Was just talking to a missile guy (outside of government) about the potential North Korean test. (Please forgive me if I don’t have all the missile lingo down here.) He says that if they have already fueled the thing up with liquid fuel (which might be in doubt according to this report), it’s complicated to de-fuel it and he thinks the North Koreans are likelier to go ahead and launch the thing. He also points out that they know we see pretty much everything that they do, so this is part of a very deliberate strategy. He reminds me that the North Koreans actually got irritated when we didn’t initially detect that they had tried to launch a satellite off a three-stage rocket in 1998. Finally, he argues that the U.S. government can’t just take the North Koreans word for it that the missile is un-armed and that we should try to shoot it down if it comes within the performance envelope of our missile defense system. Not clear if the administration will try this or not, if it comes to it. It would be politically risky, obviously, to shoot and miss. On the other hand, some conservatives would probably be raising a fuss if a Democratic administration were in office and decided not to try to take down a North Korean missile coming anywhere near U.S. territory. Critics always point out that the missile defense tests aren’t true enough to reality. But in one sense they depart from reality in a way that is biased against getting hits, because we shoot only one interceptor at one missile. In this instance, we would probably fire more than one interceptor. Anyway, it could get interesting…