http://www.nicedoggie.net/2006/
Blast From The Past
by Emperor Misha I
(14 votes, average: 4.43 out of 5)
Loading ... (14 votes, average: 4.43 out of 5) Loading ...Posted on 10/17/2002 11:53:47 AM PDT by backhoe
(14 votes, average: 4.43 out of 5) Loading ...Nukes, NORKS, Reid, Masturgate, China, Gay bashers, Islamic Jihad....Atlas Rants
Iran blames U.S. for N. Korea nuke test
Mainstream Media and Democrats Blame Bush for North Korea
Kerry blasts Bush N.Korea policy
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., blasts the Bush's policies on North Korea, telling [al] Reuters
From John Fund, Political Journal (PAID only)
The Gay Republican-Kim Jong Il Connection
Politics is all about timing. Apparently, the liberals behind Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the group that received information about Mark Foley's sexual instant messages as far back as April, originally planned to unleash its blockbuster a bit later in the 2008 election cycle. The American Spectator reports that a political consultant with ties to the Democratic National Committee told the magazine: "I'm hearing the Foley story wasn't supposed to drop until about ten days out of the election. It was supposed to be the coup de grace, not the first shot."
But as another Democratic operative told the magazine, the political climate at the end of September was suddenly turning ominous. "Bush's national security speeches were getting traction beyond the base, gas prices were dropping, economic outlook surveys were positive. Republicans were back to [holding enough House] seats for a 15-seat majority. In the Senate, it looked like a wash." All that may have played a role in prompting Democratic partisans to speed up the use of opposition research on Mr. Foley that had been put aside for later in the campaign. "Republicans had to have known we'd be looking to change the national debate," says a House Democrat leadership aide.
Check out my North Korea post here (watch the video)
The David Zucker Albright ad (flagged by YouTube , of course)
UPDATE: Strasphere has more here on the party of Obstruction and Personal Destruction;
The WaPo seems to be trying to get ahead of some coming news by admitting they dealt with a democrat operative peddling the Foley story and used a Democrat Page source who was interested in affecting the coming elections
Between WaPo and Harpers we don't need much more evidence of Democrat dirty tricks - do we?
Commentary has retrieved a set of timely articles on North Korea and nuclear geopolitics from its archives and posted them (in PDF) on its homepage. The articles include essays by Frank Gaffney, Robert Kagan & Gary Schmitt, Gabriel Schoenfeld, Joshua Muravchik and Arthur Waldron. Davi Bernstein of Commentary writes: "With the current and increasing uncertainty about the region’s fate -- fraught with implications for the world’s democratic powers -- and the menace of a nuclear Iran, these pieces are more timely than ever."
UPDATE: On a related note, Daniel Freedman asks: "Will Israel bomb Iran?"
My earlier posts on North Korea has created a debate about when the Kim regime began its cheating on the 1994 Agreed Framework. This has taken up a large part of the comments thread on John McCain's guest post from yesterday. The Brookings Institution, hardly a apologist for conservatives, makes the timeline pretty clear in a review that has plenty of sympathy for the Clinton administration (emphases mine):
When entering office, President Bush understandably wanted to revise the Clinton administration's approach to North Korea. The latter had a number of important accomplishments over roughly a five-year stretch from 1994 to 1999, but it had stalled by 2000.The Clinton administration helped produce the important 1994 Agreed Framework, under which North Korea effectively froze its major nuclear programs and promised effectively to undo whatever nuclear weapons progress it had earlier made at its small research reactor (the same one now at issue). At the time, the United States and allies South Korea and Japan were accused of giving in to North Korean blackmail, but the deal they signed was a smart one: energy in exchange for energy and nonproliferation.
Washington and its allies did not provide $4 billion in cash for Pyongyang, as often claimed by critics, but instead provided the dollar equivalent of a $4 billion value to produce energy that the Yongbyon nuclear facilities would otherwise have produced. If the deal had a flaw, it was that it left North Korea in possession of its spent fuel rods for too long, though it is not obvious that Pyongyang would have agreed to quickly surrender them. It also promised North Korea new types of nuclear reactors, purportedly—proliferation resistant—but not entirely free from the danger of having their spent fuel ultimately diverted to weapons purposes by the North Korean regime. But those reactors will almost certainly not be completed, so at worst the 1994 accord bought time.
Following the accord, a process of diplomacy and engagement began on the peninsula, involving summits between the leaders of the two Koreas, South Korean tourist visits into North Korea, and some reunions for families separated since the Korean War. After a North Korean long-range missile test over Japanese territory in 1998, Pyongyang adopted a moratorium on future testing, which remains in place (though it is scheduled to end in 2003).
