With the sublety and finesse of a jackhammer at a bake-off, our Naval forces are conducting target practice "somewhere in the Pacific." Which has North Korea barking yet again.
On one hand "resultant fury", even if it has nothing to do with the exercise, is still a poor choice of nomenclature and can be interpreted by some(read: North Korea) as a prod to NK's testicles. Given the state of affairs between North Korea and, well, everyone right now, this kind of thing isn't going to make anything better for anyone, especially South Korea(who's actually going to move their capital further away from the DMZ just because NK is so unstable at times).
On the other hand, "somewhere in the Pacific" is not really an exact location. Anyone checked out the Pacific lately? it's pretty large, considering the items one would try to locate in this instance. There's nothing in the article that mentions a location in the pacific where the operation is taking place. It could be a couple of miles off of Oahu, in the Yellow sea, or off the coast of Cali. We can justify it by saying that any operation in the pacific is going to rile-up the N. Koreans if we didn't disclose the location along with the press release(which we're not. pshah). They should just lighten up a little and not give in to the spook games the US may or may not be playing.
How many operations do we make public like this anyway?
Ultimately, however, North Korea should just lighten the f*** up, mentally and politically. 97 times out of 100, it's just an exercise with a little political payload. I mean, it's not like the US is going to attack without provocation, right?
Posted by Jeffrey at November 18, 2004 11:57 AM