Kerry to Administration: Get Off the Sidelines on North Korea
Senator Kerry responded strongly earlier today to reports that North Korea had tested a nuclear weapon. Kerry is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the ranking Democrat on the committee’s Asia Subcommittee. He called for the Bush administration and the international community to condemn any North Korean test “in the strongest possible terms.”
“While we’ve been bogged down in Iraq where there were no weapons of mass destruction, a madman has apparently tested the ultimate weapon of mass destruction,” Kerry said. He urged President Bush “to wake up and start doing the diplomacy necessary to address this threat….Getting this right will require this Administration to demonstrate the leadership they’ve failed to provide as years of absent or bungled diplomacy allowed the threat to grow exponentially.”
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I remember listening to the Senator address the topic of North Korea in the 2004 presidential debates, and wondering how urgent a matter it was…. I guess now we know. :(
Hey Dick - great to see you back here!!
Glad to hear the Senator speaking the truth about Bush and his non-diplomacy policies.
Hard to imagine we’d be in this place or any place like it if the Senator were the President.
I find it unbelievably hipocritical of the democrats to assail anyone on moral issues. The democratic party is the party of gays, pedophiles, abortionist, and congressmen and presidents who actually get applauded for having sex both gay and straight with interns and pages. Yet they never seem to step down or take responsibility for their actions.
As for North Korea, again, what would you do John Kerry? Follow your leader Clinton and give N. Korea another nuclear reactor if they promise to end their nuclear ambitions?
It is obvious that democrats are on the wrong side of every issue. It seems you would rather fight terrorism here in America then in Iraq. And for those who keep saying that Saddam had no WMD’s, is a complete fabrication of reality that has been proven time and time again.
Here is an idea, why don’t you tell us what you will do instead of making our current President the enemy. Tell us how exactly you would fight terrorist. And don’t say negotiate and try to understand why they hate us so bad.
Another case of Katrina foreign policy.
Kerry was right in ‘04 and he is right now.
From the First debate:
KERRY: With respect to North Korea, the real story: We had inspectors and television cameras in the nuclear reactor in North Korea. Secretary Bill Perry negotiated that under President Clinton. And we knew where the fuel rods were. And we knew the limits on their nuclear power.
Colin Powell, our secretary of state, announced one day that we were going to continue the dialog of working with the North Koreans. The president reversed it publicly while the president of South Korea was here.
And the president of South Korea went back to South Korea bewildered and embarrassed because it went against his policy. And for two years, this administration didn’t talk at all to North Korea.
While they didn’t talk at all, the fuel rods came out, the inspectors were kicked out, the television cameras were kicked out. And today, there are four to seven nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea.
That happened on this president’s watch.
Now, that, I think, is one of the most serious, sort of, reversals or mixed messages that you could possibly send.
September 30, 2004
http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2004a.html
Hi Dick Bell, welcome back.
well looky here.
A visitor from the dark side, already! Apparently one of the 30% crowd, afraid to admit they are, and were wrong, and their support of Bush has cost thousands of lives.
Go back to your cave, troll.
From the first debate
KERRY: With respect to North Korea, the real story: We had inspectors and television cameras in the nuclear reactor in North Korea. Secretary Bill Perry negotiated that under President Clinton. And we knew where the fuel rods were. And we knew the limits on their nuclear power.
Colin Powell, our secretary of state, announced one day that we were going to continue the dialog of working with the North Koreans. The president reversed it publicly while the president of South Korea was here.
And the president of South Korea went back to South Korea bewildered and embarrassed because it went against his policy. And for two years, this administration didn’t talk at all to North Korea.
While they didn’t talk at all, the fuel rods came out, the inspectors were kicked out, the television cameras were kicked out. And today, there are four to seven nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea.
That happened on this president’s watch
First Debate
September 30, 2004
http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2004a.html
F Powell:
I know you are fighting for your incompetent party, but your rhetoric is old. The last 6 years of blunders have been on your President’s watch. He needs to look up what “hard work” really means. Words with no deeds is not hard work.
Don’t let the door hit you in the *** on your way out.
LOL fedup. Sorry, I didn’t see you had already posted it. Great response from the Senator.
He kicked butt in that debate (and the others).
Greetings fellow humans, Democrats, Independents and Republican (or those unaffiliated)
Re North Korea - being bogged down in Iraq did not help us prepare for this inevitability. John Kerry pointed this out.
While we looked in all the wrong places for WMD, someone was developing one, but he has no oil, very little food.
Talking about the Axis of Evil did not do the trick. Diplomacy has not been tried. As Kerry pointed out, we can’t afford an Asian arms race and Bush has stayed pretty much on the sidelines.
We can not go on the attack, whether Iran or North Korea. Oil would double and send the world economy into depression. If we further destabilize the world, Shiites throughout the middle east might turn against their Kings and Shieks. We would see an increase in terrorism and attack on oil production facilities. Israel could be decimated even though they have nukes. War in Asia would suck in Japan, Taiwan, both Koreas, maybe even China. Imagine more terror attacks in Phillipines, Malaysia, southern Thailand. No place would be immune - Bali, Australia, Denmark, France.
No one gets raptured up either.
Why is this like repeating a bad jacked up nightmare?
Is it just me or have we wound up back where we started?
I must be trippin.
Hey troll, you might want to try turning off Rush Limbaugh and Hannity for just a few minutes and come on over to the side of light and truth. Your eyes might hurt a little at first, but you’ll be amazed at how friendly the world looks when it’s not all about hate all the time.
I don’t believe I or anyone else here knows any “congressmen and presidents who actually get applauded for having sex both gay and straight with interns and pages.” Quite the opposite. Everyone I know is sick about the Foley scandal, and the failures of the republican leadership to protect the pages. They’ve known about it for years, and did nothing. And THAT’s what the issue is about. It’s not about Foley being gay. It’s not about Clinton and Lewinsky. It’s not about the pages leading Foley on. It’s about Foley being a predator, and the leadership not doing anything about it. And if that’s not a failure of leadership, well I don’t know what is.
Bush has done nothing to stop the nuclear proliferation in North Korea. That’s a big ZERO. And now they have a bomb. And if you really think that’s a success of the Bush administration, well, see above about coming out of the cave. You are far less safe than you were two ro six years ago. FAR LESS. And you have no one to blame for that but your president.
You are being lied to by the right wing spin machine. Facts don’t matter to them. They think if they say it, it’s true. And you, apparently, have fallen for that. Stick around here for a while. You might actually learn the truth.
How many times has Sen Kerry advised diplomacy with N Korea? Now, years later, everyone (well, almost everyone) is saying it’s the only option.
Here’s a snip from a good CBS news story from ‘04.
“... Mr. Bush stopped diplomatic relations with North Korea early in his presidency. The cold diplomatic relations increased tensions.
Jack Pritchard, who at the time of Mr. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech was special U.S. envoy to North Korea, said in an interview that the president’s blunt language “ultimately did undermine” his diplomatic efforts.
Kerry says diplomacy is compromise, inferring that Mr. Bush’s policy with North Korea is responsible for “letting a nuclear nightmare develop,” as Kerry is quoted in Monday’s New York Times.”
Sept. 14, 2004
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/14/politics/main…
No problem GV . Its really sad what a great leader America is missing.
The July 27 SFRC Bolton hearing:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/27/AR2006072701847.html
Remember 2002..?
The US Government has announced that it will release $95m to North Korea as part of an agreement to replace the Stalinist country’s own nuclear programme, which the US suspected was being misused.
Under the 1994 Agreed Framework an international consortium is building two proliferation-proof nuclear reactors and providing fuel oil for North Korea while the reactors are being built.
In releasing the funding, President George W Bush waived the Framework’s requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors.
President Bush argued that the decision was “vital to the national security interests of the United States”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1908571.stm
Ambassador Wendy Sherman, former N. Korea Policy Advisor to Clinton, spoke on Olbermann tonight. You can see it here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/
Click on “Bush and the Axis of Evil” video link.
ProSense:
Absolutely. I hadn’t even thought of that one. Bolton backpeddled through most of that hearing. He was pretty snitty, too.
I remember watching it, Sen Kerry ROCKED!
Hey, Carol:
You may remember what I told you a couple years back about what to do when it smells like troll spirit in here:
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time, and it annoys the pig.
And as the late great Ann Richards pointed out, “You can put lipstick on a hog and call it Monique, but it’s still a hog.”
