After seeing Eric Thim ("North Korea lacks ability to nuke continental U.S.," Oct. 23) chastise Steven Jennings, I couldn't help but point out that they are both wrong. Stepping back beyond the general public's two-week memory span, and apparently that of the fearmongers on TV, you should recall that one of Kim Jong-il's test warheads has already hit American soil.

While it is true that Pyongyang has not yet conducted a second nuclear test, the fact that a North Korean warhead was recovered in Alaska was mainstream news in March of 2003. The story didn't get much play here domestically, but news agencies around the world covered it, most notably the Japanese and South Korean newspapers.

The former Japanese foreign minister, Taro Nakayama, in a report to the South Korean National Assembly, stated that "According to a U.S. document, the last piece of a missile warhead fired by North Korea was found in Alaska." He went on to convey his concerns that Washington had underestimated North Korea's nuclear capabilities.

This overlooked portion of world history sits in stark contrast to Eric Thim's random claim that "North Korea does not have the capability to strike the United States with a conventional missile."

Although, to be fair, that may not have been a random claim of Mr Thim's. He's probably just blindly parroting the utterances of some great scholar like Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly.

If Kim Jong-il could reach the United States in 2003, he can surely do it again in 2006.