Nuclear Bombs on North Korea

The AP has this afternoon released an article detailing the news that the US actually considered using nuclear weapons on more than one occasion against North Korea. Wow, this is big news -- but only if you are the AP looking for something to take people's attention away from the failing economy.

Maybe the folks at the AP missed it, but President Eisenhower credited his threat to use nukes against the North Koreans and the Chinese for finally bringing the Korean conflict to an end. Those threats were conveyed by back channels and moved the other side towards an armistice. After that, the US had nuclear weapons in South Korea until 1991 when they were removed. The presence of the nukes was not a secret, however. I believe that their presence was even expressly confirmed during the Carter Administration. So today's news article does not contain any actual news.

Of course, we do get to the lefty point of the article finally when the correspondent states, "Korea specialists generally accept Pyongyang's stated rationale that it sought its own bomb for defensive reasons - as a response to the U.S. deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea."

Isn't it great how the unnamed specialists blame the US for the North Koreans developing nuclear weapons. It would not be difficult for North Koea to have peace with the South and with the USA. All that would be required would be a serious request to move to a peaceful relationship. None of the root causes of the Korean War are really still around. The state of war only remains as a result of truly demented people leading the NK's. So the North Koreans had a choice between asking for peace or develping nuclear weapons. The experts are all sure that the NK's chose the nukes because for a period that began 60 years ago and ended 20 years ago, the USA had nukes in South Korea and contemplated using them against any attack from the North. Isn't it convenient that the North Koreans waited another two decades before actually developing these bombs.

The AP had better get new experts. Perhaps it would be good if that tried to find some that had actual expertise.