US Says North Korean Submarine Missing (cnn.com) 167
An anonymous reader writes: The North Korean regime lost contact with one of its submarines earlier this week, three U.S. officials familiar with the latest information told CNN.
According to CNN, the U.S. military had been observing the submarine operate off North Korea's east coast when the vessel stopped, and U.S. spy satellites, aircraft and ships have been secretly watching for days as the North Korean navy searched for the missing sub. The U.S. is unsure if the missing vessel is adrift under the sea or whether it has sunk, the officials said, but believes it suffered some type of failure during an exercise. This comes after North Korea has threatened to use nuclear weapons at any time and turn its military posture to "pre-emptive attack" mode.
It could be worse.... (Score:2)
...At least we didn't lose one of our own submarines...
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Regardless of the politics, they ARE people. We should not dehumanize them. While the actions of North Korea may puzzle us, it would be better understood once one realizes that THEY lost over 500,000 fighting us in the 1950s, which pales in comparison to what is happening in Syria right now.
I would hope there can be peace between US and THEM ... While we ridicule them, they have a deep resentment that can be weighed in human lives.
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Re:It could be worse.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. Really? Lost 500k people huh. You do know that they could have lost 0 people, if they hadn't tried taking over the entire peninsula and subjecting all of its people to poverty, misery, and repression. The 20/20 hindsight that we can and should use in this case teaches us that there was nothing right about violently instituting a communist regime in Korea.
Many Koreans and Chinese gave their lives in an effort to ruins the lives of millions. It's a shame they only lost 500k . . . maybe had more died, their regime would have collapsed back in the 50s, and the Korean peninsula wouldn't be subject to the living hell that the North suffers every day.
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Wow, that was a superb proof of the parent post's fundamental point - cleverly disguised as a mindless rant!
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20/20 hindsight would have had Stalin and Truman not fucking over Korea by partitioning it into 2 rival states in the first place.
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Well, given that Uncle Joe wasn't about to let the whole of Korea be occupied by the West (read: USA), your solution would have been to let the whole country become a Soviet satellite?
Yeah, that worked really well for Eastern Europe, so we should have used that system everywhere....
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3rd environmentalism.
Environmentalism? Murderous philosophy? Say what?
And I noticed that religion doesn't even rate in your mind as a rational to murder your neighbor.
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Rachel Carson, "Silent Spring", and the banning of DDT. Malaria was contained, virtually extinct, and the banning of DDT has killed millions of African and South American children by allowing malaria to spread again.
Yeah, I think "environmentalism" is a shoo-in for 3rd place.
Re:It could be worse.... (Score:5, Informative)
This is interesting. You clearly hold your views very strongly. I wonder if your views will change when presented with evidence to the contrary or if you will find a new way to rationalise your views.
1. DDT was never banned as a method for controlling disease vectors and is still in use to keep malarial mosquitos suppressed. Here's an article about the treaty banning DDT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Feel free to find the article text and verify that as of Annex B, Part 1, that DDT is in fact still allowed for malaria control.
2. Widespread indiscriminant use of insecticides is a terrible idea because resistance to the insecticides devlops. And in fact resistance in mosquitos has developed. If you want to make sure it remains as potent as possible an insecticide for malaria control, about the best thing you can do is ban it for everything except malaria control. That way there is less opportunity for resistance to develop, and given that agriculture used far, far more DDT than disease control, it's agriculture that was responsible for the majority of the devlopment of DDT resistance.
So there you have it, you're actually wrong about DDT on two counts.
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Now, imagine in North Korea where no one wants to improve anything on this side.
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And what is that percentage in the US?
Re:It could be worse.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Factually speaking there has never been communism. Communism as implemented in Stalinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and Maoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], was purely branding when called communism, nothing more. As for environmentalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], seriously?!? As for the politics of North Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], so not communism either. Capitalism kills every single year of it's existence, including wars for profit and a speciality famine, in fact it is accepted that capitalism had its origin in slavery.
Fact is no political system ever survives the psychology of psychopathy and that genetic cerebral defect will corrupt every possible political system over which the gain influence and or control. Capitalism of course can far more accurately be described as psychopathic capitalism as it does reflect the psychology of psychopathy expressed as a socio economic structure.
