<p>Solutions? Got it. They’ve got the nuke, just like Pakistan, China, India, Israel (and perhaps some countries unacknowledged). Now treat 'em like that. Bring them into the world community. If they are hungry, feed 'em - no questions asked, and without ties. American farmers will rub their hands in glee. A population less hungry will eventually begin to think about why they were hungry to begin with. They ALWAYS do.</p>
<p>This has nothing to do with the Dems or with Clinton (knew he’d come up.) The mendacious had 6 years, control of both houses of Congress, control over all diplomacy, and they fell asleep at the wheel.</p>
<p>A more complete narrative: <a href=“http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15175633/site/newsweek/[/url]”>http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15175633/site/newsweek/</a>
On Sept. 19, 2005, North Korea signed a widely heralded denuclearization agreement with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang pledged to “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.” In return, Washington agreed that the United States and North Korea would “respect each other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations.”</p>
<p>Four days later, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sweeping financial sanctions against North Korea designed to cut off the country’s access to the international banking system, branding it a “criminal state” guilty of counterfeiting, money laundering and trafficking in weapons of mass destruction.</p>
<p>The Bush administration says that this sequence of events was a coincidence. Whatever the truth, I found on a recent trip to Pyongyang that North Korean leaders view the financial sanctions as the cutting edge of a calculated effort by dominant elements in the administration to undercut the Sept. 19 accord, squeeze the Kim Jong Il regime and eventually force its collapse.
<p>Let’s start with what the so-called president should have done: not invaded Iraq, which has tied up a disproportional amount of our military while increasing, not decreasing, terrorist threats. And leaving us damned few options in that arena.</p>
<p>My assessment of threats to the US are:</p>
<ol>
<li> Pakistan</li>
<li> Afghanistan</li>
<li> North Korea</li>
<li> Al Qaeda</li>
<li> Iran</li>
</ol>
<p>Iraq doesn’t even crack the top five and the list would have not been significantly different in March 2003. This NK test takes place in the context of a looming failure in Iraq (Sen. John Warner is going off the reservation after the elections and it appears that James Baker is following) and a process of benign relative neglect that’s putting us on the road to failure in Afghanistan.
See <a href=“http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1009/dailyUpdate.html[/url]”>http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1009/dailyUpdate.html</a>
</p>
<p>Options now? I dunno. A nuclear strike on the NK nuclear facilities? They’re famed for tunnelling, it’s almost a fetish with them, and they’re probably deep enough that they’re safe even from nukes. Which our using would constitute a wonderful political coup, yes?</p>
<p>Going in on the ground to eradicate the facilities? Damned expensive in terms of blood and political consequences and we’re kinda short of units right now due to this president’s ineptitude. Too bad we can’t re-wind the tape and get a do-over.</p>
<p>ZM, the choice between the NK whackjob and our whackjob, their madman and our madman, is not the kind of “choice” that I endorse. We, the citizens of the United States, are a lot less safe than when Bush came into power.<br>
You want to talk about power, talk about all the Republicans who have swallowed and moved in robotic lockstop with the administration, all in the name of preserving power. The lack of check on this arrogant administration has led to just more arrogance and overreaching. It’s a political crime and it has a political punishment: loss of power. If there’s any justice, the likes of Bush will never see power again and the institutions that put him there will resemble Carthage after Rome finished the Punic Wars, the earth salted and no two stones left standing together. </p>
<p>ZM, please don’t speak to me of political oneupsmanship…I refer to you to all the political advantage that Bush & Co. have used 9/11 and Iraq for. You don’t like how this fight is turningnow? Maybe the GOP shouldn’t have started it in the first place. I didn’t notice Republicans decrying the tactics then. They can pound sand now.</p>
<p>SJMom, you make the common GOP mistake: you think that we have anger and contempt for the policies because of Bush; it’s the other way around, we have anger and contempt of Bush because of the policies: ignorant, wrongheaded, morally bankrupt. Bush has led us to catastrophe, he’s leading us to catastrophe, he is a catastrophe. My grandchildren will be paying for his criminal ineptitude.</p>
<p>TheDad, I don’t think I’ve confused the causality here. I think that you, like many liberals, hate Bush to such a degree that you don’t care about anything else. You construe Bush’s policies as ignorant because of your dislike of the man. Even loyal Republicans don’t bear as much animosity toward Clinton.</p>