So pay no attention to that troll behind the curtain, folks. Just call him Monique, wish him a more intelligent and useful future in his next life, and go do more productive things with your own time instead.
:0)
depose premier boosh and his repolitburu apparatchiks *now*,
Otter
Welcome back Dick!
Hey F Powell:
First, stop doing this:
Rice said Bush did not misspeak when he said that the network of Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan—the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear program who was caught selling secrets on the global black market—had been “brought to justice.”
Khan is living in a villa and was pardoned this year by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. None of Khan’s co-conspirators have been brought to trial.
Asked how that could be interpreted to mean Khan has been brought to justice, Rice said, “He has been brought to justice because he’s out of business.”
Rice defended Bush’s contention during the debate that 100,000 trained Iraqi security forces are on duty, a figure that has been disputed by some Democrats in Congress.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/03/rice.bush.kerry/index.html
Next:
Stop telling the Taliban what they want to hear – and get the job done.
http://www.johnkerry.com/news/articles/newsarticle.html?id=13
Mr. Powell,
Nice try, but your rhetoric is oh so pre-Katrina.
Rhetorical question of the day:
How many intelligence reports need to come out that definitively say that Saddam had no WMD before our dear right wing trolls will give it a rest!
RE North Korea Nuke Test: The fact is, north korea has been pursuing nuclear programs, as well as engaging in hostile and criminal activities like weapons, narcotics and counterfiet $100.00 bill trafficking for decades. Be it Bush, Kerry, Clinton,
Reagan or Carter, no amount of diplomacy can solve the essential problem of a totalitarian dictator who is determined to acquire and/or develop nuclear weapons. now that you have all judged in hindsight, what is your recommendation and/or proposed solution vis-a-vis Iran’s nuclear program? Diplomacy? First strike? UN Sanctions? Another Agreed Framework/Munich Agreement not worth the paper it’s written on? Have you learned nothing from history? Come on, give me some answers, you oh-so-brilliant intellectuals. You’re so great at arm-chair quarterbacking, give me a play call! personally, I would like to see the Israeli approach vis-a-vis Saddam’s Osirak reactor in 1981. unlike Kim, they’ve sworn the destruction of Israel and well as other mad rantings, and don’t forget that no matter how crazy and unbelievable anything Hitler said or wrote in Mein Kampf, he followed through. As James Bond might say, the best diplomat I know is a fully loaded Beretta! Get a clue, people.
Today, I held my sign in Memorial Plaza, -
THE ONLY WAY
TO WIN THE WAR
AGAINST TERRORISM
IS TO IMPEACH
GEORGE BUSH
- before some hundreds of the sixteen thousand Colin Powell ‘lionizers’ and Rudolf Juliani Prezidentual front-runner supporters who came to Portland Oregon’s sports arena to hear these fellows’ “Motivational Speaker” speechifying, outside during a sunny lunch break. How I clouded their glorius daydreams!
Mostly, they rolled their eyes, or complained to nearby listening ears. One fellow asked what I would do if I were prezident. I answered with a reasonable, “I’d have stayed in Afghanistan and not gone into Iraq”. The guy said, “Well, that’s a different issue, what with Sadam Hussein’s connections to Al Queda”. I lost it, called his statement a lie and he a liar. He didn’t take this too well, and moved on, calling me a moron. I guessed I asked for it. Still, others read the sign. A few in passing agreed and thanked me.
Later in the afternoon I returned, hearing of an expected traffic jamb, true enough jambed on all boulevard corners leaving the Arena District. The same sign shown at the now departing republican motorists drew the occassional heckle, strained facial expression or knowing kudos.
Similarly, one fellow hurling indecipherable and outraged argumentation across the passenger seat, caused me to lose it again, yelling back, “He’s a screw-up, he’s a screw-up, and you know it!”
At that I felt I’d crossed the line, and so folded the sign and went home hoping it changed some minds somehow.
Where is the democratic leader who can shine the light on the Bush fiasco his loyalists may see?
John Kerry, no one knows whom will become the next democratic presidential candidate. It’s going to be a long month, and long years til Nov 2008. God forgive us.
Good to see some new names here but I don’t go along with the Beretta logic - it’s been tried countrles times throughout history & no one has learned a thing.
We don’t need no stinkin pre-emptive war. We don’t need Japan to develop from victim of nukes (Hiroshima, Nagasaki) to purveyor of nukes.
We all need to disarm, from street corner punk to rogue nation to dominating superpower. We have too many leaders wanting to remove other nations from the map, be it leader of Iran, DPNK or US. They all think they need a nuclear deterrent.
How is it that some nations can have nukes but not others?
Nuclear proliferation is true terrorism. We set the stage, others copy. America, China, Russia, UK, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea - the nuclear fraternity.
Everybody wants a bomb.
In 1996, the big powers agreed to slow it down and the Cold War was over. Now all the nuclear nations are building new nukes, not scaling down. We quit participating with arms control treaties under Bush. We set the precedent for pre-emptive war. We did not promise not to use nukes. We proved ourselves to be unpredictable and theatening.
I read that Ronald Reagan’s nuclear negotiator, of all people, has proposed that Washington’s top priority should be elimination of all weapons of mass destruction from earth.
There is no stability with nuclear weapons. We are the only country who has ever used them. We and our “friends” are not publicly discussing nonproliferation and de-escalation. We are not even talking much about why Iran & North Korea would want such weapons. We are offering only threats & ultimatims.
Why are we talking about including the Taleban in Afghanistan’s government and offering amnesty to insurgents in Iraq yet antagonizing Iran and North Korea?
These countries are unstable and they may seek attention on the world stage & also sympathy from other nations that consider themselves the world’s underdogs & exploited.
Threatening them can only antagonize them further & make them more likely to over-react. Even Bush seems to back off a little - our miilitary is over-extended, we are a debtor country, he has to be more open to the UN than before the Iraq war, and is even giving lip-service to “diplomacy.”
Is anyone talking about Rumsfeld, who was on the board of the company that provided DPNK with reactors? I noticed someone was blaming Clinton. Rummy was there. He wasn’t working for Bush yet. This was Rummy’s Halliburton. Yet later he accused them of having a nukes program, never mentioning his role with the company that sold them the reactors. Westinghouse was still sending tech to DPNK a few days after 9/11/01. Maybe they still are.
So apparently any non pro Kerry/democratic position post here gets removed, and anything else is left as is….Real nice open dialog. It figures.
Diane says: “Beretta approach doesn’t work. It’s been tried countless times through history and has never worked. We need to disarm.”
You mean like with Imperial Japan?
You mean like with Nazi Germany?
You mean like the Soviet Union in the Cold War?
You mean like in Afghanistan?
That’s about as smart as saying all police should put away their guns, and the bad guys will too. Pandora’s Box is open, babe. Too late to close it. By the way, your ‘war is never the answer” is the same mentality that got fifty million people killed in WWII. It’s like saying if you don’t inoculate yourself, the viruses will just leave us alone. All we had to do was stop Hitler in the Rhineland in 1936 and WWII never would have happened. Instead you got Munich in 1938, and the rest, as they say, is history, something you and your liberal ilk obviously haven’t learned from. NK wanted a bomb, just like Hitler wanted the world, and it didn’t matter who was president or what agreement was signed. Now they got it.
Tell me, what’s the answer to Iran now? You got one? It’s obvious Kerry doesn’t other than the same failed policies that led to NK getting a nuke.
When will you people ever realize that there are just some people you cannot trust or deal with rationally, no matter who’s president? Or perhaps you’d care to blame the mess that was World War II on Roosevelt and Churchill, if only they’d talked or negotiated more? This policy is nothing but the international version of enabling a wifebeater. “Oh, he’ll stop if only I love him more.”
Save your psycho-therapy for the couch. It doesn’t work in the real work. As a six-year veteran who has been to South Korea three times during martial law in 1981-83 (which was imposed because of crap NK was pulling even back then, like they have for 56 years) , I can tell you firsthand. It don’t work. “Nuff said.
Uh, blog(master?) could you get those cookies baked?
Anonymous,
A very common name it seems. We are not brilliant intellectuals and I don’t think there is any pretense to that. We do recognize that as citizens of the planet, there is a responsibility to acknowledge the rest of the world, like or dislike, and keep trying to get along.
We are also supposed to be self governing. Discussions about politics and policy by the citizens are the basis for moving the country forward in thinking. Certainly there are uninformed and misinformed people who contribute their false conclusions. We have the incredible resource of the internet now. Googling a name or subject brings up thousands of sources for more information. Due to the incredible speed at which knowledge is doubling, we cannot all be fully knowledgable about the many issues we face. The discussions at least start with some knowledge and expose areas of ignorance which can be filled in with accurate information.
