the country behind the scenes. The president is little more than a figurehead. Our own president in the United States has much more real power than the president of Iran.
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:5, Informative)
Germans are not Japanese. Germans were willing to surrender (to Brits or Americans, at least). Japanese were not. When the US invaded Okinawa, even civilians made pointless attacks against US troops, while many committed suicide. Now adjust for the fact that Okinawa isn't considered a proper part of Japan, and is very small and you'll have some idea what would have happened on the mainland.
Re:And who did the invasion of Germany? (Score:5, Informative)
Germany was only partially invaded by the western allies, the russians did the lion share including the brutal Berlin battle. Japan's final battle by comparison was relatively peaceful.
Tell that to Russians who fought in Manchuria Soviet invasion of Manchuria [wikipedia.org]
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:3, Informative)
Or we could have stopped Alcoa from selling the aluminum to Mitsubishi that they made into Zeroes that they crashed through the decks of our planes.
Or we could have stopped Prescott bush from knowingly funneling millions to Hitler's S.S. One of his contemporaries was arrested for selling a great deal of fuel to the Nazis too, can't find his name right now though, sadly. But only AFTER he sold them the fuel, so that the Nazis would be able to continue to fight and so that we could seize the proceeds.
The simple truth is that we helped fuel that war intentionally for our economic goals.
Re:North Korea and Burma (Score:5, Informative)
We would probably have killed far more than twice as many invading. We were, after all, expecting more US casualties from invading than we inflicted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And we'd already established that we could inflict ten casualties for every one we suffered - air supremacy and armour, that sort of thing, are serious force multipliers....
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:5, Informative)
And the USA were already ready to invade the home-turf of Japan at that point, so the down-payment was pretty much already done.
Uh, no. There are two big differences. One is getting the troops to the Japanese homeland. The invasion of Germany was possible because of D-day. That was a pretty costly maneuver (in manpower lost and equipment), even though it was only a short hop across the Channel. Invading Japan would have meant massive amphibious landings supported not from the US homeland, but from small island bases.
Couple that with the Japanese willingness to fight to the last man, and the invasion would have been a bloodbath. So yes, a) was a valid reason.
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:5, Informative)
Leaflets were dropped for 2 days before the bombings by the CIA warning citizens that the cities were going to be destroyed, and many of them got out of town.
Re:And who did the invasion of Germany? (Score:2, Informative)
No gas chambers or furnaces. Or even that much civilian prisoners.
My best friend is Filipino, and his grandmother mother managed to survive the war (the rest of her family did not). There there were no "civilian prisoners" because the Japanese of the time viewed most foreigners as sub-human, and so had as little remorse for killing the locals as they would a stray dog.
Just because the Japanese were not as systematic as the Nazis in WW2 does not mean they were any less brutal or evil.
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:2, Informative)
The CIA was formed in 1947 ...
Re:North Korea and Burma (Score:4, Informative)