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Sorry.

That is not the impression widely here in East Asia.

The impression is that Bush and his team got rolled, and was considerably distracted over the last five years with other matters, subsequently the DPRK was able to stall things out during the very ill-advised Six Party Talks charade, in classic DPRK fashion, and to move forward with their nuke and intermediate/long range warhead program, then use the plutonium production and extraction as a bargaining chip (which they did not have to such extent eight years ago), to finally sue for peace and get their fuel, rice, electricity from the West. Bush is leaving office in 15 months, Kim Jong il's regime will still be in place. You tell me who "won"?

The result was a total capitulation of the "correct" initial Bush approach embodied in his "Axis of Evil" speech, which decayed and eroded over time. Sorry, but this is the reality.

Things were clearly done on North Korea under this Administration that NONE of us would have sanctioned were it to occur under a Clinton regime.

The nuclear threat is and has been the serious one from N Korea, we enetered this administration with teh discovery of a secret N Korean nuke program and maybe a nuke. There was not any immediate prospect of ending the N Korean regime, a result taht S Korea, for example, opposes (unfortunately). So ending a N Korean Nuke program would be a major accomplishment.

That is if it happens and depending on what we give in return. However, N Korea never got the reactors that Clinton agreed to. Now you are saying that N Korea only wanted rice and fuel?

I don't think Bush was distracted, but S Korea certainly was not a plus during this period.

Sorry but Bush has always demanded multilateral negotiations with NK and has always been reviled for doing so in the liberal press. His reasons for demanding multilateral negotiations and NK’s reasons for avoiding them are the ones I’ve mentioned before. This is a diplomatic coup for the US. Unlike under all past presidencies during the past 3 decades, if Kimmy boy backs away from this one, he will have to deal with not only the US, but China, and Russia.