As the world’s sole superpower, our greatest responsibility is not to fall into the trap of all our predecessors: using the power of our military because we have it. That brought their downfalls and I am not foolish enough to think we are somehow immune to the same fate if we are not more careful about how we use our military.
We also have over a century of stupid medling in other countries leadership which has earned us a two faced reputation. Many of our problems today can be traced back to overthrowing other governments or covert support to the fanatics who were willing to do it. Iran in ‘53 being the single most unbelivable and damaging regime change we have pulled off. And that was Eisenhower. Maybe that is why he ultimately warned us in his farewell address of the military- industrial complex.
Perhaps your expectations of diplomacy are unrealistic. It is a slow process, it does not often accomplish results in the way force does. Even though NK had been doing all kinds of hostile and criminal activities, what were their options? They have no resources, no energy, and very little arable land - almost none of which is safe from storms, drought, etc. The progress of their criminal activities had at least been held at a slow pace. Since our totally foreign policy inexperienced/inept president took over, those activities have increased in speed and daring. I would rather be making slow progress- or just holding the line- than falling into a far more dangerous situation.
Nuclear weapons are simply a bargaining chip as far as I am concerned. It is the opportunity to get a seat at the adults table.
How about if we just stop acting like know it all adults and linvite them to join us? We negotiated with the guy who told us “We will Bury You” punctuated with his shoe banging the table. He had nukes. The current picture is not that different. It’s still a bunch of grown ups having temper tantrums and trying to look dignified while having them.
Nothing is quite as ironic and bittersweet in declaring yet again that our candidate was right on the money years ago and noone else in DC got it :_(
Ginny In Co: What was it that kept us from being buried by the Russians? Mutually Assured Destruction, that’s what. We kept nuclear guns to each others’ heads for over fifty years. The Soviets may have wanted the world just like Hitler, but they were not suicidal, as the Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrated. Should Kennedy have just negotiated while Russia loaded Cuba up with ICBMs 90 miles from our shores, is that your answer? Whatever happened to Democrats with balls anyways? Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy all did the dirty work when diplomacy failed. You all act like a bunch of beaten wives with black eyes shying from the next blow. Tell me: If Charles Manson was President of North Korea or Iran, how would you negotiate with him? they both certainly qualify as mass murderers. Diplomacy is for reasonable nations. Force is for the unreasonable.
Millions for defense, not a penny for tribute, and that is what North Korea demanded, and it still wouldn’t have mattered. How has diplomacy worked in preventing the Genocide in Darfur? How did diplomacy keep the Rwandan genocide from happening? Or keep Hitler from rampaging all over Europe? It didn’t. Kim never had any intention of derailing his nuke program no matter what, that should be obvious now. How many times do you have to be punched in the face before you smarten up?
U.N. weighs sanctions against N. Korea By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer
Mon Oct 9, 7:59 PM ET
UNITED NATIONS - The world lined up against North Korea on Monday for staging a nuclear test denounced even by key allies. President Bush called it “a threat to international peace and security,” and the U.N. Security Council weighed severe sanctions to punish the impoverished communist nation.
There was no talk of military action. But the Security Council quickly condemned North Korea’s decision to flout a U.N. appeal to cancel the test after the reclusive regime announced it had set off an underground atomic explosion.
Russia was the only country to say it had “no doubts” over the North Korean claim, but the U.S. and other experts said the explosion was smaller than expected and they had yet to confirm it was nuclear.
But the reaction of world governments reflected little doubt that they were treating the announcement as fact.
The 15-nation council urged Pyongyang to return to stalled talks, refrain from further tests and keep its pledge to scrap its clandestine weapons program.
Bush said the North Korean action “constitutes a threat to international peace and security” and requires “an immediate response” from the Security Council, though he stressed the U.S. remained committed to diplomacy.<strong>
</strong>
Anonymous, or Simposon or Rocket whoever you are, take your rhetoric elsewhere.
I guess you don’t go by rules just like those in your party. Go do your punching somewhere else. Your bullyness mentality goes right along with your leadership.
Smarten up.
Hey, Ginny in Co, I think those cookies are coming out of the oven soon.
This issue here isn’t that the administration’s diplomacy has failed, but that the administration has not even attempted diplomacy.
You have to try diplomacy before you take it off the table. You have to KNOW it’s not going to work before you can know it’s not going to work.
You know?
;)
John Simpson,
Thank you for your service to our country and input here. I prefer not to look at every situation as analogous to the ones that became wars. For one thing, our technology is high enough now to detect military action before it strikes. Heck, even Pakistan had enough to spot our missiles going to the Afghan camp in ‘98 and warn bin Laden.
I agree that complete disarmament is not realistic - if only because one of the biggest hidden threats we face are the globally organized mafias - who are better armed than most countries and the terrorists, and have no concerns whatsoever about using them. That still leaves some possibility that another Saddam would invade their neighbor and need force to stop them. Picking on us is a lot like David and Goliath. We have an achilles, it won’t necessarily take arms or a nuke to cripple us. (The whole point of the Star Wars saga).
Hitler could have been avoided if our financiers and arms merchants had not been more interested in filling their bank accounts than feeding him power. Same for Russia. If we had stayed the hell out of the country when the first revolution was successful, there would not have been communists to deal with. The same group of financiers and capitalists wanted to be able to access Russia’s resources. Oops, the fanatics that took over the six month old government (with covert aid) turned out to be uncooperative.
“the rest, as they say, is history, something you and your liberal ilk obviously haven’t learned from.”
I guess it depends on which history books you read. I like the ones that have lots of verifiable references and use declassified government documents.
The policies that led to Iran getting a nuke were not diplomatic. They were inflammatory. Why do conservatives think that just because liberals suggest something less than force, we don’t understand that we are dealing with untrustworthy people? SWAT teams usually negotiate - sometimes for long periods- first. In rare instances (the Colorado school where the sheriff decided the guy was too unstable and would kill the girls anyway, which turned out to be correct) they can’t. This is where our high tech comes in. If a country is violating an agreement or moving troops to their borders, we know. If the President pays attention to this intell, we can intervene before the invasion gets into combat- or soon after.
More intell, more diplomacy, more cooperation with the countries who also oppose the infractions, more leadership. Where’s the love? It’s hard, slow work. The results are more like the Notre Dame Cathedral, which took two centuries to build.
I notice none of you counter any of my historical points, or even refer to the genocides that could have been prevented, which you refer to as my bullying. North Korea, Iran and the Sudan all call the UN and resolultions against their countries worthless chatter worthy only to be ignored, just like Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il did. What’s your answer to that? More diplomacy? Even Neville Chanberlaine came to the conclusion that Hitler could not be dealt with after he occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in violation of the Munich Accord.
As for meddling in other nations’ affairs, do you call overthrowing totalitarian regimes in Germany, Japan, Afghanistan and Iraq meddling, or finally getting the Soviet Union to loosen their stranglehold on the eastern Bloc countries at great cost in blood and treasure to us? Or do you think they were better off being oppressed, imprisoned, tortured, starved or thrown in the gulags and murdered for dissent alone by the tyrants who ruled over them? If I am coarse, it is because I have seen the dark side. i have been in Soouth Korea under martial law and in the Philippines when Marcos had that country under emergency rule. I know what it feels like to know that you could be shot just for being out on the streets after curfew. Where have you been? There IS evil and violence in the world whether you like it or not, and as any cop will tell you, sometimes you just have no option but force or getting killed yourself. As Macarthur said, nobody hates war more than the soldier, but that did not keep him from his duty when existential threats had to be fought. So what’s your solution?
Anonymous,
It’s funny you bring up the Democrats who won WWII and Kennedy who averted the Cuban War (and also nixed Operation Northwoods)
A Democrat was also in the WH for WWI.
So, the Republicans have been in charge of the overthrow of Hawaii, the Spanish- American war, way too many Cental American regime changes, Cuba, Grenada, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The Gulf War was a really good example of the GOP cut and run. The Generals on the ground were chasing down and destroying Saddam’s elite Republican Guard. His protection and power. Not the conscripted army, they weren’t fighting. McCaffery needed another 72 hours to take out an army that posed a threat to other countries in the region. It didn’t involve going to Baghdad or getting Saddam. Leaving the Guard alive and armed meant we had to keep troops in the region - fostering a lot of anger among the residents.
