Exaggerating the CNN story, the Newsweek/Daily Beast editors gave [5]it[5] this scary headline -- "North Korea Prepares Strike on U.S.' -- that had no meaningful basis in reality. Amplifying the fear the next day, NBC News [6]ran[6] a disappointingly low-key story under the ramped-up headline:
North Korea puts
rockets on standby as
US official warns
regime is no 'paper tiger'
Peter Hart of FAIR [7]has[7] explored the one-sidedness of American media coverage and its reality-distorting effect in detail.
One reason the North Koreans moved their missile was in response to the March 28 U.S. fly-bys along the South Korean border with B-2 bombers quite capable of carrying enough nuclear weapons to obliterate North Korea and set off nuclear winter around the world. Just because these fly-bys with B-2s, B-52s and other potentially nuclear-armed aircraft were part of military exercises the U.S. and South Koreans put on every year (sometimes using a pretend scenario of invading the North), the U.S. maintains the North shouldn't think of them as in the least provocative. The B-2s flew from a base in Missouri.
Another North Korean reason for moving their missile might have been the American plans to conduct missile defense drills with Japan and South Korea on an on-going basis. This plan follows the "signal" sent earlier in the winter when the U.S. announced plans to increase its anti-missile missile deployment in Alaska and along the Pacific west coast.
China Votes for
Sanctions, but Remains Wild Card
On March 7, the United Nations Security Council unanimously (15-0) approved a resolution brokered by the U.S. and Chine, imposing new economic sanctions on North Korea as punishment for its announcement on February 12, confirming [8]its[8] third nuclear weapons test. While many nations detected seismic activity that they interpreted to be an underground nuclear explosion, and while the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty monitors said the tremor had "clear explosionlike characteristics," there was no detection of radiation sufficient to confirm that the explosion was nuclear.
North Korea's admission that it had used a "miniaturized nuclear device with greater explosive force than previously" was seen by some as defiance of Chinese advice against such a test. The Chinese had promised that North Korea would "pay a heavy price" if it went ahead with the test. That price apparently includes China's cooperation with the U.S. on setting sanctions.
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