We Want The North Koreans To Know We're Building A Giant Slingshot In Alaska

Well, you can't really blame the North Koreans for threatening to launch a long range missile. After all, look at all the attention Iran gets and it just has posters of atomic bombs on the wall in the Ahmadinejad's office. And what about India? Are they a threat to world peace? Anybody think their regime needs to be toppled? Axis of Evil material? Not even close, and yet they get this sweetheart deal from the president. Yeah, we can see why old Kim is a little frosted.

So no one is surprised when the Kimster pulls a saber or two out of the closet, goes down to the beach and rattles it in the general direction of America. What worries us is what we're doing to return the chest puffery.

International tensions over the testing of a long-range North Korean missile continued to escalate today with the Bush administration making plans to shoot it down. The US's recently installed ground based interceptor missile defense system has been activated and may be called into use if the communist regime defies warnings over firing the Taepondong rocket.

Uh, guys. You sure that's the best way to go? Are the North Koreans likely to be put off their missile test knowing that we might shoot it down with a system that...well...to be generous, isn't exactly operating at peak efficiency? Seven failures out of 12 attempts isn't exactly the promise of certain doom we might like it to be. Just saying.

Oh, and let's not forget the test where "the booster failed to leave the ground." In other words, we couldn't get the engine started. Then there was the time "the booster failed to leave the ground due to a fault in the arms which hold the missile in the silo." In other words, we got the engine started, but couldn't get it in drive.

Look, we've all been there. In college we had this old Ford that lost second gear. It also had a rust hole in the floorboard and you could see the road going underneath. We managed, but then we were just trying to get to class, not scare the North Koreans to the negotiating table.

All we're saying is you might want to reevaluate your options. It might be better to go with something more traditional, say, offering Kim season tickets to the Lakers, or a bit part in Spielberg's next film. See, we're just thinking about you. Let's say the North Koreans launch the missile and you go all Def Con one and everything. You rush into the silo, contact the president on the hotline, wait for him to finish watching the Flintstones, get the official okey dokey to launch, turn the key and get that rrrr rrrr rrrr that everyone knows means nothing on fire is leaving the island today.

Or worse, let's say the launch goes off but you miss and blow up Japan.

Not good.

Meanwhile the North Koreans launch a missile that manages to hit the Pacific ocean and they look like Jimmy Neutron, boy genius.

How about if we offered North Korea a total makeover. We promise to rebuild, spruce up, improve and generally put spit and polish to anything and everything they name. They'd have to go for that, right? Now, here's the beauty part, after they agree, we send over the same team we sent to Iraq to manage its reconstruction. Within a year or two, North Korea would be so screwed up we could take them over with a battalion of grandmothers.

Why, no, we've never considered a career in the foreign service, but thanks for asking.