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Communism is the largest murderous philosophy to have ever existed (by body count). The 2nd being Fascism and 3rd environmentalism.
Apparently it's a logical fallacy to declare the conculsions of an argument as wrong simply because the premise is wrong. However, I don't think it's a logical fallacy to read enough at the beginning to flip the bozo bit and abandon the post before reading any further.
Environmentalism?
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OK, now you're getting more and more zanny
Back at the time of the Korean war, it was the North that was the more advanced state, and the South were the peasants. And, we fought against communism, not "for" the South Koreans - evidenced by the string of strong men that held power until only recent times. Unless you're going to get heavily revisionist, the U.S. wasn't in Korea fighting for the freedom of the South, only push back against Communist Russian and China.
Besides which, where are these 40 million vi
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All communism devolves into dictatorship. The authoritarian aspects are neccesity when i decide I want more or want to work less or keep what I earn. Greed and laziness doesn't magically disappear. All participants need to either voluntarily participate or be forced to else removed from the system.
Re:It could be worse.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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It follows that every economic system devolves into dictatorship. They are all composed of the interactions of these same greedy and lazy people who only work if forced to and thus must do just that, after all.
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Don't kid yourself, it isn't about any of that, it is about a small gang of psychopaths that have gained control of a larger group of very naive people and those psychopaths know that there can never be peace until they are dead because they have committed so many crimes against humanity that the world will hold them to account if they are captured.
That describes every Communist or adamantly Socialist regime.
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Regardless of the politics, they ARE people. We should not dehumanize them.
Actually, they are soldiers of a country whose leader just said that he was going to nuke the US and South Korea, who routinely tries to kill South Korean sailors, who is technically still at war with South Korea, and who routinely lobs missiles over Japan just to show off.
So I think that a "better them than us" attitude is warranted.
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That's complete bullshit.
"They" aren't responsible for this: the actions of NK are nothing to do with the "people" and the lives of grandparents who were lost. It's entirely to do with a very small, powerful ruling class.
While the actions of North Korea may puzzle us
Not really. The Kim-* * ruling dynasty want to keep their power to maintain their luxury lifestyle, and they don't care how many people get hurt in the process. This is not some power struggle between the plucky downtrodden communists and their
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"They" aren't responsible for this: the actions of NK are nothing to do with the "people" and the lives of grandparents who were lost. It's entirely to do with a very small, powerful ruling class.
Strongly disagree. They are responsible for what is done in their name that they do not stop, just as we are responsible for what is done in our name that we do not stop. Thus, you and I share responsibility for drone murder, attempted genocide in Panama, funding the ongoing attempted genocide in Israel, etc. Pretending otherwise is candy-assed bullshit.
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Regardless of the politics, they ARE people. We should not dehumanize them. While the actions of North Korea may puzzle us, it would be better understood once one realizes that THEY lost over 500,000 fighting us in the 1950s, which pales in comparison to what is happening in Syria right now.
I would hope there can be peace between US and THEM ... While we ridicule them, they have a deep resentment that can be weighed in human lives.
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Who dehumanized whom? Many Koreans, Americans and people of other nationalities died in the war that paused over six decades ago. It was a terrible war that resulted in a stalemate in which nobody ended up looking good. The Soviets and Chinese supported one brutal dictatorship and the US/UN supported another. However, the South Koreans, Americans and everyone else has moved on. The South Koreans have thrown off their dictators and even tried to build economic ties with the North. What deserves ridicule is t
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Andre...You've lost ANOTHER submarine?
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...At least we didn't lose one of our own submarines...
Yeah, they make it sound like Pyongyang missing a submarine is a bad thing
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Yeah, at first I was worried we were missing one of their submarines.
Too bad we can't rescue them, though.
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Note, for those who aren't aware of Navy slang, "port and starboard" is (among its other uses) slang for "standing one watch in two". Whenever a boat comes even close to sinking, the expression used is "trying to take Thresher and Scorpion out of port and starboard"....
Kim Jong-un no doubt has a different story (Score:4, Funny)
Can't wait to here it. Probably something about it being the worlds greatest stealth submarine that even NK can't see it.
