Pentagon Laughs Off North Korean Missile Threat
Jun 24, 2009 27 Comments ›› Erik Wong
The isolated regime made the threat as a U.S. destroyer shadows a North Korean ship suspected of transporting illicit weapons to Myanmar in what could be the first test of U.N. sanctions passed to punish the nation for an underground nuclear test last month.
The Pentagon shrugged off a threat from North Korea Wednesday to wipe the United States off the map.
“I don’t even know how to respond to that. It’s silliness,” said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.”For what and with what?”
But even as the spokesman discounted the threat from the communist nation, which reportedly may fire a Taepodong-2 toward Hawaii in early July, he defended Defense Secretary Robert Gate’s decision to move the THAAD system to Hawaii along with the massive SBX radar system.
“I don’t think he would have deployed that THAAD if he didn’t think there was a reason to do so,” he said.
Tensions have been high since North Korea walked away from nuclear disarmament talks and warned it would fire a long-range missile.
U.S. officials have said it would take at least three to five years for North Korea to pose a real threat to the U.S. west coast.
But a A senior defense official told FOX News earlier Wednesday that the “Tapeodong 2 potentially has the range to reach Hawaii.” He said also he was “very confident” these deployed missile defenses have the capability to take out any missile the North may launch.
The isolated regime made the threat as a U.S. destroyer shadows a North Korean ship suspected of transporting illicit weapons to the military dictatorship in Myanmar in what could be the first test of U.N. sanctions passed to punish the nation for an underground nuclear test last month.
The Kang Nam left the North Korean port of Nampo a week ago with the USS John S. McCain close behind. As the Kang Nam moves South, the McCain has been replaced by the USS McCampbell, which took over monitoring on Tuesday.
The new U.N. Security Council resolution requires member states to seek permission to inspect suspicious cargo. North Korea has said it would consider interception a declaration of war and on Wednesday accused the U.S. of seeking to provoke another Korean War.
“If the U.S. imperialists start another war, the army and people of Korea will … wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all,” the official Korean Central News Agency said.
The warning came on the eve of the 59th anniversary of the start of the three-year Korean War, which ended in a truce in 1953, not a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula officially in a state of war.
The U.S. has 28,500 troops in South Korea to protect against an outbreak of hostilities.