<p>I am not a Democrat, and I am not a liberal. And I don’t dislike Bush because he is ignorant. I dislike him because he doesn’t lie well enough, and has endangered my life and the life of my children and grandchildren, and those of millions of people around the globe. (Killed a bunch too, but then Clinton killed a lot more.)</p>
<p>SJMom: you are quite wrong about why I feel what I feel, why I think what I think. Please do not presume to tell me why I feel and think what I do. And I could get you an exceedingly long queue of “liberals”… a) I’m moderate tending towards hawkish on foreign policy b) it’s not an epithet…who would tell you the same thing.</p>
<p>As for Republicans and Clinton, spare the hypocrisy. If Clinton walked on water, their talking points would say he couldn’t swim. If he healed the lame, they would have investigated him for practicing medicine without a license. </p>
<p>And whatever his flaws, which were not insignificant, he was a much better man, a much better president, than the cipher in the Oval Office today. And it wasn’t until Bush that “bi-partisan” meant “capitulate and do it my way.” I truly hope that when the Dems take back the House that the retributions are relatively restrained and that they set a much better tone than the GOP has for the past six years. The Senate may have to wait until 2008. Maybe, maybe not.</p>
<p>The fact of the matter, Abu-al-TheDad, is that the situation in Korea was a done deal by 2000, as Madeline Albright’s Surrender Tour in October 2000 demonstrated. You sound more and more like a fanatic these days. What has happened to your once-droll prose? I have no doubt that your side will come up with some more IEDs as the month progresses, but just remember that Karl still has the ability to call in an airstrike or two.</p>
<p>“ZM, please don’t speak to me of political oneupsmanship…I refer to you to all the political advantage that Bush & Co. have used 9/11 and Iraq for. You don’t like how this fight is turningnow? Maybe the GOP shouldn’t have started it in the first place. I didn’t notice Republicans decrying the tactics then. They can pound sand now.”</p>
<p>I wasn’t referring to the actions of a political party, but, rather to the statements of individual human beings, so I don’t see the comparison. But I still love you!!!</p>
<p>As per usual, those who do not toe the GOP party line, who might criticize the horrific and mendacious foreign policy debacles of this administration are called names…</p>
<p>“Those awful traitorous Democrats!” </p>
<p>“They just want to see the US fall apart and fail.”</p>
<p>“They are so mean and terrible to badmouth our wonderful King George!”</p>
<p>The mess in the middle east is horrific. Anyone who doesn’t see it is sincerely blind. I don’t blame Bush for everything wrong in the world, nor do I want (though I do expect ) the US to fall like Rome. However, Bush has absolutely, unequivocably endangered ALL of our lives with his cowboy antics. Unfortunately, foreign policy is not a rodeo, and we will all pay for his attempt at showmanship.</p>
<p>"There are nukes and then there real NUKES. "</p>
<p>This is a new one. </p>
<p>Curiously, it is actually easier to make the bigger ones than the little nukes, as long as you can get enough fissile material. And it is pretty clear that their plutonium extraction is going pretty well. If it is a plutionium weapon they set off, they’ve mastered the tough parts, having a neutron source and getting it to implode.</p>
That was precisely the philosophy of the Clinton Administration. Clinton wanted to make a good faith jesture by giving North Korean nuclear technology. What Clinton did not realize was that North Korea viewed his proposal as a “Sucker is born every minute” instead of welcome into the World community. The Bush administration has offered North Korea the same deal and security guarantees but with the requirement that North Korea give up its nuclear program and the world is able to verify this. The North Korean leader is not rational or logical. He is paranoid. How about offering a new solution?</p>
<p>As to those of you who critize the Bush administation, none of you have anything intelligent to officer. All Bush has done with North Korea is talk to them non-stop. He has not made any mistakes with respect to North Korea. I also find it interesting, you also fail to condemn the Clinton administration for giving North Korean nuclear technology.</p>
<p>In a 2001 CNN article, Kim Jong Il is described in dramatically different and even opposite terms: A child raised in hardship but also in luxury and privilege, an unstable madman who is not crazy, a cognac-swilling playboy with a genius IQ, and a pragmatist who watches Daffy Duck cartoons. The one description that everyone seems to agree on is that he is short-tempered and ruthless. He may also be popular:
<p>Come on, razor, live up to your screen name and apply some of that sharp reasoing here.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Do you really think GWB tried to engage them by branding them as an Axis of evil? What a way to start a conversation.</p></li>
<li><p>Tell me ONE constructive thing GWB has done with N. Korea, beyond making demands that they disarm first, then we’ll talk?</p></li>
<li><p>If Clinton was so ineffective, why did it take 6 more years to get to this point? </p></li>
</ul>
<p>No, the truth is GWB was too busy chasing will-o-wisp WMDs in Iraq to give a s**t about what was happening in N. Korea. He did not care. Why I don’t know, although I can guess.</p>