Since we are talking about North Korea, older Duers, do you remember this?

[Cleita]

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/uss-pueblo-captured

Jan 23, 1968:
USS Pueblo captured

On January 23, 1968, the USS Pueblo, a Navy intelligence vessel, is engaged in a routine surveillance of the North Korean coast when it is intercepted by North Korean patrol boats. According to U.S. reports, the Pueblo was in international waters almost 16 miles from shore, but the North Koreans turned their guns on the lightly armed vessel and demanded its surrender. The Americans attempted to escape, and the North Koreans opened fire, wounding the commander and two others. With capture inevitable, the Americans stalled for time, destroying the classified information aboard while taking further fire. Several more crew members were wounded.

Finally, the Pueblo was boarded and taken to Wonson. There, the 83-man crew was bound and blindfolded and transported to Pyongyang, where they were charged with spying within North Korea's 12-mile territorial limit and imprisoned. It was the biggest crisis in two years of increased tension and minor skirmishes between the United States and North Korea.

more at link

The reason I'm bring this up, is that we have a past history of unpleasant incidents with North Korea and yet we haven't engaged them in another war. Of course we already had an unpopular war raging in Viet Nam, so those sailors had to cool their heels in a North Korean detention facility for almost a year. I hope we maintain cool heads this time around too. However, with Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, will Halliburton and the other MIC beneficiaries of war prevail and send us into another one?

[niyad]

1. I remember

[Warpy]

2. Brain fart

All the propaganda bonanzas for the GOP run together after a while.

[graham4anything]

4. Wrong incident. This was 1968 and Johnson was president.

[Warpy]

9. Brain fart., Sorry.

[dsc]

5. actually johnson was president for most of it

[graham4anything]

7. Proves Johnson wasn't a war monger.

Shame Eisenhower started what became Vietnam and shame JFK hired McNamara

[SwampG8r]

32. truman sent the first military advisors to viet nam to assist the french nt

[bike man]

35. And, the US was paying for about 80% of the expenses for the French during the last two

years of their involvement.

Why do folks insist on forgetting (or ignoring) the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy participation in the Viet Nam debacle>=?

[A HERETIC I AM]

8. All of it.

[dsc]

10. yep misread the op

thought it said over a year but it said most of a year.

[Coyotl]

11. As soon as the military budget passes, so will this.

Seen it happen again and again, fabricated crisis.

[moondust]

12. Halliburton is on it!

"We're in deep doo doo," Cheney warned top GOP lawmakers, a Republican leadership aide told CNN.

[Cleita]

13. Cheney? Figures! n/t

[madrchsod]

14. yup...i remember that well

[lpbk2713]

15. The Pueblo, USS Liberty and the fire on the Forrestal.

Not to derail your thread, but three serious events all occurred within about six months time.

I remember because I was in the Navy, 65 -69. I lost two friends on the Forrestal.

[Cleita]

16. Sorry to hear about your friends.

Those were unsettling times.

[Art_from_Ark]

24. And then there was the USS Scorpion

Just thinking about that one still gives me shivers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Scorpion_(SSN-589)

[Hissyspit]

30. "In November 2012, the U.S. Submarine Veterans, an organization with over 13,800 members

(all former submariners) asked the US Navy to reopen the investigation on the sinking of USS Scorpion."

[Paul E Ester]

17. Thanks for posting this, heard of the pueblo, but did not know they were hostages for so long...nt

[Cleita]

18. I remember a lot of hand wringing because we didn't do anything drastic

and the crisis seemed to drag on. But I think LBJ was right in not antagonizing the N. Koreans so the sailors were able to come home in one piece.

[graham4anything]

31. There is a political lesson to learn from this with LBJ & JImmy Carter?,carry forward to now-

And that is Jimmy and LBJ at the point in time-
one a master politician, one a great person, a great president up to 1979, and both-
one considered one of the strongest, one his enemies kept saying was one of the weakest-

Both could have used at those point in times, a better spin person and people within making the case politically for each of them and laying out the re-election campaign for each of them better for the nomination for LBJ and the general for Jimmy.

Both should easily have won reelection in the general.
My case has always been LBJ would have won the general, but did not attempt to reach the general election.

