Dirty nukes are much more plausible since nuclear material could be brought in anytime but there is a huge difference between dirty bombs and a bomb capable of nuclear fission. The theory that there are working nuclear bombs from the old Soviet era in the hands of terrorists is now about dead in my mind. The real future threat from terrorists is that they get their hands on weapon grade material and build their own crude nuclear bombs or they get live bombs from Iran, Pakistan, and N. Korea.

I read the link on the EMP threat that you provided but I do not not totally agree with what he said. He thinks the only defense against an EMP is an antimissile defense system. I do not think that anything we have now or anything that we will have in the near future could would prevent a launch into the atmosphere off of our coast. Any nation attempting to use a IBM from their own nation would just be committing national suicide so I don’t see that possibility happening except in an all out nuclear war.

The only real defense is to harden critical electronic and electrical infrastructure. It is not that hard to do since they only have to be protected from wave pulses. If they started building shielding against a pulse into all new critical electrical generating equipment and electronics it would not add much to the cost and in a decade the danger of a national catastrophe from an EMP would be gone. Spending a few billion in prevention is a billion times better than reaping the consequences of an EMP with the unhardened infrastructure that we have now.

In the end we will reap the folly of decades of appeasement of the mad cult running N. Korea. The really insane thing is treating these insane people like they were sane. Nobody knows what a brainwashed cult nation will do. They at any time might just decide to drink their nuclear Kool-Aid. Even if they do not launch out, at some point Japan is going to feel threatened by N. Korea. Japan can become a major nuclear power in just a few years. If the U.S. has to withdraw from most of the world for some reason a nuclear Japan is a certainty.

Brian T. Kennedy from the Claremont Institute (see http://www.missilethreat.com) has written an article on the Wall Street Journal on the EMP threat. You can read it http://tinyurl.com/EMP-threat. I’m glad there are some people out there who are doing all they can to inform the public on this. If the government won’t listen then maybe the people will. Of course there are always people downplaying serious threats, some even denying there is an Islamic threat at all and claiming the islamic Jihad is simply a response to “Western imperialism.” The sad thing is that this communist propaganda is accepted by many and taught in the public schools and universities by far leftist academics and teachers who themselves are the product of brainwashing and self-hatred. On a sidenote, it is encouraging that a leading and reputed newspaper like the Wall Street Journal is willing to publish this and that it is backing Wilder’s right to his views on the Islamic threat.

Having said that, North Korea is going to test their Taepodong II missile again since the 2004 attempt went totally wrong. It’s likely they will succeed this time. The missile is believed to be able to reach as far as Alaska. The second Bush administration’s policies toward North Korea have failed miserably. At first the country claimed to have given up on their nuclear program. They were taken off the black list and some time later North Korea officially resumed its nuclear program. Clinton backs Japan on the abduction issue and wants a denuclearized North Korea but at the same time they still want to listen to the North Korean madmen and engage in diplomacy with these people. It should be clear by now that the North Korean government isn’t intimidated by any of this and will simply go on what they’re doing for as long as there are Islamic and communist terrorist organizations or rogue states out there who are willing to buy their nuclear and other military technology. Syria and Iran are among them. So it looks to me like this is going nowhere. These people are looking at North Korea as an isolated problem while it really is just part of a broader problem. Also see http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/KB13Dg01.html for more on this.