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North Korea 
Thu May 20, 2010 at 06:20:44 AM MST
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There is a real rogue nation in the world, with at least one nuclear weapon in its possession, but it is not Iran, it is North Korea. It is unclear if the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea was actually successful in their nuclear tests or if they had what is called a "fizzle problem" (which is where the bomb explodes but fails to achieve the prompt criticality that makes weapons of this type so devastating). In any case they have been acting as though they have a weapon which they could deploy against their nearest neighbors for more than a year.
This might be marginally tolerable if it did not seem that the North Korean government was not intent on stirring up further trouble. In March of this year a South Korean corvette, the Cheonan sunk in waters just outside the boundaries claimed by the North. The immediate suspicion that this ship was sunk by a North Korean torpedo have been confirmed.
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Fri Apr 23, 2010 at 06:45:59 AM MST
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Attacking an enemy target is a rather slow thing, in all but one type of weapon. When we thought we knew where Osama Bin Laden was in 1998 we launched a cruise missile strike from the closet available ship. A missile frigate with the USS Abraham Lincoln Battle Group was 1100 miles from the target, which meant it took the Tomahawk missiles two hours to arrive. By that time Bin Laden was long gone.
While we have decreased the time that we can attack over a battlefield with the use of UAV drone like the Reaper, they are not really useful for the challenge of trying to prevent the launch of a nuclear missile or to attack targets in places where we do not control the air space. This of course leaves aside all the of ethical arguments about the use of this type of weapon, but that is another post.
The only weapon that we type we have that can be launched anywhere in the world on short notice is one that we dare not use, namely our ICBM's. Even if we took the time to load them with conventional warheads, no power could take the chance that we were not kicking off a pre-emptive nuclear strike (thanks to the Neo-Cons for the Bush doctrine which made the world even less safe!).
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