Posted on 03/14/2002 8:04:12 AM PST by My Identity
No one on this thread seems to know that the deal Clinton reached is that we would pay billions in nuclear blackmail money and the North Koreans wouldn't use their nukes on us if we didn't bother them.
And we have paid billions in nuclear blackmail to NK.
The danger now is that Bush doesn't want to continue the payments.
There should be no question of that. Someone who has 1 or 3 or 20 nuclear warheads would have to be a fool to attack someone who can send back 1000 times that, and do it again, and again.
Now that Bush and the adults are running our foreign policy, I don't think SK will have any real troubles going to more aggressive relations with NK.
As it is, most of the world, which is basically Conservative, barring Europe, would at least sympathize with us. I blame this course of events on the Gramscian Marxists, i.e., the Democrats, idiot liberals, the sinners, who must necessarily propogate their sin in order to justify their continuation of such, to whom no standard is to low.
To be a democrat is akin to voting for heroin addicts who want their children to also be heroin addicts.
I happened to be in theater and have said ever since that Carter should have been tried for treason.
This is not my recollection. Can anyone resolve this issue?
If Carter went without authorization, then he would be a felon, just like Jesse Jackson, for violating 18 USC 953, which reads:
Sec. 953. - Private correspondence with foreign governments
"Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both."
Text: *EPF507
06/10/94 JIMMY CARTER TO VISIT SOUTH KOREA AND NORTH KOREA (Text: Announcement by Jimmy Carter 6/9) (200) Atlanta -- Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and his wife have been invited to visit South Korea and North Korea. They will go as private citizens.
Following is the text of the June 9 announcement: (begin text) STATEMENT FROM FORMER U.S.PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER ANNOUNCING HIS PLANS TO VISIT KOREA My wife Rosalynn and I will be visiting North Korea and South Korea next week. We will be going as private citizens, representing the Carter Center. The initiative for this trip has been from Korea, not Washington, and I will have no official status relating to the U.S. government. Since 1991, I have received numerous invitations to make this visit, and on one occasion sent a Carter Center advance team to both countries to prepare for my prospective trip. As is the case with other international issues since leaving the White House, I have attempted to stay adequately briefed on the Korean situation. My hope is to discuss some of the important issues of the day with leaders in the area.
(Emphasis mine)
Freelance diplomacy
That was the situation when Carter called President Bill Clinton on June 1, 1994, to express his concern about the crisis. The White House arranged for Amb. Robert Gallucci to go to Carter's home in Plains, Georgia, to brief the former president on June 5. Gallucci, who had been trying without success to put more American give into the diplomatic give-and-take, recited the history of the diplomatic effort in some detail, including the administration's internal differences. Far from mollifying Carter, this meeting convinced him of "the seriousness of the problem" and the need to communicate directly with Kim Il Sung-"the only person in North Korea who could change the course of events." After the briefing Carter sent a letter to President Clinton saying he intended to go to North Korea.
To North Korea, which had just been denied a meeting with an assistant secretary of state, a visit by a former president, especially one who had tried to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula when he was in office, was a token of American respect. Carter was someone Kim Il Sung could do business with.
To the Clinton administration, the Carter mission was a gamble. If he freelanced, he could always be disowned, but not without political repercussions. Even if he succeeded, the administration would be open to criticism by Republicans and South Koreans who disparaged Carter's willingness to take risks for peace. Yet turning down the former president was also risky, especially if it came to be portrayed publicly as a missed opportunity to avoid war. In the end Carter won Clinton's assent.
Carter flew to Washington June 10. He was met at the airport by National Security Adviser Anthony Lake and National Security Council staff member Daniel Poneman. Lake tried to make clear, says a top official, that "Carter's role was to offer [the North Koreans] a way out. It was not to offer them a new American policy that turned everything around." Lake told Carter that he had no authority to speak for the United States, that he was going, in Carter's words, "without any clear instructions or official endorsement."
Carter then received another lengthy briefing from Gallucci and others. It covered the technical issues-what was permitted under the nonproliferation treaty and what was not, where the North Korean program stood--and differing views on the relative importance of ascertaining how much plutonium the North may have reprocessed in the past or curtailing its current program. It also dealt with whether Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il was running things in Pyongyang.
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