Permission from Beijing, of course. Ever since the now-no-longer secret colloquy between Henry Kissinger and Mao Zedong in 1972, when we told the PRC that we could "accept" a Communist victory in Vietnam as long as it happened >after< we'd gotten our troops out first, U.S. policy in Asia has boiled down to "Whatever the old men in the Forbidden City want us to do- or not do." Their eventual objective is a Pan-Asian hegemony ruled from Beijing, including the conquest of Taiwan and the "incorporation" of Japan as a Chinese protectorate. (Think the old "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere", only run from the other end.) Their eventual targets are Australia and the Indies to the south, and Siberia to the north. And sitting right in the middle as a perfect "deniable asset" to threaten the ROK and Japan with is the "Hermit Kingdom" and its gibbering-dingbat leader. The only alternative is for us to apply the policy of "The first time Lil' Kim launches a missile we even >think< has a WMD warhead, no matter >who< it's aimed at, Pyongyang gets glassed, period." One of the often-overlooked advantages of our present SOTA in weapons is that we can take out the leaders of an enemy power, as opposed to just killing their PBIs in job lots. This, I suspect, wiull be the only practical way of dealing with the Lil' Kim problem. I do >not< expect our oh-so- P.C. allies- or even our own State Department- to agree. Cheers (sort of....) eon

We'd never use our ABM system just for show. What if it missed or didn't even work at all? Better off as a threat then as a public humiliation.

Am I one of the few who think that the missile did what it was supposed to? Yeah, they probably are backwards, but think of it: Kim is nuts. He has them fire the missile to see the US/Japan/world reaction, but to ensure he does not not get his as* kicked, he exploded the missile 45 or so seconds after launch. It lands where the other missiles did. It successfully took off, probably in range of their detonating mechanism, and then BLAM. He doesnt get his as* kicked and he gets to see what the world would do. In his eyes, he won. Now, he probably thinks he can get cash/blackmail the world. He was warned not to do it, he did, and nothing of consequence happened. So, if the missile did what it was supposed to do, he won.