Well, having had the images of Pacific islands being obliterated by nuclear bombs seared into my brain, I´d be worried too.
Understatement of the century: Elections have consequences.
Elections have consequences
As a captured territory rather than a state, the people of Guam don’t even get to vote for President.
“Any attack on Guam is an attack on the United States.”
Well DUH!
Guam is a United States Territory and is no different from Puerto Rico.
Alaska and Hawaii were both US Territories prior to WW2 and later became States after the war.
It’s citizens are considered US CITIZENS although they cannot vote in Presidential Elections.
Guam elects one non-voting delegate, currently Democrat Madeleine Z. Bordallo, to the United States House of Representatives. U.S. citizens in Guam vote in a straw poll for their choice in the U.S. Presidential general election, but since Guam has no votes in the Electoral College, the poll has no real effect. However, in sending delegates to the Republican and Democratic national conventions, Guam does have influence in the national presidential race. These delegates are elected by local party conventions.
The United States currently has sixteen territories. Five of them are permanently inhabited and are classified as unincorporated territories:
Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean
Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands in the Marianas archipelago in the western North Pacific Ocean
American Samoa in the South Pacific.
They are organized, self-governing territories with locally elected governors and territorial legislatures. Each also elects a non-voting member (or resident commissioner) to the U.S. House of Representatives. The eleven other territories are small islands, atolls and reefs, also spread across the Caribbean and Pacific, with no native or permanent populations. These are Palmyra Atoll, Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Islands, Bajo Nuevo Bank, Navassa Island, Serranilla Bank and Wake Island, which are claimed by the United States under the Guano Islands Act of 1856. The status of some is disputed by Colombia, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, and the Marshall Islands. The Palmyra Atoll is the only territory currently incorporated.
Trump’s all huff and puff and like, “We are not gonna take this!”
And the Guamanians are all like sidling a way saying “Whadaya mean “we”, white man?”
Guamites? Guamordians? Guamodians? Gu…
Guamanians. Except they can’t sidle away. Guam is part of the U.S. and Guamanians are U.S. citizens…
Guamanians for people from there (as opposed to military people living there temporarily). Chamorro for the indigenous people (who are also Guamanian).
Guamians and Alaskans should stop being such wusses . If anyone ought to be afraid is the South Koreans, if they shooting starts they will certainly get the brunt of it, a good chunk of Seoul metro area is within conventional artillery range from the north, and they got more than 10000 guns in the area . If any Americans should be worried are those in Camp Casey right next to the DMZ.
True, but at least the folks at Camp Casey and the South Koreans have Mike Pence looking tough across the DMZ!
As long as he stays there once the shooting starts.
Not to pooh-pooh this too much, but no one knows whether N. Korea has successfully miniturized a bomb, which is very difficult. Secondly, no one believes that N. Korea has successfully built a multi-stage and, most important, guidable missile.
Regardless of what the Grand Cheeto may command, I doubt the military would launch a nuclear weapon against N. Korea as the fallout could drift over S. Korea, Japan or, most important, China, and result in full retaliatory suicidal attacks against S. Korea and Japan.
N. Korea is more likely to strike out with conventional weapons or not at all as they know that launching a even half-assed ICBM will result in a whither conventional attack that will destroy its military.
It’s weird seeing people have to relearn the lessons of existence under nuclear threat. Weirder still to remember how little the details seem to matter to people. Like, for example, the ICBM prototypes North Korea has already launched can probably make it as far as New York or DC, not just LA or even Chicago. But, as best I can tell, what they haven’t demonstrated yet is reentry capability at intercontinental ranges and velocity.
Because it doesn’t matter whether your missiles have the range if your warhead burns up in the atmosphere or can’t hit the target (and yeah, accuracy matters even with nukes unless you have the throw-weight to loft one of the twenty megaton monsters which the Russians used to use and still have a few of in inventory). And this is a real problem once you get past short and intermediate range.
This is obviously on their to-do list. Has to be. We shouldn’t lull ourselves into a sense of security that we still have time to do something, because our last chance to do something was squinted away by Bush and Cheney. But it’s really still not time for hysteria yet. At least not here in CONUS, to revert to Cold War Armegedden Studies terminology.
IT’s not just Guam. Justin Trudeau sent national security people from the Canadian government to NK to try to calm things down - they are right on our border.
Actually, this whole brouhaha has brou-ed up because of both of those–they’ve demonstrated multi-stage intercontinental range capability in the last few weeks and western intelligence services now think they have, in fact, miniaturized warheads enough to mate them to those missiles. What they don’t seem to have demonstrated yet are guidance packages and reentry vehicles.
Can you point me in the direction of articles concerning this as I’ve seen nothing about successfully miniturizing anything and nothing they’ve launched has been larger than two stages and done nothing but a sub-orbital splash down in the ocean. Hardly a test for re-entry capabilities.
Where do you get this? Nothing has been launched larger than two stages and the flight was sub-orbital. This demonstrates nothing. A reasonable, non-lethal demonstration might be a launch that goes into the stratosphere and then lands in the middle of the Pacific with N. Korea announcing the location ahead of the launch. Otherwise, it’s all speculation.
Do what? Even a conventional attack against N. Korea would likely mean extensive destruction of Seoul and, likely, Tokyo. Do we want to trade these two cities in order to halt a nuclear program that exists as protection just as it does for Israel and Pakistan and as desired by Iran? None of these countries should be armed this way, but most have for decades now and they’ve managed to not use them.
All ICBM’s are suborbital. That’s what “ballistic,” the “B” in ICBM, means. The important thing is altitude and acceleration. And yeah, arms control wonks looked at those and concluded it’s worse than is being reported. You don’t have to throw one downrange at intercontinental distances to prove you can. You just have to get it high enough to show you could with a different trajectory. Especially when doing a test with a ballistic trajectory might make angry worried people with massive nuclear arsenals fear you’re attacking them.
ICBM test and reentry vehicle failure (it’s not clear to me that there was a “failure” so much as “they weren’t even trying to test a reentry vehicle yet.”)
https://www.space.com/37687-north-korea-icbm-test-re-entry-vehicle.html
Presumed range:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/620/to-be-real?act=1#play (sound)
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/620/transcript (transcript)
The miniaturization part was all over the news two days ago. It’s what started this shitstorm.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korea-now-making-missile-ready-nuclear-weapons-us-analysts-say/2017/08/08/e14b882a-7b6b-11e7-9d08-b79f191668ed_story.html?utm_term=.2f19fdce0d9e
Of course, the island of Guam can’t leave. I was talking about those people who are leaving and trying to leave the island.
Later, Josh tweeted “Guamites.”