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Bye-Bye Empire, Bye-Bye. [youtube.com]
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Picture of NK submarine [telegraph.co.uk]. Pretty sure this sub sunk on its own.
Re:Kim Jong-un no doubt has a different story (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a picture with better perspective: https://www.rt.com/news/313141... [rt.com]
I suspect that protuberance with the windows is an enclosed bridge for conning the boat in cold weather, and not part of the pressure hull...diesel boats have to spend a lot of time running on the surface.
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Here's a picture with better perspective: https://www.rt.com/news/313141... [rt.com]
I suspect that protuberance with the windows is an enclosed bridge for conning the boat in cold weather, and not part of the pressure hull...diesel boats have to spend a lot of time running on the surface.
True, but another inherent property of Diesel-Electric submarines is they can operate submerged in extreme silence ... nuclear subs make a very small but detectible amount of noise at all times underwater ... which in this case might be a contributing factor in the overall uncertainty on both sides, as to whet, exactly, is going on (such as "is it simply damaged, or sunk, or what, exactly").
On another topic raised here (regarding the possibility that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK, aka "Nor
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True, but another inherent property of Diesel-Electric submarines is they can operate submerged in extreme silence ... nuclear subs make a very small but detectible amount of noise at all times underwater ...
When you talk about noisy nuke subs, you can talk about China's or India's, but the US has had many decades to eliminate those sorts of emanation and are extremely proficient at doing so. Eventually that will change as other nations reach parity with the US or Russia, but at the moment, I wouldn't be surprised if US nukes like the Virginia class are actually even quieter than a NK diesel, at least when it's moving.
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Note that it's easier to find a Virginia-class boat by listening for places that there are NO FISH NOISES than by listening for submarine noises. The Virginia-class is actually quieter than ambient - it sounds like a hole in the water....
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Of course, there is lots of noise from the turbulence from the body of the sub itself, and especially from the props.
There has been development on alternate propulsion methods that are inherently quieter, but as far as the governments will ad
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It's been a long, long time since snorkels were any kind of novelty. They are definitely the norm for recharging the batteries, certainly in conflict or training for conflict; and surfacing like in the WW II movies is the rarity. Of course you are limited to periscope depth while snorkeling - the conning tower being barely below the surface. And of course it is noisy, DOES have a non-zero radar cross-section, and releases exhaust that can be sniffed.
There is such a thing as air independent propulsion now, a
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But ANY of them is noisier than a WW II antique on battery power creeping at low speed.
Is that really true? Hasn't prop or baffle design improved since then?
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I doubt that WWII subs would hold up to modern scrutiny, even at relatively slow speeds. Our detection capabilities have probably improved a thousand-fold or more in the last half century, and that might even be an underestimation.
A staggering amount of R&D has gone into optimizing hull surfaces / shapes and prop designs to minimize cavitation and other emissions, so it's not just the noise of the powerplants that are factors. I'm not sure if they do this any more, but at one time US submarine prop de
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Blaming the USA, Korea (aka "South Korea") or Japan, etc is a near perfect pretence to escalation and who-knows-what aggressive action.
Aggressive actions are preceded by pretenses when the actor has some hope of maintaining relations with uninvolved parties, or at least giving them an excuse for not intervening. Far as I can see, nobody's going to be fooled, and NK's only motivation for not taking action is the prospect of retribution.
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Well, at least then it would finally get settled.
Deja (Score:2)
I don't know what's scarier, losing nuclear weapons, or that it happens so often there's actually a term for it.
Looking at you, octubre Rojo...
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Knowing just a bit about military planning, I'd be surprised if the term for it wasn't coined and detailed plans made LONG before any weapons were actually lost.
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There's the term that they came up for it long before it happened and then there's the term that came about from the people repeatedly cleaning up the mess. The second term is usually much more accurate and colourful.
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almost never the same as the term handed down through appropriate channels.
This is a term of familiarity, which often delineates the authenticity of your claimed participation.
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I suspect all 3 terms, they are for different types of issues relating to that, were developed before an incident actually occurred.
Though it seems likely at least one of them was after, but it's not like there's a unclassified history file on that kind of thing.
