Say Anything Blog

Well of course.  We had a deal with the N. Koreans not to make Nukes and they were sticking to it and the monitoring.  One of the first things Bush did when he “gained” office was to breach that deal. 

Think he was trying to start a war or was he just stupid?

I came across this interesting article about Bill Richardson’s chats with the North Koreans...it certainly seems like some opportunities were missed. Like James Baker says, it just goes to show how important diplomacy is and it also reminds us how the current Administration has never grasped that fact.

"New Year’s Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.” - James Agate

texxs,

How in the hell did Bush renege on any deal? It continues to amaze me that the hand wringing, bed wetting leftie types blame Bush for everything under the sun. Your hero Slick Willie Clinton sold them the technology that made this issue possible. Remember? Of course not. Facts are incovenient things.

Keep blaming Bush, though. Squeal that song loud enough and maybe, just maybe even you’ll begin to believe it.

The future ain’t what it used to be.....

What a cute couple, they’ll be so happy together.

Texxs:  North Korea reneged on the deal prior to Bush assuming office.  You need to do some research before you repeat lies that you’ve heard.  Unless of course you don’t care.

[W]hat you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

The Democrats claim that we had a great deal working on North Korea until Bush came along. However . . .

North Korea breached their agreement and began stockpiling fissile material in 1998 - intelligence estimates state that they could have had a working weapon by 2000 while Clinton was still in office.

What clause allows the North Koreans to back out of the Agreed Framework, anyway?  Was there a clause in there somewhere that states ‘if a Republican president takes office, North Korea has the right to tear up this agreement? ‘

The Democrats have to accept blame here for paying nuclear blackmail to a vicious tyrant, and for teaching Kim that being a bad actor pays off big time.

Blaming Bush for this just shows how utterly clueless they are about how the world really works.

Bush I: one to two bombs’ worth of plutonium

Clinton: zero plutonium

Bush II: 4-6 nuclear weapons’ worth of plutonium and counting

Between December 2002 and January 2003, North Korea ejected IAEA inspectors and announced its withdrawal from the Non Proliferation Treaty. [Arms Control Today, July/August 2006]

Ah yes, just because Bush was president, North Korea had the right to eject inspectors and withdraw from the treaty!

Sure, that makes sense . . . if you suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome.

It’s all America’s fault! Not the poor, hassled little dictator’s fault.

I am more concerned about north Dakota and its dictator John Hoeven.

woof,

The psycho troll doll that runs North Korea his generals didn’t have the time to manufacture the bomb-grade plutonium during the Clinton presidency. The technology was hot off the press. Clinton’s press. He sold them the stuff, remember? Damn, there are those pesky facts again.

The future ain’t what it used to be.....

What is wrong with you guys?  I’m not a democrat!  I used to be a republican before I learned how bad for a merica they are (Dems too!).  We did have a treaty with the N Koreans.  We paid them money and installed US monitors in their country they didn’t work on any nuclear weapons program. When Bush was placed in office he “dissolved” the treaty.  Ask him, he’ll admit it.

That’s the facts.
Not the stuff you hear on Fox news and Rush Limbaugh.

What clause allows the North Koreans to back out of the Agreed Framework, anyway?  Was there a clause in there somewhere that states ‘if a Republican president takes office, North Korea has the right to tear up this agreement?

North Korea reneged on the deal prior to Bush assuming office.

Clinton gave them the stuff they needed.  That was the genesis of what happened yesterday.  Get over it.

The only legitimate role of government with regard to economics is to prevent fraud and provide a remedy- civil and criminal penalties- in case of fraud.

People have the mistaken notion that the free market has no rules.  But it most certainly does.  All our problems are due to government meddling.

Clinton didn’t sell North Korea nuclear power plant material in 2000.  It was sold to the North Koreans by a company called ABB, a Swiss-multinational company.  Donald Rumsfeld was on the Board of ABB during that time.  It was a $200 Million contract that was part of the 1994 agreement between the US and North Korea that was an effort to end North Korea’s nuclear ambition.  Nobody in the Clinton White House renegged on the deal struck in 1994.  The deal was broken after George Bush came into office.

