Newt Gingrich wants to attack North Korea with ray guns

[lame54]

Newt Gingrich wants to attack North Korea with ray guns

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/gingrich-attack-north-korea-electromagnetic-pulse

By David Sunday Apr 05, 2009 12:00pm

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Newt Gingrich told Fox's Chris Wallace that he would have disabled North Korea's missile before it could have launched.

"There are three or four techniques that could have been used, from unconventional forces to standoff capabilities, to say: 'We're not going to tolerate a North Korean missile launch, period.' I mean, the world's either got to decide that North Korea is utterly dangerous -- I'd recommend, look at electromagnetic pulse, which changes every equation about how risky these weapons are," explained Gingrich.

John Amato:

That Newt sure is a card. Let's just attack another country once again. In wingnut world, George Bush was a genius when he made a deal with Kim Jong Il. And GW even boasted about taking them off his terror list: I am notifying Congress of my intent to rescind North Korean's designation as a state sponsor of terror in 45 days.

Yet the same wingnuts are now attacking President Obama with a clip from the Team America movie that features Kim Jong Il..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaM793N5sr4

[Ian David]

1. Moonraker was on cable last weekend. n/t

[DJ13]

2. So is Newt admitting the existence of the kind of weapon thought to have

....crashed Paul Wellstone's plane?

Electromagnetic detectors in surrounding universities went nuts at the exact time his plane went down.

Did Newt just commit treason by releasing top secret info?

[Chipper Chat]

6. When Noot was speaker he was probably privy to pentagon info

that the higher-ups there wouldn't even tell Clinton. I wish he would just go away like Tom Delay but I fear he will be the republican nominee in 2012.

[dysfunctional press]

7. i think he was referring to the emp from a possible north korean nuke.

not that we would use an emp weapon to stop their launch.

[anigbrowl]

8. This is wrong on many levels

First, EMP devices are not particularly exotic. You could build one in your garage. Nuclear weapons generate an EMP, but that's a side-effect of their huge destructive power. The engineering involved is pretty simple and doesn't require any specially controlled technology or materials.

Second, EMP disables electronics. However, the majority of planes (and their instruments) operate on mechanical or hydraulic principles, as opposed to fly-by-wife electronics. One reason for this is that planes can be struck by lightning (and there is more than one kind of lightning, not just the big powerful bolts), so unless it's specially engineered (with a built-in faraday cage, as in military planes) it's much safer for the various control systems to be non-electronic. So in the event of a lightning strike or EMP you might lose the radio and some of the displays, but engine and flight control systems (which are mechanical) and essential instruments like the altimeter and artificial horizon (which are based on pressure and gyroscopes, respectively) would be unaffected.

I don't have a strong opinion about eh Wellstone case, I just haven't had time to research it properly and was out of the country when it occurred. But just tossing the idea of EMP as some kind of 'super weapon' makes no sense. There are some things it can do and others that it can't. And one of the things it can't is alter the behavior of mechanical or hydraulic systems. You can fire EMP at an old diesel truck all day, and the motor will never stop running, nor will the steering be affected. It's very basic physics.

[scarletwoman]

10. Thank you for posting something sensible about this. Wellstone was my senator, and his loss is truly

an ongoing tragedy -- just think if we had his clear voice and genuinely progressive principles in our Senate through all those dark bush years!

The EMP conspiracy theorists drive me absolutely up a wall -- it's so STUPID! To be perfectly honest, I will probably always carry a niggling suspicion tucked away in a small corner of my mind that the plane crash was a political assassination. But I will never throw in with EMP loonies.

In the long run, it really doesn't matter, anyway. Bottom line, he's gone.

sw

[Hobarticus]

9. Never heard of that before...

Got a link?

[Barack_America]

3. Maybe he meant to say that he wanted to attack N. Korea with "Reagen"...

As in "Reagan economics".

That was pretty successful at destroying this country.

:shrug:

[CAG]

4. I want a freakin laser beam - throw me a freakin bone, here

[scarletwoman]

5. Sharks. With laser beams mounted on their heads!