North Korea's Impotent Taepodong

Note: Yeah, it took me this long to finally finish it!
While I missed the actual launching of the missile (I was watching World Cup soccer instead), North Korea launched a series of Taepodong-2 missiles earlier this week. While it seems rather frightening (the Taepodong-2 is a missile that could theoretically hit Anchorage, Alaska) that the North Koreans have nukes and ICBMs, it's not quite as bad as it seems. The main reason for that is because the missiles didn't even fly far enough for our ABM systems to have a test-toast. Instead, they malfunctioned and blew up 40 or so seconds into flight - think back to your younger years, when the Challenger blew up over Florida. That was around 2 minutes into flight. For a missile of this size, it's the equivalent of trying to dunk a ball, but only getting 6 inches off the ground. Oh, and the diminuitive size of Kim Jong Il means that North Korea would be getting 6 inches off the ground as Earl Boykins. It's a failure, and a big one. Of course, they'll be back, but for now it's not such a bad deal. We're up to our ears in other, more pressing issues, and if Pyongyang can just sit tight until we've dealt with Hezbollah, Iran, and all those other madmen, then it would really help us out of a jam.