To any of the paranoid out there, those terms are all known to the public, even if the incidents probably aren't. Hmmm... I wonder if anyone has stuck them on Wikipedia yet.
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My own favorite quote is from The Peacemaker. It's something to the effect of "Do you know what worries me all to hell? Someone who only wants to steal ONE nuclear weapon". Because it's pretty obvious what that guy has generally in mind.
In other news . . . (Score:5, Funny)
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I doubt the U.S. would waste a torpedo on that tub.
Re:In other news . . . (Score:4, Funny)
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I can hear it now...
"Sailor! Did you just say the words 'weapon' and 'lost' in the same sentence?"
Oh, wait, you mean "lost' as in not really lost. Right, because the US Navy has a habit of "losing" weapons while training in waters near hostile nations. Because "losing" a weapon would not cause an international incident, no?
I have little doubt that this sub sank due to no action from an outside nation. It could have been a mechanical failure or a training failure. Either way the families will likely be t
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(I have no idea how Navy would actually report that, so I'm using the hollywood junk which is probably wrong.)
Its Tommy Lee Jones (Score:2)
Before he tried to hijack a US battleship and steal the nukes, he captured a North Korean sub
We'd better call Steven Seagal
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We'd better call Steven Seagal
You go ahead and call Seagal. I'm calling Erika Eleniak.
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We'd better call Steven Seagal
You go ahead and call Seagal. I'm calling Erika Eleniak.
As I remember it, she was an essential part of it too. She shot O'Brien from Star Trek before he could shoot Seagal in the face.
On second thought...don't call Erika Eleniak. Let's have Seagal do this one solo.
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"Do you think the Americans would let us borrow the Hughes Glomar Explorer for a few weeks?"
Hmm... (Score:2)
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I doubt it has enough range to even reach South Korea.
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Good question. Why would you think that? S. Korea or Japan is much closer. Or the Aleutians if they are desperate to see American women.
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Good question. Why would you think that? S. Korea or Japan is much closer. Or the Aleutians if they are desperate to see American women.
It IS much closer...that's the reason why they probably wouldn't do it there if they could help it. Remember, when North Korean dictators have wanted certain things from South Korea or Japan, they've tended to just go and take them. Including movie producers [wikipedia.org] and other artists. [wikipedia.org] I really doubt they would fail to go after the crew, if they were so close by.
It might be great if the USN rescued the crew (Score:4, Insightful)
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If the sub is really in serious trouble and the US Navy rescued the crew (and maybe took possession of the sub) it might be a pretty good PR coup. Treat the sub's sailors well - good food, some entertainment in SK to see how life is there, etc. - before repatriating them to the DPRK. Treat the sailors as we would expect our sailors to be treated in similar circumstances. Besides, it's the right thing to do.
What would happen, unfortunately, is that the minute these sailors arrived home, they would be incarcerated. They would be blamed for the loss of the sub, and wiped out. All the good that would be done before their return is like the last meal given a dying man.
You need to understand the "Maintaining Power" mindset. 500 lives means nothing.
Best Korea is just demonstrating... (Score:2)
...its new cloaking technology.
"Gulf of Tonkin Incident"? (Score:3)
I wonder if North Korea will puff this up into their own Gulf of Tonkin Incident [wikipedia.org]
For those of you too young to have been of draft age during the Vietnam conflict, this pair of (possibly bogus) incidents were used as the excuse get Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving the president (LBJ) the authority he used to puff a minor conflict into a major war without a declaration of war.
Commanded by ... (Score:2)
Underwater subs - like drowned fishes? (Score:2)
The U.S. is unsure if the missing vessel is adrift under the sea or whether it has sunk, the officials said, but believes it suffered some type of failure during an exercise.
Since submarines normally operate underwater, how will they know if it's 'sunk'?
Poseidon's Revenge (Score:3)
Considering how many missiles they've been firing at the sea, I can't be too surprised that the sea would decide to fight back.
One of our submarines is missing? (Score:2)
Is this some sort of lyric to a Thomas Dolby Song?
One of the great albums of the 80's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Fellowship of the silent service (Score:2)
The men and women who serve on submarines all know their real enemy isn't the other side's sailors but rather the sea itself.
