Pyongyang's Nuclear Blackmail

Wall Street Journal ^ | Oct 19, 2002 | Editorial

[The Raven]

North Korea's admission that it has a secret program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons seems to have startled people who like to think better of totalitarians. We view it as a U.S. opportunity to revise the now-obvious failure of its decade-long policy of appeasing nuclear blackmail. One mystery is why Pyongyang has decided to come clean now. The U.S. recently presented North Korean officials with new intelligence gathered over the summer, but their first reaction was to persist in lying. After a day and half they finally fessed up, adding that the 1994 Agreed Framework in which they had promised not to have such a program is now nullified. The suspicion has to be that the North now wants to sell the same horse twice, this time threatening to build actual bombs unless the U.S., Japan and South Korea pay an even larger bribe.

[The Raven]

There's a lesson here for those in denial on Iraq's motives and especially Iraq's nuke program. We can't wish away or inspect away WOMD from bad guys.

It appears we got some intelligence from Pakistan - perhaps we have similar info from them on Iraq.

[The Raven]

For you fans of the New York Times' foreign policy - here's Andrew Sullivan's Von Hoffman Award:

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"Diplomacy with North Korea has scored a resounding triumph. Monday's draft agreement freezing and then dismantling North Korea's nuclear program should bring to an end two years of international anxiety and put to rest widespread fears that an unpredictable nation might provoke nuclear disaster.

The U.S. negotiator Robert Gallucci and his North Korean interlocutors have drawn up a detailed road map of reciprocal steps that both sides accepted despite deep mutual suspicion. In so doing they have defied impatient hawks and other skeptics who accused the Clinton Administration of gullibility and urged swifter, stronger action. The North has agreed first to freeze its nuclear program in return for U.S. diplomatic recognition and oil from Japan and other countries to meet its energy needs. Pyongyang will then begin to roll back that program as an American-led consortium replaces the North's nuclear reactors with two new ones that are much less able to be used for bomb-making. At that time, the North will also allow special inspections of its nuclear waste sites, which could help determine how much plutonium it had extracted from spent fuel in the past." - The New York Times, wrong yet again, October 19, 1994.

(The Von Hoffman Award is named after famed commentator Nick von Hoffman who boldly predicted the collapse of the Afghan campaign the week Kabul fell. It's for truly bad judgment or prediction among the punditocracy.)

[VOA]

Actually I think North Korea has a valid reason for their nuclear weapons program.

They want to make sure that Roger Clinton will never assault their ears again.

(end sarcasm)

[CatoRenasci]

At what point does willful persistence in demonstrated folly become treason?

[F16Fighter]

"At what point does willful persistence in demonstrated folly become treason?"

We'll recognize it when William Jefferson Clinton himself, clad in orange prison-garb is being led ball and chain to the gangplank.

[The Raven]

[Backlash042]

The article said . .

"If Mr. Bush's inclusion of the North in his "axis of evil" means anything, Kim Jong Il and his government have to learn that their dangerous behavior won't be rewarded."

In my opinion, Bush's "Axis of Evil" rhetoric means absolutely nothing. He OK'd $95 Million to North Korea for their Nuclear Power program under the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework which was (I believe) started by the Clinton Administration. He stated it was "vital national security interests of the United States". Check out the following link. . . . it looks like certain anti-proliferation requirements were waived too.

Presidential Determination No. 2002-12, April 1, 2002
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/04/20020402-13.html

An earlier post about the 95 million Big Ones to Pyongyang http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/662232/posts

. . . and to think I was about to retire my Tinfoil hat when Bush took office! The more things change . . .

[Backlash042]

We'll recognize it when William Jefferson Clinton himself, clad in orange prison-garb is being led ball and chain to the gangplank.

As much as I would like to see that, my vision of Klinton's comeuppance always included a lampost . . . .

[Lion's Cub]

I can't disagree with the WSJ position. Appeasement never works.

[Semper Paratus]

Nuclear blackmail worked for them before.

[Paulie]

"We'll recognize it when William Jefferson Clinton himself, clad in orange prison-garb is being led ball and chain to the gangplank"

Can he be followed by his sob'n mo-fo wife?

[Tailgunner Joe]

bttt