I don’t get why you think negotiating with Russia’s criminally violent leadership was somehow ok but NK is too violent and irrational. Lenin, Kruschev, etc were not mass murderers? What history books do you read? Because of their bargaining chip (Mutually assured destruction), we had no choice but to negotiate. We also fought the Cold War with other means, some stupid. The definition of victory being who is standing at the end, we ‘won’. Saddam was also a mass murderer - when we gave him intell and weapons to fight the Iraq-Iran war. Which he then used to invade Kuwait. What kind of diplomacy is that?
As much as some like to paint some of these folks as Charles Manson psychos, do you really think they could get into power if they were that psychologically unstable? Don’t cite Hitler, he wasn’t that kind of psycho either. Genghis Kahn class, yes. And a bunch of other ruthless emperors, kings, etc.
It may not matter either. Good psy-ops can keep a psycho wondering, giving us time to do other intell work - eg contacting other people in the country to get information and find out what is brewing behind the dictators back. Our intell had been telling Reagan that the Soviet Union was headed toward a finacial implosion - without Afghanistan. A little more patience and less interference (or smarter interference) would have resulted in the demise without the cost of creating the nest of al Qaeda.
Diplomacy did not work in Rwanda (BushI) and is not working in Darfur, but did work in the Balkans. IF you know all of what Clinton bombed as well as the rest of the intell work and development of the terrorism plan, you would know that he had balls to go with the rest of his better known privates.
One of the great responses JK made in the first debate on Foreign Policy:
“Just because you can’t do it Mr. Bush, doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”
Bush can’t do it because he doesn’t even try.
Anyone remember which countries got the bomb in Tom Lehrer’s song.
No longer have the record, which was somewhere between a 78 and 33 rpm in the early sixties.
This current President is clueless on how to handle any foreign policy, for that matter they can’t handle anything at home. JK has been right all along. JK for President 2008!!!!!!!
I can’t help but wonder what army these trolls think we’re going to use to attack Iraq? If that’s really their plan, then their plan should also be to get the heck out of Iraq.
I haven’t heard THAT from any of the trolls. Our Army is depleted. We could not possibly go to war in another country right now.
So when they talk about not having a plan, I think they better look at themselves.
New thread, peeps.
The Republican reaction is amusing, but predictable: Blame Clinton, and take no responsibility for their own failures. Most likely it was Bill Clilnton who snuck in and altered the telepromter to have Bush call North Korea part of the Axis of Evil. It was also Clinton’s fault that Bush went into the wrong country looking for WMD.
In 2010 if anything goes wrong, can we follow their logic and blame everything on Bush instead of President Kerry?
Besides the knee jerk blaming of Clinton, there’s a lot of specious arguments. Arguments based upon how evil North Korea is don’t tell us anything we didn’t know. That’s a given. The controversy is over how we deal with the reality. Do we be tough and smart, or do we continue to follow the Bush policy of being tough but dumb?
The World War II analogies are also specious. Defeating Nazi Germany was both the only response and a realistic response (and accomplished by Democrats). In a nuclear age such a conventional approach is no longer as simple. But that’s conservativism for you—look at the solutions of hte past and ignore everything that has changed.
LOL it did not take long for the trolls to come here. When I first showed up at The Democratic Daily out of the storm, I mentioned that John Kerry gets attacked by the right for one obvious reason. Those that remember that, will know that is was true then and it is true now. The right attacks what they think to be the biggest threat, and will go beyond limits on how they do it. They will try to throw out more than one thing to divert the attention, as they group together for the main attack. Keep focused, because they hunt in wolf packs. They are not that diff. from the old German U-Boats!
I mentioned before, how before I came to see the light, the phone calls that came from people during the last presidential election were overwhelming from the people from Texas. I got calls from everyone from Texas I had ever met in the Gulf of Mexico while working out there. Now things are on a diff. level. The Katrinacrat is fighting back and I have no intentions on taking any more abuse from the Bush Crime Family. They have run people like me out of the party with the radical element.
I was lucky though, because Pamela and the others at The Democratic Daily welcomed me with open arms and they listened to me. I have grown a lot in the last year. I am fighting mad and I refuse to take anymore abuse from the likes of the trolls that showed up here.
So take that garbage elsewhere and don’t you dare go dissing my favorite squid!! This Former Marine and Former republican will not tolerate it!! We in Louisiana will storm the Bastille in November, and then GOD willing, I will live to see John Kerry re-elected as President. Holla if you hear me!!
Speaking of the army, they have a new recruitment strategy, in addition to inreasing the age limit, they’ve lowered the standards:
Lower standards help Army recruit more
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer Mon Oct 9, 7:34 PM ET
The recruiting mark comes a year after the Army missed its recruitment target by the widest margin since 1979, which had triggered a boost in the number of recruiters, increased bonuses, and changes in standards.
The Army recruited 80,635 soldiers, roughly 7,000 more than last year. Of those, about 70,000 were first-time recruits who had never served before.
According to statistics obtained by The Associated Press, 3.8 percent of the first-time recruits scored below certain aptitude levels. In previous years, the Army had allowed only 2 percent of its recruits to have low aptitude scores. That limit was increased last year to 4 percent, the maximum allowed by the Defense Department.
Of those accepted under waivers, more than half were for “moral” reasons, mostly misdemeanor arrests. Thirty-eight percent were for medical reasons and 7 percent were drug and alcohol problems, including those who may have failed a drug test or acknowledged they had used drugs.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061009/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/army_recruiting
What’s next!
This morning, Yahoo News:“We hope the situation will be resolved before we have to fire a nuclear-tipped missle.” From Yonhap, NK’s News Agency.
So whattaya think, people? Nuclear blackmail? A cry for help? If only we engaged in doplomacy, NK wouldn’t be trying to blackmail us into not interfering with their myriad criminal enterprises?
What mow, Ms. Albright? I suppose this would never have happened under Kerry’s watch, just lkie the disabled would be getting up out of their wheelchairs and walking. Considering that Mr. Kerry voted no on Iraq in 1991 when Saddam’s armies were already IN Kuwait, I am not encouraged. PS Can we stay on subject without bringing in the United Fruit Company, slavery and the assassination of Salvadore Allende, all points I concede? That was yesterday, this is today. Keep in mind NK has been a thorn for every president since Harry Truman. Can someone offer a solution instead of just more whine and cheese?
ProSense,
I found that report particulary amusing because over the summer I had a blog post at Liberal Values on recruiting difficulties. One of the right wing blogs linked to it, claimed there were no recruiting problems, and went on a rant claiming that I was lying and had no regard for the truth by posting that.
It appears I was right.
John Simpson,
“Considering that Mr. Kerry voted no on Iraq in 1991 when Saddam’s armies were already IN Kuwait, I am not encouraged.”
Not entirely accurate on Kerry’s position. Your comment falsely suggests that Kerry would not have gone to war.
Kerry did want to give diplomacy a chance first and felt that Bush was rushing to war too quickly, but that does not mean he did not support going to war if necessary. Waiting a couple of days to see if other options would have worked would not have made much of a difference.
John Simpson, John Kerry would have not allowed the situation to deteriorate to this level. In the debates, he spoke of utilyzing both bilateral negotiations and the 6 party negotiations. Earlier this week, the North Korean again asked for bi-partisan negotiations as a condition for not having this test.
Given the provocations, Bush really couldn’t open those discussions at that point. Kerry voted against the first Persian Gulf war because, he and most Democrats were willing to give negotiations and sanctions more time. Given the legacy of that war; the long term punitive sanctions of Iraq, bases in Saudia Arabia which inflamed Osama Bin Laden and the desire on the part of some to “finish” the war, it might have been better to have avoided it.
There was also the troubling circumstances of the US Ambassador, April Gillespie giving Hussein the false impression that we wouldn’t intervene in an Arab vs Arab war.
If you want to consider things from that time period, you should also consider that Senator Kerry was finishing up his investigation of BCCI - that was ended when he considered there was more to do. Senator Kerry did find that BCCI was involved in funding the building of the Pakistani bomb. The first thing on the Senator’s list of things that should be investigated was that that relationship should be further looked at.
Imagine A. Q. Khan and his financial relationships being looked at a that point in time, is it possible that we may have stopped his network from spreading nuclear technology to Iran and North Kora. Imagine a world where there is less nuclear proliferations.
Your post goes into the past and makes conjectures based on Kerry’s actions 15 years ago. This really is a game where both sides could play.