It stalks their every move, looks for a weakness, and strikes without mercy.
I am confident US, Russian, Chinese, Indian, British or French navies would send assistance if asked. This is not about conflict between these countries. Under the sea, they face the same enemy.
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Though this isn't a modern diesel electric boat. The US know exactly where it is.
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Unless you know something about the US Navy capabilities that I don't I doubt this is true. The US Navy has trouble tracking it's own assets. There are incidents of the US Navy running into other vessels at sea, including their own, because they did not see them.
This means that they cannot track vessels, in some cases, even if they could have reached out and touched them. Tracking a vessel many miles out is a much more difficult task.
A tactic used by drug smugglers is to build a semi-submersible built mu
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Modern diesel electric boats are very quiet and pose a challenge to those that worry about such things.
True, but I'm guessing this is one of their Romeo class because atsvwhich are quite old. At any rate, she would have had to snorkel at some point which would give away her location. That she hasn't doesn't bode well for her or her crew.
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Modern diesel electric boats are very quiet and pose a challenge to those
that worry about such things.
True, but I'm guessing this is one of their Romeo class because atsvwhich are quite old. At any rate, she would have had to snorkel at some point which would give away her location. That she hasn't doesn't bode well for her or her crew.
Still, the PDRK aka North Korea have been building submarines, including perhaps the world's greatest program developing some very small "midget" variants, for a very, very long time. Some require the assistance of a mother ship but the largest of the midget type, the Samg-O Class (crew of 15), can operate independently.
It may also be a Sinpo Class (crew estimated of 30~50), the largest vessel and currently under active development to replace the Romeo Class. One has been observed under construction, others
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Nope. Y. Ono.
It's not very quiet. [youtube.com]
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Oh wait! I see, you were trying to make a James Bond reference joke.
I wonder how many people got that.
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Did this vessel become inoperable in international waters? If NK wants to save face by not officially declaring this vessel as wrecked they cannot expect it to be left alone under the Protection of Military Remains Act [wikipedia.org]. I'm sure many nations would like to get a peek at the inner workings of this vessel.
I doubt anyone is interested in it. It probably is an ancient Romeo class, sold to a lot of countries.
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Another Hunt for Red October scenario?
"You've lost another submarine?"
I was thinking of Under Siege where the rogue operative stole the sub.
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Since it's a North Korean sub, I was thinking somebody knocked on the hatch.
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Wouldn't it be funny if they had been captured and evacuated by somebody else. Totally overwhelmed and completely unharmed, then put up in a nice and comfortable, but secure, modern location to enjoy a week or two off before they get put back in their sub and allowed to return to port?
There'd be some statement about communication issues, or maybe more bullshit claims about NK superscientist developed a new submarine cloaking device that runs on unicorn poop or something.
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Next thing you hear is the last words from a US sub will be why is a american submarine shooting a russian torpedo
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Stop watching TV, it is bad for you.
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what about the grassy knoll?
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The two are not separable. If you recognize a government as ruling, you recognize it as legitimate. We most certainly do recognize the Russian government as legitimate--there are embassies and everything. (The current Russian ambassador to the US is Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak, and the current US ambassador to Russia is John Francis Tefft). We don't recognize their annexation of certain territories, mo
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Uhm... I don't believe we currently recognize Russian government as legitimate. We recognize it as ruling.
The two are not separable.
Without passing any moral judgement on whether or not it should or should not be that way, I would say that it most certainly is not the case. Case in point: ISIS might be in control of certain Iraqi cities, but we still view those cities as Iraqi and would not honor any passport issued by ISIS as a legal document.
We don't recognize their annexation of certain territories, most notably the Crimean peninsula, but that's a different matter.
Not to RF. They designated Sevastopol a "Federal City" -- a designation which it shares only with the current and previous capitals of Russia (Moscow and Saint Petersburg). Which passports shoul
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Yeah, neither have I, but we both can read about the many historical attempts at such.
I don't know about you, but I have. For all that it matters, NK would have been more reasonable at most of those meetings if they'd have sent a rabid mime.
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Of course, why would you continue looking after you found it?
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Submarines, they're these machines that float under water.