This engagement process slowed by 2000. North Korea stalled on its promises to continue the series of summits and family exchanges. It provoked military clashes at sea. And meanwhile, though not known at the time to U.S. and allied intelligence, it had initiated a secret uranium enrichment program to add to its nuclear stockpile.
The Clinton administration continued to try to engage North Korea even as détente weakened. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright visited Pyongyang. President Bill Clinton considered a trip as well, if his administration had first been able to clinch a deal that would buy out North Korea's missile programs and end its missile exports in return for compensation worth perhaps several hundred millions dollars a year. ...
But this approach risked encouraging North Korea to use extortion as its main tool of interaction with the outside world. Moreover, a fix that did little to reform North Korea's economy would probably have proved only temporary, making it likely that Pyongyang would try to play a similar game at a later date with other weapons. And whatever one thinks of the Clinton approach, it clearly needed to be revised once the United States uncovered evidence of North Korea's illegal and illegitimate uranium enrichment program by the summer of 2002.
So Clinton, pressed by Jimmy Carter, cut a deal with the North Koreans that allowed them to keep their spent fuel rods -- the same material for which critics blame the Bush administration -- and then watched as they continued to test long-range missiles, which the Clinton administration apparently failed to address. They also left verification out of the Agreed Framework, which made the entire agreement a fantasy. Well before the end of the Clinton administration, the North Koreans had started clandestine uranium-enrichment for weapons. Meanwhile, Clinton and Albright did nothing, although they did consider engaging in bilateral talks once again in order to pay blackmail to Kim Jong-Il, stopping only because someone finally realized that Kim could simply play that game as often as he liked.
Brookings clearly shows that the Kim regime had started its violations well before Bush took office, and that Clinton's appeasement policy gave Kim the head start he needed to build nuclear weapons. Pyongyang went nuclear before Bush had a chance to take the oath of office, and the lack of American resolve allowed it to happen.
Japan has the power to prod the Chinese into doing what needs to be done to bring North Korea under control. That is because of a little known deal with the North Korean port of Rajin to act as a trans-shipment hub moving Chinese goods to Japan. If Japan maintains a ban on North Korean shipping, Chinese profits will suffer, and there lies the leverage needed to get China on board.
Andrew Coyne has a fine, if depressing, column on the North Korea developments:
We simply do not have the stomach for this fight. We will learn no lessons from this latest crisis, as we have learned none from those before. But be assured our adversaries will. In Iran, they are watching and learning from North Korea's example, as North Korea had learned from Iran's, each discovering in its turn that there are no checks on its ambitions, nor any world to stop it. And when, as the wisest heads advise, we abandon Afghanistan to the Taliban, and Iraq to al-Qaeda, the nuclear bazaar really will be open.
The South Koreans have pressed for engagement with North Korea and the Kim Jong-Il regime for decades. They have protested against the American military presence in their nation and tried to appease their northern neighbor into playing nice on the peninsula. Kim's latest nuclear test appears to have finally demonstrated the folly of that approach. In less than a week, public opinion has shifted profoundly towards a hard-line policy and even arming the South with nuclear weapons: South Korea got a dose of reality this week, and to their credit, they've recognized what many do not: appeasing dictators does not produce security. It only kicks the can down the road. Roh and his mentor Kim Dae-jung still believe in appeasement, which means that South Koreans have a choice to make about their own government and their own security -- and they know that time has almost run out. Posted by Captain Ed at 09:30 AM | Comments (6)
Nation Under a Nuclear Cloud/Racially Impure Children Killed... -- The North Korean regime is easily one of the most despicable on the face of the planet. And now these inhuman wackos have nukes. Yet the Left is content to appease them as per usual.
I kind of liked this one.
The North Korean nuclear test has been confirmed. (Hat tip: Dirk.) link: 47 comments " And with a Republican at the helm...we allow this. The borders are wide open and the nations enemies are allowed to have nukes."
For decades after the end of World War II, no one dared mention the acquisition of nuclear weapons in Japan. This taboo came from having suffered the only use of nuclear weapons in wartime as well as a revulsion to any offensive military capability after the atrocities Japan perpetrated in the first half of the 20th century. However, with Kim Jong-Il rattling his own nuclear saber, the taboo has begun to lift for the Japanese:If Japan does decide to go nuclear and take the shackles off their military, it will transform the balance of power in the region in a profound manner.Posted by Captain Ed at 06:10 AM | Comments (6) |
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