You could further look at the long term consequences, GHWB’s war led to more war and hatred. John Kerry’s carefull analysis of the financial links led to closing a bank where OBL had money and might have done more if it weren’t stopped by others.
ProSense said:
“Of those accepted under waivers, more than half were for “moral” reasons, mostly misdemeanor arrests. Thirty-eight percent were for medical reasons and 7 percent were drug and alcohol problems, including those who may have failed a drug test or acknowledged they had used drugs.”
Well, I guess there’s a job for that Rep. from Florida after all ;-)
What is it with you guys? “Rush to war?” Saddam was already in Kuwait for SEVEN MONTHS! No answer for North Korea either, except what, more failed diplomacy? More Madeline ALbright clinking champagne glasses with Kim Il Brain? More Jimmy Carter diplomacy? That worked great with Iran fro 444 days! Face it, Kim’s an international menace who just threatened us with nuclear war, just like he threatened Clinton with the whole “sea of fire” routine for EIGHT YEARS! I don’t recommend war, but I do say we isolate the SOB until he chokes on his nukes and his subhuman regime collapses!
It would be easier to isolate him if our diplomacy were better at the UN. we are now the odd man out in the UN due to a UN Ambassador that the Senate refused to confirm partially because he does not play well with others.
Anonymous:
Wonder how Saddam came to invade Kuwait:
The true Iraq appeasers
By Peter W. Galbraith | August 31, 2006
...In 1983, President Reagan initiated a strategic opening to Iraq, then in the third year of a war of attrition with neighboring Iran. Although Iraq had started the war with a blitzkrieg attack in 1980, the tide had turned by 1982 in favor of much larger Iran, and the Reagan administration was afraid Iraq might actually lose. Reagan chose Rumsfeld as his emissary to Hussein, whom he visited in December 1983 and March 1984. Inconveniently, Iraq had begun to use chemical weapons against Iran in November 1983, the first sustained use of poison gas since a 1925 treaty banning that…
This message was reinforced by US conduct after the Rumsfeld missions. The Reagan administration offered Hussein financial credits that eventually made Iraq the third-largest recipient of US assistance. It normalized diplomatic relations and, most significantly, began providing Iraq with battlefield intelligence. Iraq used this information to target Iranian troops with chemical weapons. And when Iraq turned its chemical weapons on the Kurds in 1988, killing 5,000 in the town of Halabja, the Reagan administration sought to obscure responsibility by falsely suggesting Iran was also responsible.
On Aug. 25, 1988—five days after the Iran-Iraq War ended—Iraq attacked 48 Kurdish villages more than 100 miles from Iran. Within days, the US Senate passed legislation, sponsored by Claiborne Pell, Democrat of Rhode Island, to end US financial support for Hussein and to impose trade sanctions. To enhance the prospects that Reagan would sign his legislation, Pell sent me to Eastern Turkey to interview Kurdish survivors who had fled across the border. As it turned out, the Reagan administration agreed that Iraq had gassed the Kurds, but strongly opposed sanctions, or even cutting off financial assistance. Colin Powell, then the national security adviser, coordinated the Reagan administration’s opposition…
The next year, President George H.W. Bush’s administration actually doubled US financial credits for Iraq. A week before Hussein invaded Kuwait, the administration vociferously opposed legislation that would have conditioned US assistance to Iraq on a commitment not to use chemical weapons and to stop the genocide against the Kurds. At the time, Dick Cheney, now vice president, was secretary of defense and a statutory member of the National Security Council that reviewed Iraq policy. By all accounts, he supported the administration’s appeasement policy.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/08/31/the_true_iraq_appeasers/?p1=MEWell_Pos5
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82
Posted by Anonymous | October 10, 2006 12:01 PM
We found agreement! NO WAR.
Very good.
And how do you propose to isolate him without diplomacy with other nations? How do you propose to choke out the nukes without starting world war three.
So instead of coming in here and namecalling, why don’t you give real plans that we can pursue together. It use to be called “working together” and I realize it hasn’t occured in our country since Democrats gave Bush everything he ‘wanted’ after 9-11.
But put aside the vile name calling and try using diplomatic skills within our own country, and eliminate the bullying here and around the world, and you might be surprised by the progress we can make.
I am all for trying to resolve issues peacefully but there comes a time when threats cannot be ignored any longer.
I don’t see how sanctions will work against a madman who is willing to let his folks starve to death anyway. What are you going to use for sanctions weapons? As far as I know, there is not a minority group in North Korea that is a threat. So it is unlikely the issue will be resolved from within.
I think we have to nail the launch sites before he launches. Kim threatened to launch a nuc. We have to take him at his word.
The next thing is Kim’s response.
Does he invade South Korea?
Can we help out or are our forces too spread out?
I chuckle at the arguments about how the USSR was defeated.
Did we spend them into oblivion by building a military that was so huge the USSR couldn’t keep up?
Was it borderless communications such as the internet?
Was it the USSR was stagnant and a new direction was needed anyway - like pieristroika (sp)?
All of the above?
None of the above?
Of course we try to talk to NK. But if it doesn’t work - and it won’t take long to figure it out - then we have to take military action against the launch sites.
Let’s suppose every leader in the world condemns the NK leadership. They demand he stop with the nuke weapons stuff. There is absolute unity. Even BushCo has united everyone against Kim.
Kim says no…I love my nukes and am going to launch. There is nothing that the rest of the world has because I have all I need.
Whatdoyoudo?
Do we hope China is worried about the instability and steps in? After all, they own us now!
Do we face the likely hood of attacking the sites?
Is this the October surprise we expected of BushCo?
Is there other ways to solve the problem that don’t involve violence when Kim has already threatened us with violence?
sorry..last one was me…
As far as Kerry…
He always said you go to war when you have to…not when you want to.
Iraq is an optional war that must be dealt with in the now. How we got there is important because it dictates our future options.
What do we do to return the country back to the Iraqs with the infrastruture intact?
I am concerned about the government in power there. Once we leave, what happens to the US-backed government in power? Most likely, the government will resemble the government they had versues the government they have now. There will most likely be a strong central leader that hopefully won’t tortue his subjects.
I don’t think dividing the country into three parts will work because Turkey will never let the Kurds be free.
ProSense: I notice not a word on North Korea, just a rehashing of the past. yap,yap,yap. Bush did this, the Republicans did that. Roosevelt suppported the Soviet Union with massive aid during WWII, even knowing how bad they were. What alternative did he have? Choosing allies often involves choosing the lesser of two evils. Why do you offer no solutions, only more whining and moaning over past grievances? You think the American people don’t notice this from Democratic candidates? That’s why you lose elections, and don’t think the Foley scandal will help you in November. Perversion is hardly a Republican problem alone. Need I mention Gerry Studds, who actually did have sex with a minor? The fact that the same liberals who re-elected him time after time are the same screaming for Foley’s scalp speaks volumes. Soccer moms are going to be less concerned in November about GOPers molesting their children than who is best able to keep their kids from glowing in the dark. This all could have been prevented with a bombing run on Yongbyon in 1994, and don’t tell me Kim only started to cheat when Bush took office. He never had any intention of honoring his agreements, only more threats and blackmail. That’s how psychotics operate. If Bush is responsible for all the worlds’ ills, then you aslo have to blame Clinton for Rwanda,Bosnia and the ascention of Al Qaeda, all which happened under his watch. Blame all you want, it doesn’t fix the problem, and Kerry’s armchair quarterbacking is part of the problem, not the solutiuon. Where in his website does he offer one concrete realistic approach, one that hasn’t already failed miserably? To tell the truth, I feel a hell of a lot better with John Bolton taking a hard line than with Madeline Albright’s wishful thinking and John Kerry’s Chamberlainesque approach.
Anonymous,
“What is it with you guys?”
Exactly!! What is it with you guys/animals/monsters/sheeple/idol worshipers/Pedophile backers/chicken hawks that know nothing about ever wearing a uniform of this country?
This really gets me going!! You can’t even show a little dignity and go under your real name! My name is real. And so is that of my real President, John Kerry. How dare you! I take great offense in you hiding behind a no name bias and making claims you have no base for. I got driven out of my party by a bunch of wackos, and now I know what it is that I have to do. The republicans made me, and then they made The Katrinacrat! So take your meds buddy. You will get no sympathy from me.
I give no mercy to those that are willingly ignorant!!
LOL gotta get them cookies baked! The last one was from me. Here I am talking about using your real name, and I came up Anonymous!! LOL!!
