Why is the U.S. government “downplaying” the North Korean missile threat?
The Japanese believe that North Korea plans to fire a missile at Hawaii on July 4th. They probably did have plans to do this, but according to the U.S. Intelligence Committee, there is no threat of such missile attacks. This is probable for several reasons.
- The U.S. is aware of a possible attack
- N. Korea knows that the U.S. is aware, as this intelligence has been published to theĀ internet [1]
- The U.S. is preparing to defend potential attacks [3]
- This is also available on the internet [1]
So, what would be the advantage of an attack? Should N. Korea try to clear the Pacific of Hawaii, they’d be badly embarassed by our missile defense systems. N. Korea knows this, so an attack is unlikely.
However, this is not the only extent of the Korean missile threat. The North Korean government announced that it would be testing more missiles near the Sea of Japan between June 24th and July 9th [1]. What is also interesting about this is that N. Korea announced today that it plans to eliminate the United States [2].
Another interesting fact about the situation in Korea is that the U.N. Security Counsel has asked to search North Korean ships and that North Korea responded by saying that it would consider such an inspection to be an act of war [2].
War seems eminant, but the United States is prepared to repel any potential attack. All that remains is for the publicĀ to remain calm, and it seems that the best way to do this is to downplay it.
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/06/24/us.north.korea/index.html [2] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,528880,00.html [3] http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/06/19/us.nkorea/index.html