Hopefully Something We Can All Agree On

This dog is cute.

With Friends Like This..............

In a recent interview with POLITICO, former Vice President Dick Cheney warned about what he said he feared was Obama’s naïve approach to the threat of terrorism and the harsh steps on interrogation, surveillance and detainment needed to stop it. Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” Cheney said. He added: “The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I’m not at all sure that that’s what the Obama administration believes.”

Nuke the North.........NOT

Joseph Cirincione writing at CNN said the missile test should “condemned,” but that it is “not a serious threat to the United States, nor does it justify a crash program to deploy an expensive, unproven anti-missile system.”
This small, impoverished nation would need to make three key additional breakthroughs to turn this launch vehicle into a real nuclear-armed missile capable of reaching the continental United States.
First, North Korea has to develop a bigger, longer-range missile. MIT scientist Ted Postol calculates that the failed satellite appeared to weigh 150 to 200 kilograms (330 to 440 pounds) and was intended for a low-Earth orbit about 550 kilometers (340 miles) high. It is puny by world standards. . . .
Size matters. A typical first-generation nuclear warhead weighs about 1,000 kilograms. To threaten California or New York, North Korea needs a much bigger missile that can carry more weight over a longer distance. . . .
Second, North Korea would have to miniaturize its warhead. The primitive nuclear device tested by North Korea in 2006 is estimated to weigh more than 1,500 kilograms (3,307 pounds). That means North Korea’s current nuclear weapons are simply too heavy to be launched by a vehicle similar to the one tested Sunday. . . .
Third, North Korea would have to develop a re-entry vehicle for its warheads. A warhead returning through the atmosphere to its target must survive extreme conditions. Developing the technology required for this survivability is no small task. It is one thing to test a nuclear weapon in carefully controlled conditions. It is another to build one that can survive the fierce vibrations, G-forces and high temperatures of launch and re-entry into the atmosphere.