All Kim Jong Il wants to do is talk, so he'd have you believe. Why, oh why, won't the US talk with him one-on-one? He's so ronery.
This, historically, is his one and only stall tactic that he's used successfully in the past to confuse his neighbors and frustrate us into giving him concessions. We pat him on the head like a child that's acting out and subsequently lose respect at home and abroad.
Jack has a commenter who mentioned an op ed piece in today's Washington Post by Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, assistant secdef and secdef under Clinton, respectively, which advocates preemptive destruction of the Taepodong II missile. "We should not conceal our determination to strike the Taepodong if North Korea refuses to drain the fuel out and take it back to the warehouse."
They also suggest the reactions of the other members of the 6 stakeholder countries and a potential retaliation scenario.
The United States should accordingly make clear to the North that the South will play no role in the attack, which can be carried out entirely with U.S. forces and without use of South Korean territory.
The United States should accordingly make clear to the North that the South will play no role in the attack, which can be carried out entirely with U.S. forces and without use of South Korean territory. South Korea has worked hard to counter North Korea's 50-year menacing of its own country, through both military defense and negotiations, and the United States has stood with the South throughout. South Koreans should understand that U.S. territory is now also being threatened, and we must respond. Japan is likely to welcome the action but will also not lend open support or assistance. China and Russia will be shocked that North Korea's recklessness and the failure of the six-party talks have brought things to such a pass, but they will not defend North Korea.
The United States should emphasize that the strike, if mounted, would not be an attack on the entire country, or even its military, but only on the missile that North Korea pledged not to launch -- one designed to carry nuclear weapons. We should sharply warn North Korea against further escalation.
On a retaliation scenario of invading South Korea:
An invasion of South Korea would bring about the certain end of Kim Jong Il's regime within a few bloody weeks of war, as surely he knows. Though war is unlikely, it would be prudent for the United States to enhance deterrence by introducing U.S. air and naval forces into the region at the same time it made its threat to strike the Taepodong. If North Korea opted for such a suicidal course, these extra forces would make its defeat swifter and less costly in lives -- American, South Korean and North Korean.
I agree with the sentiment that we absolutely must insist on the DPRK ratcheting down their sabre rattling and that we must present a forceful front.
These two men are smarter than I am, without a doubt, and absolutely have access to more intel than I do, but I can't help but respectfully disagree with their characterization of the reactions of our allies / other members of the 6 party talks as well as the invasion scenario. The possibility of invading N.Korea is ridiculous, honestly.
If the Iraq war proves anything, it's that we can have a successful military engagement and be completely hamstrung by our "allies" and popular opinion. And that's not even getting into actual forward-thinking rationale. I'm not suggesting that there'll be a guerilla resistance by short, malnutritioned pompadour wielding men, but that, except for our active military, our resolve is so shaken that any post-missile destruction military action's outcome is literally an unknown. No longer does a victory mean we win.
Further, this last iteration of relying and pressuring our "allies" such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to do anything but help superficially is completely disheartening. South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia will not sit idly by, shocked at DPRK's recklessness, if we destroy DPRK's missile capacity. They'll be shocked at our recklessness and they'll complain in all the ways they can: to the UN, to each other, to Iran, to our press. The collateral damage won't be the military base on which the missile resides, but America, itself. This is consistent with the Einhorn quote in Jack's post:
Robert Einhorn, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said a U.S. shootdown of a North Korean missile on a test flight or a space launch would draw "very strong international reaction" against the United States. [msnbc]
If Kim Jong Il can just feint with a nuclear delivery system instead of picking up the phone every time he wants to talk, and we do nothing about it while also having our machismo pushed into a corner, we're setting a bad precedent: If you have nuclear weapon capability, you are actually at the big boy's table, even if you're not. This particular threat by DPRK is forcing proving the efficacy of the nuclear card. What'll we do if Iran claims they can enrich their own uranium and sees no need for the IAEA's additional protocols?
Kim Jong Il and the DPRK leaders need to go. They've worn out all their diplomatic welcomes. I believe we have an opportunity in this DPRK act of aggression, even though we've got very little political clout to enact it - make South Korea, Japan and China request US military action, as the emir of Kuwait did, during the first Gulf War. This won't avoid retaliation or ensure any sort of regime change, but it will place the ultimate responsibility upon the countries of the region rather than the moral burden of preemption on us. We can't just serve notice and fire off a cruise missile without knowing that Kim Jong Il's neighbors will accept the collect call.