In 1998, U.S. intelligence discovered a secret complex used to develop nuclear weapons in violation of the Agreed Framework.

That’s right - North Korea completely breached the agreement long before George Bush took office.

I know it is hard for you critics to believe that a communist dictator would renege on an agreement, but there it is.

Oh gee, look at this, Clinton wasn’t even out of office before the nuclear blackmail began:

July 2000: North Korea again threatens to restart its nuclear program if Washington doesn’t compensate for the loss of electricity caused by delays in building nuclear power plants.

bak72: You just don’t get it.  The agreement was wrong in the first place.  Clinton made it, and so what happened after that is on his head.  He should never have made the deal.  It was wrong, period.  You don’t sell nuke material and equipment to a Commie dictator, no matter what he promises you.  Duh.

Nobody in the Clinton White House renegged on the deal struck in 1994.

They should have, in 1998.

The only legitimate role of government with regard to economics is to prevent fraud and provide a remedy- civil and criminal penalties- in case of fraud.

People have the mistaken notion that the free market has no rules.  But it most certainly does.  All our problems are due to government meddling.

Oh my, look at this chronology - it appears that the ink wasn’t even dry on the Agreed Framework before Clinton’s bumbling appeasement completely failed:

1994: Inspectors find seals broken, are denied access to crucial equipment and cannot certify North Korean compliance.

1994: IAEA terminates inspections after North Korea bars inspectors from collecting samples at its plutonium reprocessing plant.

1994: U.S. cancels scheduled talks.

1994: IAEA announces again that it can no longer ensure that North Korea’s nuclear materials were not being diverted for nonpeaceful purposes.

1994: North Korea begins removing spent fuel from the 5 Mwt. reactor, in “serious violation” of North Korea’s safeguard agreement with IAEA. U.S. offers to hold high-level talks. IAEA reports that it is quickly losing ability to monitor past production of plutonium.

1994: IAEA tells UN Security Council that North Korea’s recent removal of fuel rods makes it impossible to reconstruct the operating history of the reactor.

1994: IAEA exempts North Korea from technical assistance; North Korea reacts by quitting IAEA.

1994: U.S. announces it will pursue global economic sanctions against North Korea if North Korea does not allow IAEA inspectors to examine the spent fuel rods.

Looks like President Bush did the right thing.  The “agreement” was a joke from the beginning.

The only legitimate role of government with regard to economics is to prevent fraud and provide a remedy- civil and criminal penalties- in case of fraud.

People have the mistaken notion that the free market has no rules.  But it most certainly does.  All our problems are due to government meddling.

North Korea again threatens to restart its nuclear program if Washington doesn’t compensate for the loss of electricity caused by delays in building nuclear power plants.

Clinton was so weak that Kim Jong (he be)Il thought he could blackmail him.  Nice.

The only legitimate role of government with regard to economics is to prevent fraud and provide a remedy- civil and criminal penalties- in case of fraud.

People have the mistaken notion that the free market has no rules.  But it most certainly does.  All our problems are due to government meddling.

OK what are are despertaley trying to avoid talking about is the simple fact that Cheney has just made things much worse in the Korea situaution.  Possibly on purpose.

It’s obvious from his previous actions Afghanisthan (I thought we went there for Bin Laden not that pipeline he promised his company), Iraq (There’s no WMD’s there and no one thought there were) that Cheney and his sub (Bush) are in this to make rich and powerful people, richer and more powerful.

As a result our military is far to overexteneded to bully anyone else with and if N. Koreas has nukes, we’re going have to let them or restart the draft and wait a few years before we build up our war machine.
What’s the easier solution?  Just pay them off again.

Cheney’s foolish waste of our military resources has made our country unable to bargain with anything except money now.  Soon that will be gone too.
BTW this is exactly what caused the collapse of the USSR.

MikeA: Actually, the NK fiasco under Clinton shows just how useless “diplomacy” is when dealing with dictators…

The only legitimate role of government with regard to economics is to prevent fraud and provide a remedy- civil and criminal penalties- in case of fraud.

People have the mistaken notion that the free market has no rules.  But it most certainly does.  All our problems are due to government meddling.

Ooops! Sorry, wrong chronology there.