John Simpson
Why do you think Repubs are better at preventing our kids from glowing in the dark?
There is a time for talking and a time for fighting.
BushCo never tries to talk to anybody until fighting is the only option left.
I think someone who can do both is most important.
Talking to others and then dropping the hammer when absolutely necessary. The absolutely necessary requirement is the key.
Do you think soccer moms feel save with our nutcase president strutting around telling the rest of the world to get lost?
Alternatively, would they feel safer with a president who does everything possible to avoid a fight and only enters one at the last resort?
Maybe in NK, fighting is the only option. Is being a thorn or an irritant worth dieing over? We were obviously not paying taking strong enough action against NK before and now the world is paying for it.
If bombing is the next step, what follows?
Once you make a move, your opponents move is limited which limits your next move.
If we bomb the NK nuke sites, what is their next move and what is our likely response?
In answer to John Simpson’s question above (post of October 10, 2006 1:06 AM ) regarding the Senator’s position on Iran, there is a good rundown of Senator Kerry’s 2004 proposal for handling Iran at:
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/6463.html
Then as noted in that post, Bush turned around and said he supported a plan much like what Kerry suggested in 2004. See the full article here:
http://www.nysun.com/article/26606
Now, has Bush changed his tune again? (flipping and flopping on this, perhaps?) Or is he still supporting the proposal Kerry offered way back in 2004 (when the Iranians might have actually been willing to consider it), but that it took Bush until January 2006 to come around to?!? If Bush would have TRIED that approach - which included accounting for all fuel provided to test the Iranian government’s true purpose - even if Iran screwed us over on the deal we would have disproved their stated intentions THEN - and they would have been 2 years less far into unrestrained nuclear enrichment research.
If Kerry’s proposal is “the same failed policy that led to North Korea getting a nuke”, then why is Bush supporting it? Or why did he ever? But in any case that is a red herring, because North Korea “got a nuke” (actually several) under the Bush administration’s watch, and their failure to deal effectively with the (absolutely expected) efforts of Kim Jong-Il to wiggle out of the box Clinton put him in. Kim Jong-Il stepped out of the box and built his nukes. Just because Bush didn’t bother to guard the box, doesn’t make it Clinton’s fault. Obviously nothing Bush has done since has prevented either North Korea or Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons. That makes Bush a failure on this issue regardless of what anyone else did or didn’t do.
Sorry..last one was by me again…grrr
RE Anonymous, who fears to reveal his own name: I am a SIX-YEAR VETERAN who served from 1979-1983 during the Cold War. Among other things, we on the USS Midway plucked Vietnamese boat people up out of the water after Kerry’s Paris antics paid off so well! Always like Democrats, making messes for Republicans to clean up! You set the house afire through negligence, then blame the firemen who have to put it out! What a waste of space and time you are. You people ARE the weakest links. Goodbye!
John Simpson:
You fail to grasp the Bush administration’s culpability in giving rise to the grave situation that currently exists! You want solutions, but Senator Kerry has for years articulated the course that should have been taken.
May 30, 2004:
Kerry also accused the administration of having no plan to deal with North Korea’s rush to build its nuclear weapons arsenal. He derided the Bush administration’s long effort to set up six-nation talks to resolve the impasse over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions as a “fig leaf” designed to cover up its failure to have a coherent policy.
Kerry said he would immediately begin bilateral negotiations with North Korea—a goal the Pyongyang government has long sought. But, perhaps in a nod to the sensitivities of the Japanese, the South Koreans and the Chinese, he said he would not abandon the six-nation talks.
-end-
During the first debate:
KERRY: With respect to North Korea, the real story: We had inspectors and television cameras in the nuclear reactor in North Korea. Secretary Bill Perry negotiated that under President Clinton. And we knew where the fuel rods were. And we knew the limits on their nuclear power.
Colin Powell, our secretary of state, announced one day that we were going to continue the dialog of working with the North Koreans. The president reversed it publicly while the president of South Korea was here.
And the president of South Korea went back to South Korea bewildered and embarrassed because it went against his policy. And for two years, this administration didn’t talk at all to North Korea.
While they didn’t talk at all, the fuel rods came out, the inspectors were kicked out, the television cameras were kicked out. And today, there are four to seven nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea. That happened on this president’s watch
-end-
You mention Bolton, who predictably defended the administrations failed approach by offering more rhetoric during the July 27 hearing:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/27/AR2006072701847.html
Years of inaction and fearmongering, and this is where things stand today:
Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ Comes Back to Haunt United States
By Glenn Kessler and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 10, 2006; Page A12
Nearly five years after President Bush introduced the concept of an “axis of evil” comprising Iraq, Iran and North Korea, the administration has reached a crisis point with each nation: North Korea has claimed it conducted its first nuclear test, Iran refuses to halt its uranium-enrichment program, and Iraq appears to be tipping into a civil war 3 1/2 years after the U.S.-led invasion.
Each problem appears to feed on the others, making the stakes higher and requiring Bush and his advisers to make difficult calculations, analysts and U.S. officials said. The deteriorating situation in Iraq has undermined U.S. diplomatic credibility and limited the administration’s military options, making rogue countries increasingly confident that they can act without serious consequences. Iran, meanwhile, will be watching closely the diplomatic fallout from North Korea’s apparent test as a clue to how far it might go with its own nuclear program…
In Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address, a speech designed to shift the political debate from a battle against al-Qaeda to a possible confrontation with Iraq, the president mentioned North Korea, Iraq and Iran and declared: “States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. . . . In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.”
All three issues came to a head in 2003: The United States invaded Iraq and discovered no weapons of mass destruction; North Korea began to obtain weapons-grade plutonium from fuel rods that had been under international observation; and Iran disclosed that it had made rapid progress with a previously secret uranium-enrichment program.
In contrast to its handling of Iraq, the administration has tried to resolve the North Korean and Iranian nuclear breakouts with diplomacy. But progress has been slow, in part because the United States has been reluctant to hold bilateral talks with either country except within the context of broader talks with other nations.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/09/AR2006100901130.html
-end-
Speaking of rehashing the past:
Foley’s case isn’t about a single consensual relationship. There were complaints by pages, lies as the behavior continued and a cover-up by the Republican leadership! Foley is a sexual predator! The Republican leadership knew this and covered it up!
Two decades ago, the Democratic leadership promptly censured Studds.
Replying to John Simpson (post of October 10, 2006 2:29 AM) “As for meddling in other nations’ affairs…”
Actually, I think the meddling being referred to is more along the lines of these items in history, just for a couple of examples:
<ol><li> the CIA’s overthrow, in 1953, of the first democratically elected prime minister of Iran</li>
<li>the Bush administration’s support, in 2002, of a military coup against Venezuela’s democratically elected leader</li></ol>
I’m sure others here can come up with many more examples, I have to go off and do some other things now.
John Simpson,
A typical problem for Bush supporters is the wisdom in avoiding war.
As a VN era vet - no shots fired - except beer glasses – VN was a mistake, which cost us 58,202 souls.
You cannot get it through your head that Kerry was trying to get us out of VN. He was a charter member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. I joined in 1973 and by then it was really radical. Watching your friends come home in body bags tends to do that. Kerry went to Paris on his honeymoon and tried to get our POWs home. He was trying to save vets lives and all he gets is contempt for trying to bring the troops home.
Kerry is a hero to me as he did his best to bring the troops home in a very difficult time. If he did not care, he would have left you guys to rot.
The reason you were picking up refugees is we fought a wrong war with the wrong tactics.
The same mistake is being made in Iraq; a wrong war using wrong tactics. If you really cared about your veteran brothers and sisters and their families then you would work to end this war and return a functioning Iraq to the Iraq people. In Iraq, we cannot bomb ourselves into anything that resembles a victory.
I worry that in NK, we may have to.
Another example of Kerry being right! We certainly are not safer under the current “leadership” in the White House.
Notice how the media has not picked up on this story. They are not covering what Kerry said in the debates or acknowledging that Kerry did have a plan for dealing with the threat N. Korea poses.
If things were reversed and it was a Democratic President, the news would be all over this; playing the clips of the debate (with his Republican challenger) again and again.
last one was me again….curses…
John Simpson,
“Always like Democrats, making messes for Republicans to clean up! “
More like Republicans being unwilling to take responsibility for their own actions, and therefore finding specious arguments to blame everything on Democrats.
The Republicans have controlled all branches of government for over five years, and the House for even longer.