South Korean anthropologists who measured North Korean refugees here in Yanji, a city 15 miles from the North Korean border, found that most of the teenage boys stood less than 5 feet tall and weighed less than 100 pounds. In contrast, the average 17-year-old South Korean boy is 5-feet-8, slightly shorter than an American boy of the same age.
The height disparities are stunning because Koreans were more or less the same size — if anything, people in the North were slightly taller — until the abrupt partitioning of the country after World War II.
"I just can't respect anybody that would really let his people starve and shrink in size as a result of malnutrition," President Bush told White House reporters in October [2003].
Link to the Taepodong Musudan-ri (Taep’o-dong-2, Musudan-ni) missile launch site in DPRK w/ Google Earth: 
Bodies of the missing US soliders were found here, approximately 20 miles south east of Yusufiyah, reportedly in a river/canal in the village of Jufra as Sahkr, Iraq.
Link to the places w/ Google Earth:
"We give the good news to the Islamic nation that we have carried God's verdict by slaughtering the two captured crusaders... With God Almighty's blessing, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer carried out the verdict of the Islamic court"
With this message posted on a jihadi website and reports from the press that two beheaded bodies of servicemen were found, it looks like Abu al-Masri's starting off his succession of Al Qaeda in Iraq with a bang. Recall that it was Zaraqwi who brought his group Tawhid wal Jihad to the fore by using the beheading of Nick Berg (04/2004) and Eugene Armstrong (10/2004), a contractor, to great media success. It's arguably this brutal strategy that made Al Qaeda recognize Zarqawi as a force to be reckoned with in Iraq and lead to his franchising the Al Qaeda name. Also, recall, that Zarqawi backed off this tactic when beheading was shown to be backfiring among his target recruiting audience. Yes, too brutal.
Now, al Masri appears to be doing the same, and that statement implies personally. Rehashing this old tactic may be a ploy to solidify his position as top dog in the insurgent pantheon since things were shaken up due to Zarqawi's death, but it also signifies that he's desperate for attention and position. Since the established public perception of beheadings turns the populace away from the insurgency, we're left with these possibilities: Desperate attempts for power or legitimacy.
What the American people do with this event will really be determined how the press and the individuals in Congress feel about the political opportunities that can be leveraged. It's a sad even that our boys are captured and killed, but it's a clawing reaction to try to hold on to the Iraqi public's fear in the face of an ever solidifying Iraqi government.
I compiled some images snapped from NASA's WorldWind app to show the recent abductions by the Mujahedeen Shura Council insurgent cartel in Iraq. The Green Zone's an approximate outline.
Link to the places w/ Google Earth:
On Friday, 06/17/2006, two American soldiers were captured and one killed during an attack on a checkpoint in Yusufiyah, Iraq. (Pte. 1st Class Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, TX and Pte. 1st Class Thomas Tucker, 25, of Madras, OR) The group who claimed responsibility for the abductions -Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella group of Al Qaeda related insurgent groups – is the same one that claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of four Russian diplomats and killing one in Baghdad’s Mansour district, 06/03/2006. (The four missing are Fyodor Zaytsev, Rinat Aglyulin, Anatoly Smirnov and Oleg Fedosseyev; Vitaly Titov died) They hadn't made any demands, but as of today, they’ve given Moscow 48 hours to pull out of Chechnya and free Chechen prisoners.
Iraqi government Sunnis poised to take on insurgents
Coordinated raids in the days after Zarqawi’s death are looking more and more to have been a politicized effort – insurgents and their protectors who were close, but not aligned, with the Sunnis in the Iraqi government were ratted out and crushed, forcing a polarization of the insurgent and insurgent supporter community. The blowback will cause the insurgents to do more and dramatic attempts to assert relevance, such as these high profile abductions and further destruction. As long as the Sunni element in the Iraqi government keeps the pressure on, the insurgency could very well be on its last gasps.