1995: CIA Director John Deutch estimates that the Nodong-1 missile will be deployed by the end of 1996, and that North Korea is continuing missile research and work on nuclear, chemical and biological warheads.

1996: North Korea announces it will withhold from the IAEA any new nuclear information until the light-water reactors are finished and operating, a period of 10 years or more.

May 1998: Unhappy about the slow pace of activity under the Agreed Framework, it is reported that North Korea may reopen the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

June 1998: North Korea declares that it will continue to develop and export nuclear-capable missiles.

July 1998: The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) reports that North Korea is refusing to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors full access to its nuclear sites.

August 1998: U.S. intelligence reports that North Korea is building a large underground facility that may be either a nuclear reactor or reprocessing plant.

March 1999: A U.S. Department of Energy intelligence report claims that North Korea is working on uranium enrichment techniques.

May 1999: A team of American nuclear specialists arrives in North Korea to begin an inspection of what is suspected of being an underground nuclear weapons site at Kumchangri.

The Agreed Framework is easily the most incompetent and disastrous foreign agreement ever made in American history.

What’s the easier solution?  Just pay them off again.

That was Clinton’s solution, and you can see where it got us.  Your distracting by talking about Afghanistan and Iraq and Cheney illustrates your desperate need to blame President Bush(who is finally doing the right thing about terrorism) for what is obviously Clinton’s fault, directly(refusing OBL multiple times) and indirectly(being a general coward about fighting terrorism).  He never even visited the WTC after the ‘93 bombing, and tried to act as if it was a robbery or something.  Clinton’s weakness against terrorism enabled OBL and Al Qaeda to grow in strength and influence during the ‘90’s.  Fact.

The only legitimate role of government with regard to economics is to prevent fraud and provide a remedy- civil and criminal penalties- in case of fraud.

People have the mistaken notion that the free market has no rules.  But it most certainly does.  All our problems are due to government meddling.

The Agreed Framework is easily the most incompetent and disastrous foreign agreement ever made in American history.

It certainly ranks right up there with giving up the Panama Canal.

The only legitimate role of government with regard to economics is to prevent fraud and provide a remedy- civil and criminal penalties- in case of fraud.

People have the mistaken notion that the free market has no rules.  But it most certainly does.  All our problems are due to government meddling.

BTW this is exactly what caused the collapse of the USSR.

Totally wrong.  The collapse of the USSR was predestined when the Bolsheviks murdered the Mensheviks who actually won the Russian Revolution.  The stagnant and inefficient Marxist economic system can’t compete against free people making free choices; it just took the commies all that time to loot such a rich country as Russia and all the other countries they enslaved as the USSR.  Reagan gave them the final shove into oblivion with SDI.  Nothing going on in this country(except the leftie traitors) is even remotely similar.

The only legitimate role of government with regard to economics is to prevent fraud and provide a remedy- civil and criminal penalties- in case of fraud.

People have the mistaken notion that the free market has no rules.  But it most certainly does.  All our problems are due to government meddling.

MikeAdamson said, I came across this interesting article about Bill Richardson’s chats with the North Koreans...it certainly seems like some opportunities were missed.

Opportunity for what? More broken promises from the communist North Koreans? Oh, how terrible that we wasted an opportunity like that.

Like James Baker says, it just goes to show how important diplomacy is and it also reminds us how the current Administration has never grasped that fact.

Maybe you just don’t see it Mike. Then again, you’re the one who believes that he can negotiate and trust people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-il. You really have no room to talk since you’re so foolishly naive.

texxs spits his game, OK what are are despertaley trying to avoid talking about is the simple fact that Cheney has just made things much worse in the Korea situaution.  Possibly on purpose.

Haha! You get called on your erroneous “facts” ("Not the stuff you hear on Fox news and Rush Limbaugh.” you assure us.), and now you say that people are “despertaley” trying to avoid something. That’s funny.

It’s obvious from his previous actions Afghanisthan (I thought we went there for Bin Laden not that pipeline he promised his company), Iraq (There’s no WMD’s there and no one thought there were) that Cheney and his sub (Bush) are in this to make rich and powerful people, richer and more powerful.

Wow! It’s a conspiracy to make the rich richer dude!!1!

