Regards, Ivan
Posted on 05/30/2005 10:17:05 PM PDT by MadIvan
Vice-president Dick Cheney stepped up America's war of words with North Korea yesterday by calling it a police state run by an irresponsible leader indifferent to the fate of his malnourished people.
His words came just 48 hours after the Pentagon announced that it was sending 15 F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter-bombers to South Korea, a US ally, for an undetermined period. The aircraft crews, trained to seek out targets with precision weapons, needed to familiarise themselves with the Korean terrain, the air force said.
Speaking to CNN in an interview broadcast last night, Mr Cheney described North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, as "one of the world's more irresponsible leaders".
Mr Cheney went on to accuse Kim of running "a police state" and of maintaining one of the most heavily militarised societies in the world.
He said most North Koreans lived "in abject poverty and stages of malnutrition". The statement appeared to be a reference to the North Korean famine, widely blamed on the country's communist elite, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
The vice-president continued: "He doesn't take care of his people at all, and he obviously wants to throw his weight around and become a nuclear power."
The nuclear ambitions of the impoverished state were "a major problem", he said. Washington was "continuing to work very hard" to get the six-party talks going again.
But Pyongyang would need to "understand that they're not going to have normal relationships with the outside world in terms of commerce, industry and trade if they become a nuclear power".
The vice-president's words appeared to be an attempt to toughen the administration's policy on North Korea.
America has warned its regional allies that spy satellites have detected possible preparations for Pyongyang's first nuclear weapons test, sending shudders through much of the region.
It has also quietly ended food aid to the regime amid suspicions that the North Koreans were using it to feed the country's elite.
The response from Pyongyang has, as always been fiery. Yesterday the state-controlled media criticised the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who earlier this year described North Korea as "an outpost of tyranny". Pyongyang has demanded an apology as a precondition for its return to the six-nation talks.
In its rant against Ms Rice, Radio Pyongyang suggested that having a woman in charge of American foreign policy was a weakness: "It's a sad house where the hen crows louder than the rooster", it stated.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
It was hardly a "tirade". Cheney was simply speaking the truth.
Ruh roe, raggy!
Meesa thinks Little Kimmie is about to be berry ronery.
Good, I hope we get the B-2's involved as well they carry more payload. :D
bttt
OH BOY Ivan he going be so roaney
The Daily Telegraph implies in its writing style that the facts Cheney points out aren't well-known. It's Cheney's "opinion" that NK is a "police state run by an irresponsible leader indifferent to the fate of his malnourished people," but nobody can really say for sure whether it is or not....
Don't these reporters do any research? Are they really ignorant of what's going on there? We in fact know very little of what's going on in NK, but we do know that the leader is messed up, and that the people are very hungry....
If someone in the 40's had said that Hitler was a tyrant who wanted to murder millions and was a danger to the world, would this have been considered a "tirade"? Don't think so.
First of all they have Nukes and while taking out N. Korea, S. Korea and Japan would fall under nuclear attack.
Once the Regime in N. Korea fell we would have to rebuild the infrastructure from ground up which would cost trillions of dollars. We can't afford that.
In the process we would have to deprogram the entire population of N. Korea who believe the leader is God.
And somehow, I do not think Red China would be all that amused with the US delivering a regime change to N. Korea.
One false move Kim Junkie and you're "fried wonton".
And so are our friends in Seoul.
Gonna be a cool summer..........
Besides, wasn't Cheney responding to attacks by NK last week?
It going be one crazy Hot Summer in Asia and Middle East we got Israelis going withdrawel perhaps from settlement good possibity Kim like do anything big on anniversary like good Communists
It going be one hellva of summer
Hey we have something make us think until NFL Football season
Works for me
this sort of commentary, along with publicizing the f-117's movment, is calculated PR, and only an element of what is really going on behind the scenes.
From what I have seen on the news, those rioting leftists in Seol aren't our friends. perhaps we should just pull out and let fat boy walk through the place for a while.
Yesterday the state-controlled media criticised the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who earlier this year described North Korea as "an outpost of tyranny". Pyongyang has demanded an apology as a precondition for its return to the six-nation talks.
In its rant against Ms Rice, Radio Pyongyang suggested that having a woman in charge of American foreign policy was a weakness: "It's a sad house where the hen crows louder than the rooster", it stated.
Lil Kim better be careful, that's our Secretary of State he's talking about.
And what is worse, we simply do not have the troops to be able to mount any further wars. Sometimes in my darker moments I think we would have been better off letting Saddam export oil (at least we'd get some and oil prices would be lower) and using the troops against a country with a real nuclear threat like Iran or North Korea.
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