Kim Jong Il .. A real whack job yes, but ...

I believe I made a rather less-than-carefully-thought-through recommendation to our President in last evening's blog posting. I made some comment like, "turn North Korea's missile launchers into metallic ash!" ... or something along those lines.

Clearly, I was writing in a moment of anger and let my common sense, if such exists, float into a one of the many nano-black holes that shares space with my brain. I seem to have apologized to you about having posted something stupid more than once, haven't I? Sorry 'bout that!

But the fact is ... this "whack job" is one extremely dangerous customer and, in fact, is a really schmartt cookie, all in all. His past "crazy" and provocative actions have usually brought concessions from either us or others and he also undoubtedly sees the current missile tests as possibly enhancing North Korea's already large customer base for arms sales. It is estimated to be around a half billion dollars to various Middle Eastern countries, such as Iran, Yemen and Syria and I think its exports to Egypt also include military weaponry, but I can't find 100% proof of that on the web -- at least anything that's current.

But forgetting his intentions, I think we have to be somewhat careful when dealing with anyone who looks even remotely like the photograph (unaltered) above.

He does have nuclear weapons and I recall living for five and a half years in the 1970s within range of his artillery pieces just north of the DMZ. Just drag out a map and look at where Seoul is located with respect to the DMZ and then recall also that the UN Command on the hill at Yongson (where I was stationed and near where my wife and children lived) is crowded with US troops and civilians.

Artillery is a very convenient means for delivering tactical nukes and I have no idea just how "crazy" the mind behind the face above really is. Of course, were he to attack a single human being with a nuclear weapon, we would likely annihilate Pyongyang (and vast areas in North Korea) with nukes of our own. Hmmm ... with GWB at the helm, we would probably redirect the Yalu River just for jollies, and then have China -- and its arsenal to worry about. Hmm .. you don't suppose that GWB would try to connect the Yalu River and Tumen River with nukes, do you? Just think of the headlines, "New Bush River Connects Yellow Sea with Sea of Japan!"

No, we will have to negotiate this matter of one-on-one versus six-party talks with the man at the helm in Pyongyang ... unless we can be sure to decapitate the entire People's Republic of Korea government ... to include KJI and his sycophants.

And even then, what do we know of the starving masses who (strange as it may seem to us) have a kind of hero-worship of their maniac-in-charge. Keep in mind that 50% of Americans voted for Mr. Bush twice, so we surely can't predict what the unwashed and uneducated masses in North Korea might come up with if we killed their leader and smashed their missile launchers at the same time. Can we truly trust what we have learned from the few North Koreans who have escaped who have ensured us that the people of that sad and starving country are aware of and hate the continuing brutality of KJI's repressive Communist regime?

No, we'll probably have to negotiate with the bastard, I'm afraid, and yes, it really bothers me that persons such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and possibly George W. Bush would be put in the horse-trading role at a "tea party" with that wily mad hatter, Kim Jong Il.

Even Lewis Carroll couldn't write a scene like that!