It is the Republican’s fault that real threats of WMD in North Korea and Iran were ignored while Bush was waging a senseless war in Iraq.
It is the Republican’s fault that our standing and influcence in the world has deteriorated so dramaticlaly in the last few years.
It is the Republican’s fault that countries like North Korea were even more inspired to continue with thier nuclear programs after being labeled part of the Axis of Evil, and after Iraq taught them that they needed a nuclear deterent against the United States.
Republicans have also tried to blame their failings on domestic policies on Democrats, but finally Katrina showed that one major difference between the parties is that Republicans are incompetent at governing.
John Simpson,
Some of the points made have to do with the history of both parties. Bottom line is that the overall pattern is the Republicans destabilize a country that has a reasonable if not perfect government, and put in someone like - the Shah, Marcos, Noriega, etc. Eventually, the only way most of the countries got out from under these oppressive governments was by extremists. The wars and overthrows have been going on for over a century and many areas of the world have not forgotten their history even if we have.
After the Korean War, the (Republican) negotiations left North Korea with almost no way to sustain itself. Minimal arable land, no resources to mine and sell or produce goods. While the population was small, it was less of a crises. The North Koreans have not been starving to death in the last decade just because of the dictator leading them.
“Kim says no…I love my nukes and am going to launch. There is nothing that the rest of the world has because I have all I need.”
How about, “We have NOTHING to lose, why shouldn’t we just put some nuclear crap in the air and take some of you down with us”?
The recurring theme of Vietnam, Iraq, the Balkans, Afghanistan and too many other situations, is we haven’t negotiated from a position of understanding their culture, their issues, their problems. Bush is the worst of the culprits. He was rarely outside of the US before he took office. He has no interest or curiosity about other cultures, let alone compassion.
Notice I am not claiming this is the position you negotiate from. It is simply ludicrous to go into negotiations without understanding where the other party is coming from and how that affects their negotiating position. You would think the Republican business people would understand this. Except most of them operate from the hostile takeover philosophy than win-win.
So now we are faced with another dangerous mess. The LACK of diplomacy- all of the possibilities mentioned here - over the past 6 years has accelerated the problem instead of keeping it in a course that might have led to controlling and then improving the situation. Just as battles are lost in wars, diplomacy has it’s failures. Sometimes you have to cut and run - when the aggressor actually begins offensive action. Until then - or the military intell shows it is imminent - keep talking. There is no harm in it.
Not knowing what the Intelligence agencies and the military are telling Bush, I can only point to the info released on the detonation- that it was not ‘complete’ or something that indicated the bomb might not be fully developed. If he does launch one, where is he likely to aim it? He doesn’t have the capacity to get it all that far. We have a lot of technology and defense capability.
Taking an aircraft carrier, armed predators and other resources out of the middle east may be a problem, but if we could also get another country or two to step in to set up a missile blockade while negotiations continue, seems like a reasonable risk given the alternative. It puts us in the position of being ready to strike his launch site as soon as it becomes apparent he is activating it.
Meanwhile, call his bluff. He is dead serious, because he wants to show his strength? get new territory? out of desperation? How can we move him to less desperation?
We’d be safer under Kerry? You’re kidding, right? Just like we became safer and safer under Clinton? His two terms were a descent into the abyss! Bookended by two al qaeda attacks (WTC ‘93, USS Cole ‘00) and a failure to act forcefully against terrorists. AS To Anonymous and my fellow verterans, the best thing we could do for our troops is to present a united front. Instead, leading Democrats assail our policies and demand troop removal as vociferously as Al Qaeda does! I support my troops by supporting their mission, which is to rid the world of Islamofascists who seek to destroy us, and right now they’ve chosen Iraq as their central front. You cannot support the troops and not support their mission. Hell, it’s so bad the DNC website had a picture of a Canadian soldier with his badge photoshopped out so you couldn’t tell he wasn’t American. You call that support? By the way, before you get orgasmic over Foley (if you’ll pardon the pun) and enter into your typical giddy pre-election methamphetamine-like rush over favorable polls, remember that there is only one poll that counts, and you guys have been wrong for six straight years! Sea of red, anyone? You think flyover country doesn’t know that this whole Foley scandal is the pot calling the kettle black? Or why Massachusetts is called the Gay State? Somehow you will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, you always do because your dopey leaders cannot keep their mouths shut long enough to win. Besides, I love going into the playoffs as the underdog. It makes victory that much sweeter. Have a nice day. See you in November, wailing and gnashing your teeth as usual.
John Simpson,
If an al Qaeda attack is your litmus test, the mother of all al Qaeda attacks occured on George Bush’s watch. It was George Bush who ignored several warnings. It was also George Bush (or more specifically, his National Security Advisor) who ignored plans for dealing with al Qaeda passed on by the Clinton Administration.
The attacks under Clinton were trivial compared to what we have faced under Bush. Some think that it was Clinton’s success in limiting casualties from terrorism which lulled the Bush Administration into a false sense of security leading them to fail to take the threat seriously.
You have some nerve complaining that Clinton failed to act forcefully against terrorists considering he did far more that Bush after 9/11, and it was the Republican Congress which blocked him from taking even more action.
But then you have a way with ignoring reality. For example, “sea of red.” You think that means a thing? Until this year, this was a 50:50 nation. The only reason maps look more red is that Repulbicans are living in more rural areas (on the average) and Democrats are more concentrated in cities. It is voters, not empty land, that counts. Electoral maps adjusted for population density show an equal amount of red and blue areas. Of course that was in the recent past. This country may no longer be 50:50, and it is the Republicans who have fallen.
Oops, I did it too—that Remember personal info box doesn’t work. I’m the last anonymous poster
John Simpson:
First, the worst attack on the U.S. soil happened on Bush’s watch. It, and every crisis since, has been met with complete incompetence and arrogance, matched only by the its poor planning for the invasion of Iraq:
Posted 3/26/2004 4:19 AM
Soldiers in Iraq still buying their own body armor
The Associated Press
Soldiers headed for Iraq are still buying their own body armor — and in many cases, their families are buying it for them — despite assurances from the military that the gear will be in hand before they’re in harm’s way.
Body armor distributors have received steady inquiries from soldiers and families about purchasing the gear, which can cost several thousand dollars. Though the military has advised them not to rely on third-party suppliers, many soldiers say they want it before they deploy.
Last October, it was reported that nearly one-quarter of American troops serving in Iraq did not have ceramic plated body armor, which can stop bullets fired from assault rifles and shrapnel.
The military says the shortfall is over and soldiers who do not yet have the armor soon will. But many want to avoid the risk.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-03-26-body-armor_x.htm
An extraordinary action by the chief of staff sends a message: The Pentagon must increase the budget or reduce commitments in Iraq and elsewhere.
By Peter Spiegel
Times Staff Writer
Published September 25, 2006
WASHINGTON — The Army’s top officer withheld a required 2008 budget plan from Pentagon leaders last month after protesting to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the service could not maintain its current level of activity in Iraq plus its other global commitments without billions in additional funding.
The decision by Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army’s chief of staff, is believed to be unprecedented and signals a widespread belief within the Army that in the absence of significant troop withdrawals from Iraq, funding assumptions must be completely reworked, say current and former Pentagon officials…
Schoomaker failed to submit the budget plan by an Aug. 15 deadline. The protest followed a series of cuts in the service’s funding requests by both the White House and Congress over the last four months.
According to a senior Army official involved in budget talks, Schoomaker is now seeking $138.8 billion in 2008, nearly $25 billion above budget limits originally set by Rumsfeld. The Army’s budget this year is $98.2 billion, making Schoomaker’s request a 41% increase over current levels…
Most funding for the fighting in Iraq has come from annual emergency spending bills, with the regular defense budget going to normal personnel, procurement and operational expenses, such as salaries and new weapons systems.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-na-military25sep25,1,7815229.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Army extends cost-cutting, despite emergency funding bill
By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, July 22, 2006
...The Army has more than 100,000 soldiers deployed to Iraq, plus responsibility for logistic support for itself and its sister services. It also equips, trains and supports the Iraqi security forces…
Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, said July 14 that in 2004 it cost $4 billion to repair or replace war equipment, but now it has reached $12 billion to $13 billion. “And in my view, we will continue to see this escalate,” he told a Defense Forum Foundation roundtable on the Army’s role on the war on terror in Washington. The Army is using up equipment at four times the rate for which it was designed, he added….