And you claim that you’re not a Democrat. I call bullshit.

And you claim that you’re not a Democrat. I call bullshit.

likwid:  He’s obviously a commie; the real question is whether or not Dems are commies.  I vote yes.

The only legitimate role of government with regard to economics is to prevent fraud and provide a remedy- civil and criminal penalties- in case of fraud.

People have the mistaken notion that the free market has no rules.  But it most certainly does.  All our problems are due to government meddling.

Ken McC

It’s all America’s fault! Not the poor, hassled little dictator’s fault.

It’s actually Clinton’s fault if you follow much of the reasoning on this thread.

texxs

What is wrong with you guys?  I’m not a democrat!  I used to be a republican before I learned how bad for a merica they are (Dems too!).

I’m sorry but according to likwidshoe you are a figment of my imagination.

lik

Maybe you just don’t see it Mike.

I probably don’t see all of it but then who does? What you don’t see if that previous Administrations, both Republican and Democratic, have been able to handle issues without resorting to the military option or adopting a strategy of bumble and bluster. The hard fact is that America does not hold the same position in the eyes of the world that it once did and this serves to enbolden the nutbars. I didn’t always agree with American foreign policy in the past but at least I could count on its competence.

"New Year’s Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.” - James Agate

r108 said

He’s obviously a commie; the real question is whether or not Dems are commies.  I vote yes.

No comment required from me.

"New Year’s Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.” - James Agate

Of course the Dems are going to try to pin it on Bush: it’s an election year and they need the National Security bona fides.
To me, both administrations tried, but couldn’t stop a determined country from going nuclear.  As I said on a different thread yesterday, we couldn’t stop the Soviet Union, China, Israel, India and Pakistan.  Ain’t much you can do short of occupying the country, and no one was willing to do that.
What we all should be talking about is how we’re going to contain Kim & his nukes.

The only way to restrain North Korea is through China.  If they don’t cooperate we can’t do anything.

The Bush administration tried to get them involved but they wouldn’t.  China does things for their own reasons.

This is likely to hurt China more than us.  If I was in Japan or South Korea, I’d want my government to develop it’s own deterant to NK.  (I wouldn’t trust the US would do it.  China could intervene.) If SK and Japan build a bomb can Taiwan be far behind?

The fault in this would lie with Kim, China and far behind BJC.

[W]hat you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Whistler: I agree that China will be the loser, especially if Japan goes nuclear (which would be China’s worst nightmare).
Maybe they just don’t have any leverage with N.K., but I’d like to be a fly on the wall at Party Headquarters in Bejing right now!

Greg: they’re the only ones with leverage as far as I can figure.

[W]hat you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Your hero Slick Willie Clinton sold them the technology that made this issue possible.

You’ve been listening to too much Fox propaganda.  Before Clinton took office, the North Koreans had a Magnox reactor at Yongbyon. This plant operated from 1986 until 1994, when it was shut down under the terms of the Agreed Framework. Weapons grade plutonium can be extracted from the spent fuel of a Magnox plant. Also under the terms of the Agreed Framework, construction on two larger Magnox reactors was halted in 1994.  The Yongbyon reactor was restarted in 2003 (Thanks, GWB) and is currently producing an estimated 5kg of plutonium per year.

Ah, so it’s George Bush’s fault that the North Koreans broke their agreement in 2003 to restart the Yongbyon reactor?

What justification did the North Koreans have to do that -"George Bush is president now, so we have the right to break our agreements and start producing plutonium?”

Is there a clause somewhere in the Agreed Framework that says “this agreement does not apply in the case of a Republican becoming president?”

Weak, very weak.

As I pointed out earlier, North Korea built an entire secret facility for producing bomb making material that was discovered in 1998, so perhaps you should be thanking Bill Clinton for that instead.

Ah, so it’s George Bush’s fault that the North Koreans broke their agreement in 2003 to restart the Yongbyon reactor?

Well, he has been in charge of our foreign policy for the last six years, hasn’t he?

Clinton got the North Koreans to stop producing Plutonium.  He got them to stop construction on two much larger plutonium-producing reactors.  (If either of those reactors had been completed, North Korea would be able to produce ten times the plutonium they’re currently producing.) He got them to permit IAEA monitoring.

