"Who really poses the greatest danger to world peace: Iraq, North Korea or the United States?" asked Time magazine in an online poll in early 2003, shortly before the US invasion of Iraq. The final results were: North Korea 6.7%, Iraq 6.3%, the United States 86.9%; 706,842 total votes cast.[1]

Imagine that following North Korea's recent underground nuclear test neither the United States nor any other government cried out that the sky was falling. No threat to world peace and security was declared by the White House or any other house. It was thus not the lead story on every radio and TV broadcast and newspaper page one. The UN Security Council did not unanimously condemn it. Nor did NATO. "What should we do about him?" was not America Online's plaintive all-day headline alongside a photo of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

Who would have known about the explosion, even if it wasn't baby-sized? Who would have cared? But because all this fear mongering did in fact take place, wwwDOTvoteDOTcom was able to pose the question -- "North Korea's Nuclear Threat: Is It Time For An International Economic Blockade To Make Them Stop?" -- and hence compile a 93% "yes" vote. It doesn't actually take too much to win hearts and mindless. Media pundit Ben Bagdikian once wrote: "While it is impossible for the media to tell the population what to think, they do tell the public what to think about."

So sometime in the future, the world might, or might not, have nine states possessing nuclear weapons instead of eight. So what?

Do you know of all the scary warnings the United States issued about a nuclear-armed Soviet Union? A nuclear-armed China? And the non-warnings about a nuclear-armed Israel? There were no scary warnings or threats against ally Pakistan for the nuclear-development aid it gave to North Korea a few years ago, and Washington has been busy this year enhancing the nuclear arsenal of India, events which the world has paid little attention to, because the United States did not mount a campaign to tell the world to worry.

There's still only one country that's used nuclear weapons on other people, but we're not given any warnings about them.
...
Did I miss something or is there an international law prohibiting only North Korea from testing nuclear weapons? And just what is the danger? North Korea, even if it had nuclear weapons and delivery systems, and there's no evidence that it does, is of course no threat to attack anyone with them. Like Iraq under Saddam Hussein, North Korea is not suicidal.

Who will fight all these wars? Your kids? Mine?

Of course. They're demonized, isolated and their people are starving. That's why they built and tested it. Would you?

Got a link where we are enhancing the Indians nuke arsenal?

See, that's why we are engaged in multi-lateral diplomacy there - China is the only player with anything resembling influence over NK.  The Left has been all hot about "direct talks", not noticing that the country that supplies nearly all the food and oil to NK (China) is the only one that can actuall exert influence short of war.  Seems to be working.

Step two. Press button.

Step three. Kiss Seoul goodbye.

As bush/cheny/rumsfeld have all admitted lately, we "cannot abandon those oil fields and the income from them to terrorists", it is clear that any country with oil, but absent nuclear weapons, will most likely be attacked by America so that no oil will go to terrorists, only to American refineries.

Nice job, mr. boosh. You have started a proliferation race that could indeed bring about the end of the world.

And as for attacking North Korea, like che's lounge accurately states, Seoul can be completely wiped out by conventional artillery that is so disbursed, so numerous, and so well hidden and/or armor-hardened that nothing short of completely wiping out the entire peninsula could stop a retaliation for an attack that would devastate S. Korea, but also the 25,000 American troops there.

bush will be the first president to lose two wars simultaneously, Afghanistan where he cut and ran, and Iraq, which has been a failed mission from the start, but he can make it three losses by attacking Iran or N. Korea.