Even if the satellites were "Homefront" EMP generators, NK couldn't hold a bake sale, much less a portion of the U.S., or any other country for that matter. They were chosen to be the baddies because it's verboten to use China as the villain anymore, since they fund a lot of entertainment projects and are a huge overseas market.

Still, I'm wondering how much of this is Kim Jong-un trying to keep everyone's attention when ISIS is stealing the spotlight. It'd be hysterical if they could somehow be turned on each other like candidates for Homecoming royalty.

Just for perspective: I think the plot of "Homefront" is about the silliest I've seen in video games in a long time, and that's counting in all the parts of "Rhythm Tengoku".

It is a pity that our friends lie in between. If no land divided Raqqa and North Korea, then they could fight while we watched and waited.

Rockets are dual-use, true, but launching satellites is a legitimate peacetime national interest aka a huge propaganda tool for Fatty&co.

I'm all for containment and diplomatic pressure, I'm just saying "pick your fights wisely" - the nuke tests seem far better focus for sanction than satellites.

I'll worry about states trying to develop nuclear weapons after the only one that's ever used them gets rid of theirs.

Uh, yeah, that would indeed be worrisome. I'm no fan of the military industrial complex or lingering cold war politics, but the whole 'mutually assured destruction' thing keeping nuclear powers in check, the US included, has staved off another world war thus far. If the US were to suddenly announce a complete disarmament, pissant little dictatorships like North Korea would be more inclined to actually use nukes rather than just use them to wag their tiny flaccid cocks to the world.

If anything, pissant little dictatorships like North Korea developing nukes is more worrisome in regards to them selling them on the black market. As said, this is all just a pissing contest for North Korea, to show the world that they too have their big-boy pants. Once that is done, those nukes represent a hot commodity that can be sold to keep Baby Huey engorged with decadent Western luxuries while his people starve.

The American military industrial complex does not need nuclear weapons to fend off North Korea. They could turn it into a burning wasteland quite effectively with just conventional weapons.

North Korea, however, has an entirely legitimate peaceful need for them. As you point out, and as evidenced by Bush's "Axis of Evil," where he threatened three sovereign states with war yet only followed through with the one known not to have weapons of mass destruction.

I dunno, I was a pretty hard critic of Bush's policies, and still am, but this is bloody North Korea we're talking about here. You make it sound as though the US were a schoolyard bully or something, and North Korea is just the skinny weird kid who came to school with his mom's pepper spray to defend himself. It's more like North Korea is the skinny weird kid who tortures cats and comes to school with knives from the cutlery drawer to feel tough, and the US is the popular yet full of himself kid who thinks that's fucked up.

Of course, it's not just North Korea that's the problem. World peace has yet to be achieved, and as troubling as it is every nation has to be prepared for the possibility that shit will go down and they will need to defend themselves and their allies. The US may be a swaggering douchebag, but compared to other empires, past and present, we're more or less on the up and up.

It's why nuclear disarmament has to be an all or nothing thing. The US alone disarming won't lead to world peace, if anything it'll further destabilize it.

"The US may be a swaggering douchebag, but compared to other empires, past and present, we're more or less on the up and up."

This reminded me of a cartoon I saw in, I want to say the New Yorker, where two Aztecs are watching a human sacrifice while one tells the other, "It may not be perfect, but this is still the best system there is." At one time, in one part of the world, that was actually true. And while it's hubristic to say that Western civilization will always be the best thing going, it's also delusional to deny that currently, it is. Warts and all.

I'm all for universal nuclear disarmament, sure- starting with the major powers.
But sorry, the statement that NK "has an entirely legitimate peaceful need for them" is so absurdly ridiculous that it could have come from baby Kim himself.