As I pointed out earlier, North Korea built an entire secret facility for producing bomb making material that was discovered in 1998, so perhaps you should be thanking Bill Clinton for that instead.

Here’s what the CIA said in November, 2002:

...we did not obtain clear evidence indicating the North had begun constructing a centrifuge facility until recently. We assess that North Korea embarked on the effort to develop a centrifuge-based uranium enrichment program about two years ago.

So North Korea didn’t even start the uranium enrichment effort until late 2000, and the US didn’t find out about it until late 2002.  The CIA assessment goes on to say that a uranium enrichment plant could not be operational until the middle of the decade, at the earliest.

The situation in North Korea has deteriorated dramatically during the Bush administration: they’ve pulled out of the Agreed Framework and the NPT, they’ve resumed plutonium production, they’ve stopped allowing IAEA monitoring, they’ve tested a long-range missile, and now they claim to have tested a nuclear bomb.

Uh… about those CIA reports on North Korea’s abilities and intentions.  It would seem that the Agency is no better on the subject of North Korea than it was on Pakistand’s nukes, India’s nukes, Libya’s nuclear program, or the fall of the Soviet union.  All of which our main spooks managed to miss… badly.  From today’s Washington Times‘ Bill Gertz:

Recent U.S. intelligence analyses of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs were flawed and the lack of clarity on the issue hampered U.S. diplomatic efforts to avert the underground blast detected Sunday, according to Bush administration officials.

Some recent secret reports stated that Pyongyang did not have nuclear arms and until recently was bluffing about plans for a test, according to officials who have read the classified assessments.

The officials said there were as many as 10 failures related to intelligence reporting on North Korean missile tests and the suspected nuclear test that harmed administration efforts to deal with the issue.

According to officials familiar with the reports, the failures included judgments that cast doubt about whether North Korea’s nuclear program posed an immediate threat, whether North Korea could produce a militarily useful nuclear bomb, whether North Korea was capable of conducting an underground nuclear test and whether Pyongyang was bluffing by claiming it could carry one out…

Another analytical shortcoming involved the failure to predict that North Korea would fire its July 4 salvo of seven missiles. One report said North Korea would test a single long-range Taepodong-2 and also did not predict that Pyongyang would fire the missile, which failed 42 seconds into flight, toward an area of the Pacific near Hawaii, the officials said.

The analyses also predicted that China would agree to impose tough U.S. sanctions on North Korea’s arms exports and imports, something that has not occurred. However, the lack of clarity about the issue was one reason both Mr. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did not make stronger appeals to officials in China to press North Korea not to conduct the test, the officials said.

“It was an intelligence failure,” said one administration official close to the issue.

Additionally, the weak assessments undermined the recent visit to China by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who did not have good enough intelligence to persuade Mr. Hu that a test was imminent and that he should use his government’s influence on North Korea to stop it.

It also appears that there has been quite a bit of diplomatic activity, much of it below the MSM radar, contrary to the assertions of the Democrats, who still can’t acknowledge the fact that those dreadful North Koreans were actually cheating on the precious Agreed Framework.

I’m willing to give Clintone credit for trying to deal with North Korea. 

I didn’t like it at the time but it had a chance of working. 

But history has proven that it was a failure.  Why do the Democrats insist that the current administration make the same mistakes?

“One defination of insanity is doing the same thing over and over when you know it doesn’t work.”

[W]hat you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

“One defination of insanity is doing the same thing over and over when you know it doesn’t work.”

stay the course

Excuse me, you were saying?

Un-oh, this just in…the course has not been stayed

…President Bush has said American troops can come home from Iraq when Iraqi forces can secure their own country.

Excuse me, you were saying?

rbb: We are staying the course because it’s working.  Duh.

The President has been saying that we will stand down when the Iraqis stand up for some time now.  Why do you lie about it being current news?

The only legitimate role of government with regard to economics is to prevent fraud and provide a remedy- civil and criminal penalties- in case of fraud.

People have the mistaken notion that the free market has no rules.  But it most certainly does.  All our problems are due to government meddling.

DocDave:  The lefties are saying that we should go back to the Clintone strategy on North Korea.

[W]hat you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.