North Korea and the Failed Launch Success
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on April 7th, 2009 4:41 am by HL
North Korea and the Failed Launch Success
To U.S. analysts long involved in the peculiar trade of tealeaf reading North Korean brinkmanship, the reclusive nation’s missile test is precisely what it looks like: escalation. On Sunday, North Korea launched a rocket over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean. It was North Korea’s latest step toward building a nuclear arsenal and asserting itself as an East Asian power despite its withered economy and repressed society, according to interviews with experts on North Korea. In Pictures: First Trips Abroad – How Does Obama’s Stack Up? In Pictures: The 10 Most Important Presidential Trips Abroad Yet after the rocket launch U.S. headlines from Newsweek to the Associated Press read “Attention Seeking Missile [sic]” or North Korea’s “rocket gambit bid for attention.” Sometimes a ballistic missile test is a ballistic missile test.
The Most Vulnerable Senator Up for Re-Election in 2010? 
Move over, Jim Bunning. You have company. Veteran Sen. Chris Dodd (D) should not be vulnerable in his home state of Connecticut. As a longtime officeholder in a reliably Democratic state and the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, Dodd should have the stature, political base and access to resources to dissuade even the most ambitious of Republicans from challenging him for re-election. But the darkening cloud that is growing over the Senator’s head has changed Dodd’s prospects quickly, and the signs already are clear that he’ll have the fight of his life next year when he seeks his sixth consecutive term in the Senate.
