North Korea praises Bush for use of 'Mr.'

AP ^ | 6/3/5 | BURT HERMAN

[SmithL]

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea gave rare praise to President Bush on Friday, welcoming his use of the honorific "Mr." when referring to leader Kim Jong Il and saying the softened tone could lead to its return to nuclear arms talks.

The United States wants the North to end its nuclear weapons development, and is working with China, Japan, Russia and South Korea to persuade Pyongyang to return to disarmament talks last held in June 2004. The North has stayed away from the table citing a "hostile" U.S. policy and claimed in February that it had nuclear weapons.

"If Bush's remarks put an end to the scramble between the hawkish group and the moderate group in the U.S., which has thrown the Korean policy into a state of confusion, it would help create an atmosphere of the six-party talks," an unnamed North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

At a Tuesday news conference, Bush defended his focus on using diplomacy to try to resolve the standoff.

"It's a matter of continuing to send a message to Mr. Kim Jong Il that if you want to be accepted by the neighborhood and be a part of ... those who are viewed with respect in the world, work with us to get rid of your nuclear weapons program," Bush said.

The North said Friday that it had noted Bush was reported as "politely addressing our headquarters of revolution," a reference to Kim.

"We will closely follow if his remarks would not change day and night as this happened in the past," the spokesman said.

The softer tone Friday from the North came a day after Pyongyang called Vice President Dick Cheney a "bloodthirsty beast" and said his recent comment that Kim was an "irresponsible" leader was another reason for it to stay away from the nuclear talks.

This week, the North also took a personal swipe at Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, using language laced with insults to imply she was controlling the White House. In the past, Pyongyang has also called Bush a "political imbecile" and "half-baked man."

The North has demanded an apology for Rice labeling the country one of the world's "outposts of tyranny" earlier this year.

Also Friday, the North again asked for the U.S. to make a "bold decision to withdraw the remark ... to remove the biggest hurdle lying in the way of resuming the six-party talks."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday that Washington would continue to try to solve the dispute through six-nation talks.

"Our policy is what it is, and it's well-known," Rumsfeld said at a meeting with Asian defense officials in Singapore.

Meanwhile, the U.S. ambassador to Japan said in Tokyo that a nuclear-armed North Korea would pressure Japan and South Korea to consider building their own atomic arsenals.

Ambassador Thomas Schieffer also cautioned that the North's return to the six-nation talks would be just the beginning of a long process to persuade it to abandon its weapons.

"We have to be very careful that getting North Korea back to the table does not become an end in itself," he said. "The six-party talks were meant to resolve a thorny issue - they weren't meant to be just an opportunity to talk about it endlessly and achieve nothing."

[sandbar]

Say "Mr" or we'll annihilate your entire country!! Say it! SAY IT!!

[Eric in the Ozarks]

You first, stud.

[Centurion2000]

Rent the unrated version for disgustingly hilarious puppet sex.

They have an unrated version?? I bought a copy at WalMart and was laughing my butt off at the puppet sex scenes they left in.

[NJ_gent]

Actually, the Agreed Framework wasn't all that terrible an agreement in my opinion. When you look over what was on paper combined with what was known at the time, it's a pretty decent agreement for both sides. What went wrong was that North Korea lied constantly, never really upheld its side of the agreement, and President Clinton did little more than sweep their non-compliance under the rug. That set the stage for the next President to have to deal with an almost certainly nuclear-armed North Korea. Unfortunately, President Bush has made no more progress than President Clinton thus far. Some rhetoric and talking doesn't go very far when we're reducing troop presence in South Korea and tying ourselves up in wars across the globe while continuing to allow NATO commitments to sap the strength and manpower of the US military.

In 2003, we could have crushed North Korea and removed a true nuclear threat from the globe while bringing all of Korea closer to the US. Now, we're just hoping they don't decide to start obliterating our allies in the area.

[Yardstick]

"That's DOCTOR Jong-Il to you, Pwesident Bush! I didn't spend eight years in Evil Dictator school to be called 'mister,' thank you very much."

Vive FR! At least one hearty chuckle a day, guaranteed.

[tumblindice]

Can't wait `til Kim finds out our president actually called him 'Mr. Sparkle':
I'm disrespectful to dirt.
Can you see I am serious!
Get out of my way, all of you.
This is no place for loafers.
Join me or die.
Can you do any less?
For lucky best wash, use Mr. Sparkle.

[melancholy]

I called you Mr., you call me Uncle!

[xusafflyer]

The Walmart DVD is the theater version. The unrated version at Best Buy and other places is the original version before the MPAA got it. Not much different but the puppet sex is disturbing.

[dhs12345]

Oh, but it is going to cost you. Billions in aid to prop up a dying regime should about cover it.

IMO, that's what they have wanted all along... to extort aid from the U.S. They conned us under Clinton and we won't fall for that twice.

[Alcibiades]

Couldn't finish the movie. The bad guys were hilarious but the good guys just weren't that interesting. Plus my kids were around. Barely made it to the part where he flushes Hans Blix into the shark tank.

[JohnnyZ]

"Our policy is what it is, and it's well-known," Rumsfeld said

Lol, Rummy's great....

[Max Flatow]

My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a 15 year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims, like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy - the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical: summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring, we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds. Pretty standard, really.

[B4Ranch]

Mr. Kim Jong Il

Never mistake good manners for good will.

[HardStarboard]

>>>That problem is also solved… So why aren’t we going in>?<<<

There is the small matter of 100,000 NK artillery pieces just across the DMZ zeroed on Seoul and the South Korean industrial areas and our treaty to come to the South's defense if attacked.

And we haven't mention NK tanks yet. Just taking out their nuke sites wouldn't accomplish anything except to insure war.

The only sane solution is to force NK's collapse from within; covert action coupled with massive psychological pressure on "The Il One" publicising failures of his regime will eventually make them fold.

[libs_kma]

"Perhaps we can politely ask Kim Il Jong to get rid of his nuclear weapsons? (Please, pretty please, Mr. Jong?...)"

I say skip that and go straight for the secret weapon. Let Maddy Halfbright give lil Kim another koochie-koochie dance.

[MeanWestTexan]

Given NK gasoline/diesel issue, I would consider their tanks a fixed artillery piece by day 3 of any war.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

The softer tone Friday from the North came a day after Pyongyang called Vice President Dick Cheney a "bloodthirsty beast"

Ahem. MR. bloodthirsty beast.

[AFPhys]

ROTFL --- maroons

[SkyPilot]

I love that scene.

[gogogodzilla]

What the North Koreans fail to realize is that the MR. that President Bush used in referring to Kim Jong-Il was not the normal Mr. we have come to expect.

Nope, it was a special MR.

An acronym that is short for: (M)ad (R)at.

So what President Bush really called Kim Jong-Il was:

Mad Rat Kim Jong-Il

And to think, those stoopid, stooopid North Koreans fell for it. Bwahahaha.

:-)