Love the phrasing of the Q...we'll have to wait and see as Obama seems to definitely say one thing and do another...so your guess is as good as mine.

.......You are aware that there are black people that aren't, and don't want to be gangsters right?

This is minor to get "gangsta" over. Korea's actions have a reason and we being on the outside looking in this would look pretty bad. I am surrounded by army and military men and women trained to kill daily; if this was going as bad as the press wants you to think it wouldn't be exposed. Yet, know that this is being dealt with. If I were president I would suggest backing off adding a simple statement like: "Or we can go with plan B...My parents taught me always hit back".

Ah, the everlasting Korean problem again. :) Every US President since Harry S. Truman has been beleaguered with what to do about Kim Il-sung and now his son, Kim Jong-Il. The reason the issue has festered for nearly 60 years now is that the Western powers screwed it up mightily at the Potsdam Conference and there is no easy resolution to the mess we collectively made. China has very strong strategic interests in the Korean Peninsula. They do not want the collapse of the North Korean state, as that would flood an already volatile region within their borders with millions of starving refugees. They also do not want a united, democratic Korea allied with Japan and the West. Any military action we undertake that threatens to produce either of those outcomes would be met by a flood of millions of People's Liberation Army soldiers. If we then took on China directly, that would draw a response from Russia, whose strategic interests would be threatened. This could easily lead to all-out nuclear war. That's why, since 1953, as much as each US president including Bush has wanted to punish the Kims for their provocative actions, cooler heads have prevailed.

Our President has a together temperment..he's not going to lose his cool..don't worry the man's nobody's fool

I doubt he's going to go gangsta' on them. I always feel bad for our diplomats when this kind of thing happens. They communicate in measured tones and carefully crafted messages, and some folks back here at home think they're wimps for doing it. What people miss is the fact that they would love nothing more than to go into a conference room with Kim Jong Il and tell the bouffant-haired nut case that he can stick his missiles where the sun doesn't shine. But they know that, if they do that, there is a price to be paid. And that they won't be the ones to pay it -- that price would be paid by our kids. I mean we give them machine guns and training, but the bottom line is that the diplomats know that insults to the other side are a self-indulgence that someone else ends up paying for. So, they do the right thing, keep the conversation going in an attempt to avoid armed conflict, and some people back home call them wimps because of it. The really heroic thing about them is that they know this, and they don't care.

