Gates’s Advice to Kim Jong Il: “Don’t Do Anything Stupid.”

On a visit to lovely Fort Drum, New York, last week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates discounted the threat of a conventional North Korean attack:

“Frankly, this is an army that’s starving. The average North Korea, at this point, is seven inches shorter than his South Korean counterpart. This is a country where the famine of the mid-1990s has affected the physical and even intellectual development of those that are now coming into the zone who would be eligible for military service. So this is a country whose conventional forces and capabilities are really, I think, declining,” he said.

Still, Gates said he is concerned about North Korea’s continuing efforts, in defiance of international sanctions, to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.

“We’re watching them very closely, and I hope they don’t make any stupid mistakes,” said Gates.   [VOA]