On 12/21/2014 08:34 AM, trader_4 wrote:


It's not very much of an answer. Who exactly is going to build a "Disney Land"?
Certainly not Disney. There is very little foreign investment in NK, except for
China. It's not just the US that has issues and is ****ed off at them. Plus
there are currently UN sanctions in place, that would prohibit US investment
there. So, if you ever want to get to that point, then you'd have to
A - restore normal diplomatic relations
B - end the sanctions
C - Make nice to Kim Jung Un who just this week inflicted $100mil in
terrorism against Sony, threatened the USA with another 911, etc

You'd do that, while they are actively building nuclear weapons, thumbing
their nose at the UN, and directly threatening the USA as well as SK,
Japan, sinking SK ships, firing on them, etc?

X

Like I said, I don't have the answer to North Korea and since 1953 no
one else has either. I am quite sure the US has enough missiles
programmed to get there asap should they actually try anything...and
other than containing them there is not much more we can do.




To me, Saudi Arabia and Iran are both our enemies.

I just give a little more credit to Iran because they are not smiling to
our face.

What the US needs to do is abandon /all/ oil imports from the mid-East.


Which isn't consistent with your stated policy of leaving them alone or
wiping them off the map. And what we import or don't import from there
isn't going to hurt them. Oil is fungible, there is a world market and it
will be sold anyway. I agree there are economic reasons and national
security reasons why the USA would be better off importing less oil. But
to think we can then ignore the middle east, let anyone take over the oil
there, is naive. How about ISIS takes over the oil?



I fully realize the idea of us going in there and just plain blowing up
the entire mid-East is an insane idea and I was speaking figuratively if
I implied I really meant to do that...but no matter what, we need to get
our oil interests /out/ of the mid-East.

If the US were in no way dependent on them for oil it would cloud our
thinking less.

As far as ISIS goes. since no one else is going to do it, the good old
US will have to...and of course get criticized by everyone else on Earth
for doing so



There is enough right here in the US to supply our needs if we
supplement our power requirements with solar.


Sure, solar has been a big success so far..... It's the highest cost
electricity there is, by far. The only reason it's gotten anywhere is
because the govt is heavily subsidizing it, to hide the true cost.
Plus, we aren't burning oil to generate electricity,
with rare exceptions, anyway.




100 square miles of panels in a place like Arizona is all it would take.


This analysis says you're off by a factor of 100, which sounds about right.
Ain't no way you're going to provide the power for the USA with something
only 100 square miles. I'd be happy to see your math/reference.

http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/2...n-solar-power/


The article you linked to confirmed my figures so I don't see why your
are arguing .

Of course when I said "going solar" that does not mean we need to go
100% solar. There is plenty of oil right here and in Canada. I /think/
we get more oil from Canada than we get from the mid-East anyway






Heck I was stationed on Germany 25 years after WW-II ended.

Had we treated Afghanistan and Iraq the way we handled Germany and
Japan, we would not be seeing the **** that we see today.


OK, you don't think decimating the two countries is a good idea?


If not, then we need to stay the **** out.


So, following 911 you would have stayed out of Afghanistan? Or you
would have bombed all the civilian, women and children, when they had
no military that was capable of threatening the USA? The latter would
have been a war crime, rightly condemned by the whole world.



After 911 I would have done sufficient research to find out /exactly/
where the threat came from and completely wiped them out.

Since the terrorists apparently came from Afghanistan then that would
have been the place to go. Although the US did put some effort into
going after terrorists there, the majority of the effort was put into Iraq.


A considerably bigger problem than Iraq (Iraq was not a threat to the
US) is the issue of Saudi Arabia which you say is our good friend. The
Saudis were where the terrorists came from and the US in one way or
another needed to (and still needs to ) address that issue.


Bottom line:

Had Bush gone to the source of the problem we'd not be in the mess we
are in today,

Of course we'd just be in some kind of other mess...that's the way the
world is.