Someone with LBJ's back should have been demanding it.

For sake of the party in 1980, Teddy should have been demanding Jimmy be reelected instead of making the monumental choice to challenge without winning it. Then not giving the all needed to reunite the party after through two egos- both his and Jimmy's.

In essence we lost two Presidents in 1980, because 1984 could have been Teddy's quite easily.And Teddy took himself out forever more from running for President, and decided to make himself the best senator since LBJ led the senate two decades earlier.

Either that, or Jimmy should not have ran again, like LBJ did in 1968, taken himself out of consideration and then had the entire party back Teddy.

Of course, later, we all learned both were sabatoged from the other party.
Jimmy with the Reagan Hostage deal
LBJ peace talks sabatoged by Nixon's dealings with Vietnam to not deal with LBJ til after the election.

History repeating itself twice now.

The lesson for President Obama and the Democratic Party is not one in peace and war,
but in Dotting the I's and Crossing the T's which ever way it goes, and not letting the other party nor malcontents in the media, spin it the wrong way.

Everything is about spin and how it is spun.

These days of course, one doesn't have to nuke them if they threaten to nuke us.
If they go over the line, we could always drone them and keep damage at a minimum.
We also don't know if it is a bluff or not.

LBJ and Jimmy Carter played it out and the hostages came back.
Here, there are no hostages except the world is to the situation.

Bringing to mind the Bay of Pigs and JFK as the sides play their game of chicken.

Of course, it could be said, that at times like this, the President should have the backing of all Americans and politics should not be considered whatsoever.
Like it was in the early 1960s with JFK and the Bay of Pigs.
America in situations like this should be on a singular message, like then, now.

What makes now different from the two is President Obama cannot run for a 3rd term, and as Hillary is not SOS, it doesn't affect her at this point in time.
Of course, she can play it after the fact depending which way it turns out.
That is politics 2013.

Of course, maybe China will get bored by this,and take action themselves against him, or maybe this nutjob will blow himself up,
much like the Waco people blew themselves up as the US patiently stood by and allowed it to play out.
Remember, China at the end of the day, needs us and we need them. So no way we are going to blow each other up. This is not the cold war of the 1950s-60s. And so does Japan.
We are all in it together, and China (as witness by T-Square) doesn't let things go on all that long. And this guy in Korea is not the man who stood in front of the tank symbolically either.

When you get right down to it-
This guy is just one nut blustering and attempting to keep his voice loud and large.

and the question would be-what would come after this guy, would it be better, worse, unknown, so one patiently awaits the outcome, as President Obama has been doing.
If President Obama was not patient, it already would have gone done, wouldn't it?


(The above would be musings from the playbook of then, juxtaposed at the end, with now based on then and now).

[Avalux]

19. President Carter was on The Daily Show last week talking about this.

Specifically; how when he was prez he had to deal with Kim Jong Un's grandfather, much the same situation.

[spanone]

20. who could forget 1968????

[Cleita]

21. It was quite a banner year, wasn't it?

It was also the year of Woodstock and the year I met my husband.

[pinboy3niner]

22. Woodstock was 1969

[Cleita]

23. That's right a long time ago. However, I really did meet my DH in 1968. n/t

[pinboy3niner]

25. I didn't doubt that for a second. :) nt

[byeya]

37. My wife & I got married in 1968

[xxqqqzme]

26. Indeed -deadly year

and I got married (on hitler's birthday, I later learned).

[Cleita]

27. Oh noes!

[Lugnut]

28. I could never forget 1968.

My son was born on July 4, 1968.

[Hissyspit]

29. Is this the one where the guy flipped the finger in the photo?

As a hint, and the N. Koreans had no idea.

Also, the commander's hands were bloodied and tortured-looking as he signed his "confession."

[Cleita]

33. The very same one. According to the article, when the N. Koreans found out

they were beaten.

[Hissyspit]

34. There was a television docudrama about it in the 1970s.

I think it was called "The Pueblo Incident."

[bike man]

36. And the unarmed aircraft shot down in 1969 with the loss of all 31 aboard

EC 121 attached to VQ1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_EC-121_shootdown_incident