Posted on 05/20/2005 4:50:18 AM PDT by Brilliant
The Bush administration has halted all food-aid shipments to North Korea so far this year and may not provide any through the end of 2005, according to officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The sharp curtailment in assistance comes as the dispute between Washington and Pyongyang over nuclear arms has intensified, with U.S. officials voicing concern this month that North Korea may soon test a weapon.
Administration officials said there was no link between falling food aid and rising diplomatic tensions, attributing the curbs instead to an inability to monitor how the assistance is being used, as well as new, competing demands from famine-ravaged countries in Africa. They also say it's possible food-aid shipments could be resumed later this year...
Whatever the reasons for the shift, the cut-off could prove destabilizing to North Asia. Already, aid officials worry about a potential return to famine-like conditions the country experienced a decade ago -- a tragedy that could send hundreds of thousands more refugees streaming into China and South Korea...
Since the nuclear dispute broke out in October 2002, however, the Bush administration has significantly reduced the amount of food aid delivered to North Korea. Last year's total was 50,000 tons, which included wheat, maize, beans and vegetable oil. The administration cut off its monthly shipments of 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil to North Korea in 2002, which hit the country's industry hard and undercut its ability to raise foreign exchange through exports.
The Bush administration's moves raise the question of whether food aid is being used as a weapon to pressure North Korean leader Kim Jong Il over his nuclear-weapons program. U.S. officials have consistently maintained that Washington was keeping a sharp divide between humanitarian and security issues in its dealings with North Korea...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
ping
The food isn't getting to the people like it's supposed to. In a documentary I saw a while ago, it showed the food being sold on the black market thanks to North Korean soldiers. Children were seen roaming through the market place starving and picking of little pieces of food out of the mud and eating it.
Socialism is hughly successful, these nations have trillion$ in exports yearly. Ask any RAT, he'll tell ya. Check the Sun, AM gab fests, they know, and they'll let you know.
F*** em. The sooner that places falls apart the better off the ordinary person there will be.
F.U.N.K
Why should we send them food anyway? None of it goes to the people. All we are doing is feeding their army. Aren't we technically still at war with them?
Yes we are.
Like the food from the US military commissaries and items from the military exchanges in south korea. These items are sold on the black-market everyday for profit and the ROK customs aids and abetts this crap. As to north korea, let them roast kim il jong on a spit, his ted kennedy looking body could feed a thousand starving commies. NSNR
Until the are eradiacated, we will always be at war with those commies. They are the democrats ally in their hate and try to make America fall. NSNR
It would just go to feed the N Korean military.
The very idea that we should ever send food aid to one of our nations primary enemies is beyond ridiculous. Every nickel's worth of food aid we provide is just that much more money the North Koreans can divert into their weapons procurement and development programs.
And as far as the starving North Korean people go - I feel sorry for them, but at the end of the day it is they who allowed this insane cult of a government to become entrenched. The North Korean people will rise up and remove this marxist regime, or they will continue to live in slavery and terror.
Longbow
I'm sure that's what Bush is thinking. He probably used the lack of monitoring thing as an excuse to cut it off.
The problem is that with 1/2 of our population consisting of liberal ideologues, he can't come right out and say that's what he's thinking without creating an unnecessary fuss.
That's the dirty little secret with U.S. aid. Almost all of it goes to corrupt tin-pot dictators. Whatever's leftover is bogged down in bureaucracy.
Oh no- we shouldn't do that. Dr. Evil may get real mad and threaten to use a nuke again. China will of course mediate yet protect their protégé and we don’t really want any war. So I guess we’ll just keep feeding and fueling them as they build more missiles and nukes so that they can what? Of course, threaten us with a nuclear war if we don't deliver rice and fuel.
Subsidizing your existence as a nation through extortion, weird situation!
But what feasibly can we do?????? Really? I gave this a little thought. It seems that when you look at the big picture and add in China, Taiwan, Japan, nukes, S. Korea and all the other variables/factors to the nations involved including us, the potential size of conflict, WMD used, collateral damage, difficulty of our militarily subduing N. Korea, UN, support from other allies etc…… it appears that Dr. Evil will no kidding get his way. We and several others in the area will play along as he extorts his existence, lives in pleasure houses with young girls, wears platform shoes and a Dr. Evil suit, surfs the World Wide Web which is only available to him and a few others, as he has a perfect communist village on the boarder with S. Korea; showing us how great it is in N. Korea, build the largest flag in the world which is on their boarder, and have only missiles as their export product. This is crazy. This is no joke on the level with “Austin Powers” (The movie).
Anyone out there with a plausible idea of how to tackle this one? I just don’t see an answer. The simple answer of "just cut him off" don’t seem like it’s realistic, nor does a first strike to take out his nukes. China is no real help here. S. Korea would get desemated in an attack. The UN is no help..........Where do we go from here?
Red6
wait until he dies and hope his successor is sane.
"The Bush administration has halted all food-aid shipments to North Korea so far this year and may not provide any through the end of 2005, according to officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development."
Let me get this straight.
North Korea is part of the axis of evil.
They have been threatening us for decades.
Their latest nutjob dictator is building a nuclear bomb and threatening us and our allies with it.
And we have been FEEDING them??
This is insane.
Where's the outrage from Galloway! We're starving those poor Koreans! /s
Why did it take this long ?
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