I don't think he visited as a part of a school trip. As I read the info, he embarked on a side trip while studying abroad in China.

He had planned to study abroad in his third year of college in China and heard about Chinese travel companies offering trips to North Korea. His parents were OK with it.

 

"Otto's a young, thrill-seeking, great kid who was going to be in that part of the world for a college experience," Fred Warmbier explained.

 

Young Pioneer Tours described itself as providing "budget tours to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from." They also included Iran, Iraq and former Soviet countries.

 

He booked a five-day tour for late December 2015 and was in the process of leaving on Jan. 2 2016, to return to China when he was detained.

 

I am all for human rights, but this does not warrant military response.

All...

 

Do you think we should send our military to all countries that have bad human right records?

:popcorn:

Do you think we should send our military to all countries that have bad human right records?

 

Africans really really really want to know.

What do we do about the other Americans that are reportedly being held? If we do any strikes those three are likely to be killed(if they haven't already).

 

As cold as this sounds Otto took a chance and lost. He made a very poor decision. He knew or should have known the risk he was taking to go to a country led by an unstable person.

 

I hope others learn from his mistake. But I'm not sending those others to battle. Air strikes that have little chance of injury of loss of like? OK. Anything more than that? I'd vote no.

 

Work progressively to get them out of there. Likely that won't happen, but this instance does give us some leverage in that aspect. In my honest opinion, North Korea let Warmbier come back home for one of two reasons. One, they knew he was about to die and didn't want that on their hands due to possible retaliation. Two, they didn't want to spend the money needed to keep him alive. Essentially (in my opinion) they used him as a pawn and once they realized that the pawn wasn't going to make it, they sacrificed the pawn.

 

He did make a poor choice, I would never go to North Korea. But he did, with his classmates. Regardless of whether it was a bad decision or not, he didn't deserve to die. Even if he did steal the poster.

 

Air strikes are what I was speaking of earlier when I said that North Korea could be hurt without a single soldier stepping foot on their soil. What are they going to do about it? Fire off a Nuke that we shoot down?

I wonder if he tried to hang himself in prison and that is what caused the lack of oxygen. It seems more plausible​ than botulism. But I don't know why NK would change any facts.

Kid took down a flag, gets basically tortured to death.

 

I'm not sure going to war is the answer, but I'll support just about any response to those jack wads in NK.

 

I disagree that military response is the answer.

 

I don't know what the answer is to this but something has to be done, doesn't it? I keep looking for more international outrage at this incident and there doesn't seem to be much. That concerns me and puzzles me.

 

I'm not sending men and women in harm's way over this. The kid went voluntarily to a country that was dangerous. Sadly, he paid the ultimate price. The State Department has said they cannot guarantee safe returns for Americans and try to discourage them from going. Had he gone over there in an official capacity and they did this then I'd be open to the discussion.

 

There may not be a good response. I'd think putting pressure on China may help but I doubt we'll do that.

 

No good answer but putting lives at risk in a country that has nuclear weapons over a poor decision by a kid isn't worth it to me.

 

Taking no action puts us back into the Obama age and puts more lives of work. Our enemies need to fear us.

I wonder if he tried to hang himself in prison and that is what caused the lack of oxygen. It seems more plausible​ than botulism. But I don't know why NK would change any facts.

 

To me botulism seems more plausible, although I don't believe it was botulism that caused this at all. What makes more sense to me is that North Korea used him as a guinea pig for medical research. Once they put him in a coma and realized they couldn't bring him out of it, they needed to send him back here before he died in their custody. If he tried to hang himself I'm sure that North Korea would have said that was what happened. Instead they said he contracted botulism and then went into a coma after taking a sleeping pill... Doesn't sound like he attempted to commit suicide to me.

I wonder if he tried to hang himself in prison and that is what caused the lack of oxygen. It seems more plausible​ than botulism. But I don't know why NK would change any facts.

Are you saying that you can't imagine why NK would lie?

Alot of liberal media outlets deleting articles written in the past today. Huffington Post deleted an article blaming growing up in white privilige for his arrest. Slate and Ebony wrote similar articles.

Do you think we should send our military to all countries that have bad

human right records?

 

Your being obtuse now...That's a completely different scenario. I wouldn't be opposed to it though, it's a bit different than this scenario though so it would take more planning.

Alot of liberal media outlets deleting articles written in the past today. Huffington Post deleted an article blaming growing up in white privilige for his arrest. Slate and Ebony wrote similar articles.

I saw the piece from the Huffington Puffington Post. I had to read it twice to be sure that I wasn't missing a joke in it somewhere. Radicalism disguised as journalism.

Your being obtuse now...That's a completely different scenario. I wouldn't be opposed to it though, it's a bit different than this scenario though so it would take more planning.

 

Not being obtuse at all. You stated we should go because of human rights violations. I was clarifying to see how far you are wanting to go in the name of human rights.

The truth is that the US has rarely acted militarily over human rights violations in this world.

 

We never reacted to Rwanda where a million plus died.

 

We did act but very late in the Kosovo affair.

 

Cambodia was ignored. We talked about Iraq and the Kurds but did nothing until we wanted to invade. Central America is another place where we have turned our backs on despots before.

 

I too wish there was some way to punish North Korea and there may be. But in the current climate it needs to be backdoor and through maybe China who can probably pull off a coup better than any the US can accomplish.

Somalia was a military campaign based on human rights intervention. We all know how that went.