North Korea Is Testing Atomic Weapons, Does Anyone Care?

Yesterday's The Hill ran an article by Roxana Tiron on the North Korean nuclear testing.  The lead paragraph stated:

"President Obama's national security adviser on Wednesday said that North Korea's recent nuclear detonation and missile tests are not "an imminent threat" to the safety and security of the United States."

I'm sure that Retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones is aware that the technology of the missles tested indicates that these missles could reach Alaska and California and possibly a few other states.  General Jones stated that he felt the threat was that the North Koreans would share their technology with other countries or terrorist organizations.  That is a serious problem, but meanwhile we have a belligerent government with an unstabe leader setting off nuclear weapons and rockets.  It seems to me that we need to rethink our missle defense spending cuts about now.

General Jones also noted that:

"Nothing that the North Koreans did surprised us," Jones said. "We knew that they were going to do this, they said so, so no reason not to believe them."

OK.  Then why, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he will wipe Israel off the map, don't we believe him?

I hate to be negative, but I believe nothing will be done about the North Korean tests.  China has no real incentive to prevent the spread or use of these weapons.  China has no reason to want to protect South Korea--during the Korean War, we were fighting Chinese forces.  The only real answer to this problem is to allow Japan to have nuclear weapons.  Not a great idea, but one that at least might cause the North Koreans to pause before doing anything drastic.