Way to "thug up" such a purely political question! lol

OK, this is gonna be long before I get to my point, so bear with me. I am going to rehash a little history, leading to my conclusion on the value of diplomacy over the value of “going gangsta’”. The issue with Korea has been going on for over 60 years. Indeed, the split between North and South Korea happened in 1945, when Korea was freed from the Japanese. The Soviets occupied the country north of the 38th parallel, which became Communist. US troops stayed South of the 38th parallel until 1946, and this part became capitalist. Obviously, North and South Korea were at odds with each other. Things remained this way until China turned Communist in 1949. This upset the balance tremendously. Especially with the Soviet-China relationship. Mao proclaimed Stalin as the only leader of the Communist party, and in turn Russia gave Mao nearly a billion dollars in aid and Manchuria (which the Soviets had taken from the Japanese). However, by 1959 Mao was getting pretty p*ssed at the Soviets, who reneged on their promises of helping China develop nuclear weapons. So by 1962 Mao pretty much told Khruschev “suck my c*ck, you son of a b*tch” and proclaimed himself the true leader of the Communist world. Now, let’s back up a little bit: In 1950, Truman realized that America was in a race with Communism for world domination, whether anyone liked this or not. And because of that, a policy of ‘containment’ wasn’t going to work with Communism…it would have to be actively fought. However, the battle could NOT be fought between the major players. Why? Because the major players were BOTH armed with nuclear weapons (Russia and America). Conflicts would thus have to be fought by proxy, as it were. In other words, in and through OTHER countries which the major powers would support and fight along side. This way there would be NO direct confrontation between the superpowers. (By the way, this was predicted to be the outcome of future warfare between two nuclear armed nations in the 1940’s by the very scientists who developed the weapons. Read “The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes.) So now we’ve set the scene. In 1950, N. Korea attacked S. Korea. This set off the Korean war, which ultimately ended in 1953 when America actually threatened to use nuclear weapons on China if they didn’t stop fighting. China stopped. Flash forward to about 1962. China and Russia were at odds. This was BAD for the Russians. Russia was nearly bankrupt, their nation being stressed to the verge of collapse by their huge military expenditures and financial support of Communist nations. (They didn’t realize at this time that they had HUGE oil resources which would help them.) Mao tells Russia to p*ss off, Russia is in a showdown with the U.S. over the Cuban Missle Crisis, Russia had tested the worlds biggest nuclear weapon the year before (50 megatons…which was a deliberate downsize of the designed 100 megaton yield) and the Vietnam war had been going on for 3 years so far. World tensions were stretched to the snapping point. And in 1964, China officially upped the ante by successfully detonating their first nuclear weapon. Mao flips Russia a big fat bird and openly challenges America to attack China, saying that China was so big that no matter what America did, China would STILL survive to attack America. China’s borders were pretty much sealed at this point. Now Russia was truly terrified of China, and in fact had proclaimed China to be a far bigger threat than America. The balance of power in the world was upset BIG TIME. And still the battle raged in Vietnam. An while all this is going on, North Korea kept up with their own program to pursue their own goals, which ultimately included nuclear weapons of their own. In 1968 an event happened which, when Nixon came into office, was to provide the Nixon administration the keys to opening up China and achieving a NEW balance between the superpowers. A Soviet Golf II missile submarine sank about 350 miles Northwest of Hawaii on March 7th. The Soviets had no idea where that submarine was at when it happened, as it was operating outside it’s designated patrol area. Nor did they know exactly when it happened. All they knew was that one of their submarines had gone missing and they instituted a MASSIVE search for it. They never found it. America, however, found out about it. And they found the submarine. And they discovered a few REALLY hairy details that shook the very foundations of the LBJ administration, and later the Nixon administration. The Golf II submarine apparently sank while attempting to appear to be a Chinese nuclear missle submarine, which were literally copies of the Soviet Golf I missile submarine, right down to the Soviet supplied nuclear missiles they carried. The Soviet Golf II submarine actually LAUNCHED a one megaton nuclear missile toward Honolulu. What went wrong was the launch codes were apparently incorrect, which triggered a failsafe device which blew apart the warhead, resulting in a catastrophic detonation of the missile fuel which blew a hole in the sub and sank her. Based upon the strategic capabilities of the two different classes and the location at the time of the incident, it is theorized that the submarine was taken over by a specialized group of men who were taken aboard the sub before departure from her home port, with the intent to simulate an attack on America by China. (Khruschev didn’t know about it, which was key to Nixon’s ability to later bring about drastic changes in the Soviet government.) (By the way, this attack, even if it were successful, would have failed in it’s deception…we knew whose sub it was long before the launch.) NO MENTION OF THIS WAS LEAKED for several years due to the political tensions between the three nations. However, the Nixon administration, THROUGH THE DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS led by Kissinger, used this event to open up China, bring about political changes in Russia, and achieve a NEW balance which was stable and resulted in drastically reduced tensions between all three nations. WITHOUT HAVING TO RESORT TO ACTUAL ARMED CONFLICT between the three nuclear powered nations. Now my point: “Getting gangsta’” and ‘stomping those mo-fos out’ is NOT the preferred action to take. Diplomacy is NOT a namby-pamby profession used by wimps. There is a completely different side to diplomacy that John Q. Public does NOT see. Yes, there is a lot of political and public posturing. Yes, there is a lot of talk. Yes, there are disagreements and posturing galore. And yes, all the nations take certain actions in order to make powerful political statements. But diplomacy AIN’T wimping out. What diplomacy ultimately does is enable nations to battle it out WITHOUT having to resort to all-out military conflict. The Nixon administration understood this. So did the Reagan administration. In fact, ultimately EVERY administration understands this, though some are more or less able at it under given circumstances than others. Every major nuclear armed nation knows that it’s suicide to attack one of the superpowers with nuclear weapons. The superpowers do not need to counterstrike with nuclear weapons in order to completely defeat and take over the attacking nation in short order…with the full political support of virtually EVERY other nation on the planet. That’s the ultimate irony of N. Korea having nuclear weapons: They can THREATEN to use them…and the rest of the world will stand up and listen. But they CAN’T use them because it’s suicide. Diplomats of BOTH sides know this. Therefore there is no need to ‘go ghetto’ on N. Korea’s *ss because they’re talking sh*t and both sides KNOW it. Including every other nation on the planet, whether they back N. Korea or not. Now, by this time I expect I will have a few DR’s. I could care less.