Also, today, 500 detainees were released from U.S.-run detention centres in Iraq, the Justice Ministry said, part of Prime Minister al-Maliki’s plan to release 2,500 prisoners to promote national reconciliation. This will probably have a positive effect of widening the gap, mainstreaming Sunnis toward the government's cause and isolating the insurgency. Our American military probably doesn't think releasing prisoners's a good idea, especially since our left/press will probably find some way to make it into the cause celeb - return our troops!
I’ve some pictures of Yusufiyah and the Mansour district as well as some more info about the Mujahedeen Shura Council, which I’ll put up later.
Stratfor has an analysis (Iraq: Next Moves for the Shia) that suggests coordination between Iraq's Sunni politicians (usually the moderates) and the Sunni hardliners (who provide a human buffer zone between insurgents, such as Zarqawi, and the government / Americans). That indicates that the Sunnis, overall, are tired of fighting the Iraqi government and can see that enraging the Shia will not get what they want - protected status or the chance for more power.
Previously, I would not have thought that the hardline Sunnis were getting noticibly tired of fighting the Iraqi government, but backing actions that leverages the Americans against the Shia is an excellent wedge issue and a very savvy political move. The Sunnis, overall, are more aware of politics and what political manoevers can achieve than the Shia, what with having been in power throughout Saddam's era. Further, the curious 17 raids conducted immediately after Zarqawi's death, suggest little time for actual analysis of gathered intel, and the subsequent almost 470 raids in the last few days shout out that there's been a coordinated Sunni effort to force the spotlight onto ruling ability of the Shia.
The Stratfor analyses of the intra-Shia schisms and the tensions are on target - the unknown and uncontrolled influence of Iran's definitely more to the fore with the head of the Sunni insurgent snake gone.
Whether this is a calculated move or not between the two halves of the Sunnis to force the spotlight on the Shia is almost academic - it's now in the Shia court to get themselves in order. And it's about time.
Iraq's Insurgency After Zarqawi - Council on Foreign Relations -
Council on Foreign Relations: World - Jun 9, 2006 -
A decent article about the remainder of the Iraqi insurgents (the International Crisis Group's report, "In their own words" (Feb 2006), is more in depth, but less immediately digestable due to the details about each of the many insurgent groups) that concludes that the Iraqi Sunni insurgents won't be satisfied until perceived humiliations (by Americans, of the loss of their control/country, etc) have been addressed. I concur.
Khalayleh's influence was and legacy is to show that an independent cell-structure could carry out objectives that were tangentially related to Al Qaeda and be successful and (grudgingly) accepted by Al Qaeda. Madrid, London, and Tornoto all owe their origins and inspiration from the independency of Zarqawi. His priority was sewing dissent by attack Shia and destabilizing the region (for him, Iraq and Jordan were more important than America, Saudi, or Europe or the goal of the Caliphate), unlike "orthodox" Al Qaeda ideology.
For Iraq, Zaraqwi's death means a cooling of Al Qaeda influence and a chance to heal the Shia-Sunni rift. The foreign-born jihadists in Iraq will experience a marked decline (more than they were already experiencing) now that Zarqawi isn't available to continue the PR and impose his ideological and tactical differences on Iraq. It won't matter if it's Abu Ayyub al Masri (an Egyptian that Zarqawi picked to be his successor) or Abu Abdel Rahaman al-Iraqi (a Baghdad native previously from a different insurgent group who is AQI's 2nd in command) who takes over Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Iraqi government's continued stability should now be getting closer to being enough to contain their insurgency.
As mentioned above, the broad view of the Iraqi insurgent composition doesn't help with minor course changes, but gives a general handle on what the insurgents are fighting for (and against). The article references Ahmed Hashim's Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq which I'm currently reading and hopefully I'll make commentary or at least a summary.
For the rest of the world, though, it's Zarqawi's life that'll give hope for the broader, violent Salafist movement - whether in line with Al Qaeda's goals or not. I expect more "copy-cat school shootings" - half-baked, but baking, nonetheless - like London and Toronto to be the commemerative reactions: DIY "Al Qaeda," and if you're good enough, you can use the brand name. Further, because of this, the image of Islam will continue to be denigrated by western governments and populaces, reinforcing an anti-muslim view that perpetuates both the War on Terror and the rationales for resistance.