A "Secret" War Against North Korea

The TimesOnline has an article with the headline, "West mounts 'secret war' to keep nuclear North Korea in check." Now, there are some actions being taken by a number of countries to make sure that North Korea doesn't engage in the proliferation and/or distribution of weapons of mass destruction but characterizing these actions as a "secret" war is absurd.

A PROGRAMME of covert action against nuclear and missile traffic to North Korea and Iran is to be intensified after last week’s missile tests by the North Korean regime.
Intelligence agencies, navies and air forces from at least 13 nations are quietly co-operating in a “secret war” against Pyongyang and Tehran.



It has so far involved interceptions of North Korean ships at sea, US agents prowling the waterfronts in Taiwan, multinational naval and air surveillance missions out of Singapore, investigators poring over the books of dubious banks in the former Portuguese colony of Macau and a fleet of planes and ships eavesdropping on the “hermit kingdom” in the waters north of Japan.

Few details filter out from western officials about the programme, which has operated since 2003, or about the American financial sanctions that accompany it.

But together they have tightened a noose around Kim Jong-il’s bankrupt, hungry nation.

“Diplomacy alone has not worked, military action is not on the table and so you’ll see a persistent increase in this kind of pressure,” said a senior western official.

This makes it sound like Darth Halliburton fired up the black helicopter and airlifted armies of commandos over in to the region to do battle with Dr. Evil...

In a telling example of the programme’s success, two Bush administration officials indicated last year that it had blocked North Korea from obtaining equipment used to make missile propellant.

The Americans also persuaded China to stop the sale of chemicals for North Korea’s nuclear weapons scientists. And a shipload of “precursor chemicals” for weapons was seized in Taiwan before it could reach a North Korean port.

According to John Bolton, the US ambassador to the United Nations and the man who originally devised the programme, it has made a serious dent in North Korea’s revenues from ballistic missile sales.

STOP! Okay, now we're getting to the dark archetect of the "secret" war... Note to George RINOvich, you might want to make sure that you have some tissues in case you get a case of the vapors...

But the success of Bolton’s brainchild, the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), whose stated aim is to stop the traffic in weapons of mass destruction, might also push North Korea into extreme reactions.

Britain is a core member of the initiative, which was announced by President George W Bush in Krakow, Poland, on May 31, 2003. British officials have since joined meetings of “operational experts” in Australia, Europe and the US, while the Royal Navy has contributed ships to PSI exercises. The participants include Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Italy, Spain and Singapore, among others.

There has been almost no public debate in the countries committed to military involvement. A report for the US Congress said it had “no international secretariat, no offices in federal agencies established to support it, no database or reports of successes and failures and no established funding”.

Remember, folks, this is a "secret" war...announced by the President of the United States while visiting a foreign country...with the participation of at least eight nations.

To Bolton and senior British officials, those vague qualities make it politically attractive.

Huh? What the ^%$$??? Politically attractive? You gotta be kidding me...

Plenty more where all that nonsense came from...be sure to check out the whole article and note that not the whole thing is as much rubbish as the first page...