Washington has been beefing up its joint exercises with South Korea and has added flights of its nuclear capable air craft near the Korean Peninsula, first B-52 bombers and now the B-2 stealth planes.
The case for putting anti-missile defenses into place was underscored by this sobering fact: A ship like the North Korean vessel that was covertly carrying Scud B missiles and forcibly intercepted in the Arabian Sea last week could be steaming off the coast of the United States at this very moment.