Snip…
The Army chief said there is too little money available to keep up with equipment repairs. He said the Army’s five major repair depots are operating at only 50 percent of capacity, resulting in a backlog of 1,000 Humvees awaiting attention at the Red River Army Depot in Texas and 500 tanks at a depot in Alabama. The Army’s 2006 budget is $98.2 billion, and the 2007 budget request not yet approved by Congress seeks $111 billion for the Army.
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=37886&archive=true
This could go on forever, failure is failure! Lies are lies! It’s time for accountability.
John Simpson:
Hate to break the news to you, but here is the real story. Did you forget one lil thing known as Katrina? I have sent out the call to my fellow Louisiana bloggers, and the public to Storm the Bastillle on November 7th!! Then Bush does the latest signing statement to appoint who he sees best for the position that Brownie held!! OH YEA, that’s real compassion. Every known blogger that has a heart is watching us down here right now. I intend to take the lead and oust your right wing puppets once and for all!
Take this to the bank, I intend to not only lead my people to the promise land, but I will run for any local office that I feel needs to be freed of the hype and pomp and glory of the GOP!! You made me, now deal with it!! I look forward to a fight with the people that run me out my party with their radical views.
The GOP has an enemy, and it is one of their former members. I am not alone in this, they have run many traditional republicans away, and now you will feel the sting from it. The La 3rd district is about 60/40 Dem/Rep and now we have people from New Orleans here. Stand by for the spanking you deserve!!
In La 1st district, we have a progressive Democrat that can work the Magic. But he needs some help. Stacey Tallitsch is facing Bobby Jindal, and Jindal is a Rovian puppet. Any help for Stacey, is a strike against the chicken hawks.
There is so much going on here, that you cannot count out the bayou folks. We have long term memories.
Also, the way that people vote here, is at a cummunity level. JK knows that, and he is not afraid to talk to the folks that live outside the big cities. That will get Louisiana to follow him. I would love to see him come here, in the Katrina/Rita areas, and I would be most happy to give him a tour. I will not bow down to the fear and lies!!
Does the word EMBOLDEN mean anything to anyone here? Who does it help when Durbin and Kennedy call our soldiers Nazis? Even Republicans who detested Roosevelt banded together behind him after Pearl Harbor. Instead, all we get out of lefties these days is vitriolic hatred of Bush and tinfoil hat conspiracy theories that blame Bush and the Jews, always the Jews! I’m sick of it! What do you tell our soldiers when you say, “Oh, we support you, but what you’re doing is evil, you Nazi fascist babykillers!” Check the drudge archives for all of the violence against ROTC centers and even uniformed soldiers in this nation. Guess who by: libs or cons? Is that your idea of support? As for understanding other cultures, our fathers did not need to understand Shinto Buddhism or mystic Teutonic rituals as practiced by the SS. All they knew was that an existential enemy had to be wiped from the face of the earth. As for diplomacy, we’ve been going at it with North Korea on this nuclear thing for 14 years, when do you finally call it an exercise in futility? Have any of you learned nothing from history, even recent history? The American people reject you, and will continue to reject Liberal Democrats because they represent everything they despise: appeasement, perversion, slander and hatred! You want to see liberal tolerance in action? Look at the video from Columbia University when the Minutemen came to speak. How many liberals are assaulted with pies, salad dressing or charged on the stage and forced out because only one form of free speech can be tolerated and all others squashed? You call Bush a Nazi Hitler, yet all the political Brownshirt tactics I see in this country are committed by so-called champions of free speech - voter bus tires slashed and GOP offices raided and trashed by union thugs! Doesn’t matter. You’ve learned nothing from your electoral failures, and they will continue. Hell, you couldn’t even take Duke Cunningham’s seat, and he went to JAIL! Like I said, see you in November. Ta-ta, Dahlings. I’m done banging my head against the wall here. PS If Kerry’s looking for a new campaign slogan, this is it: Once a loser, always a loser. He’s just not SWIFT enough - ha ha ha!
To John Simpson (October 10, 2006 4:22 PM ):
When did Durbin or Kennedy ever say that about American soldiers??? Please provide a link to the congressional record or other credible source.
VOTERS SHIFT TOWARDS HOUSE DEMOCRATS
POLL: DEMS GAIN BIG LEAD
By Jill Lawrence, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — A Capitol Hill sex scandal has reinforced public doubts about Republican leadership and pushed Democrats to a huge lead in the race for control of Congress four weeks before Election Day, the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows.
Democrats had a 23-point lead over Republicans in every group of people questioned — likely voters, registered voters and adults — on which party’s House candidate would get their vote. That’s double the lead Republicans had a month before they seized control of Congress in 1994 and the Democrats’ largest advantage among registered voters since 1978.
Nearly three in 10 registered voters said their representative doesn’t deserve re-election — the highest level since 1994. President Bush’s approval rating was 37% in the new poll, down from 44% in a Sept. 15-17 poll. And for the first time since the question was asked in 2002, Democrats did better than Republicans on who would best handle terrorism, 46%-41%.<strong>
“It’s hard to see how the climate is going to shift dramatically between now and Election Day,” said John Pitney, a former GOP aide on Capitol Hill who now teaches at Claremont-McKenna College in California. He said Iraq remains the biggest problem for Republicans: <strong>“People just don’t like inconclusive wars.” <strong>
more:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-09-poll_x.htm</strong></strong></strong>
The cookies are now baked! The javascript error that was messing up the oven has been corrected.
John Simpson:
First, the worst attack on the U.S. soil happened on Bush’s watch. It, and every crisis since, has been met with complete incompetence and arrogance, matched only by the poor planning for its invasion of Iraq:
Posted 3/26/2004 4:19 AM
Soldiers in Iraq still buying their own body armor
The Associated Press
Soldiers headed for Iraq are still buying their own body armor — and in many cases, their families are buying it for them — despite assurances from the military that the gear will be in hand before they’re in harm’s way.
Body armor distributors have received steady inquiries from soldiers and families about purchasing the gear, which can cost several thousand dollars. Though the military has advised them not to rely on third-party suppliers, many soldiers say they want it before they deploy.
Last October, it was reported that nearly one-quarter of American troops serving in Iraq did not have ceramic plated body armor, which can stop bullets fired from assault rifles and shrapnel.
The military says the shortfall is over and soldiers who do not yet have the armor soon will. But many want to avoid the risk.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-03-26-body-armor_x.htm
An extraordinary action by the chief of staff sends a message: The Pentagon must increase the budget or reduce commitments in Iraq and elsewhere.
By Peter Spiegel
Times Staff Writer
Published September 25, 2006
WASHINGTON — The Army’s top officer withheld a required 2008 budget plan from Pentagon leaders last month after protesting to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the service could not maintain its current level of activity in Iraq plus its other global commitments without billions in additional funding.
The decision by Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army’s chief of staff, is believed to be unprecedented and signals a widespread belief within the Army that in the absence of significant troop withdrawals from Iraq, funding assumptions must be completely reworked, say current and former Pentagon officials…
Schoomaker failed to submit the budget plan by an Aug. 15 deadline. The protest followed a series of cuts in the service’s funding requests by both the White House and Congress over the last four months.
According to a senior Army official involved in budget talks, Schoomaker is now seeking $138.8 billion in 2008, nearly $25 billion above budget limits originally set by Rumsfeld. The Army’s budget this year is $98.2 billion, making Schoomaker’s request a 41% increase over current levels…
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-na-military25sep25,1,7815229.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Army extends cost-cutting, despite emergency funding bill
By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, July 22, 2006
...The Army has more than 100,000 soldiers deployed to Iraq, plus responsibility for logistic support for itself and its sister services. It also equips, trains and supports the Iraqi security forces…
Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, said July 14 that in 2004 it cost $4 billion to repair or replace war equipment, but now it has reached $12 billion to $13 billion. “And in my view, we will continue to see this escalate,” he told a Defense Forum Foundation roundtable on the Army’s role on the war on terror in Washington. The Army is using up equipment at four times the rate for which it was designed, he added….
Snip…
The Army chief said there is too little money available to keep up with equipment repairs. He said the Army’s five major repair depots are operating at only 50 percent of capacity, resulting in a backlog of 1,000 Humvees awaiting attention at the Red River Army Depot in Texas and 500 tanks at a depot in Alabama. The Army’s 2006 budget is $98.2 billion, and the 2007 budget request not yet approved by Congress seeks $111 billion for the Army.
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=37886&archive=true
This could go on forever, failure is failure! Lies are lies! It’s time for accountability.
FROM RAWSTORY:
Bush ‘04 Video Flashback: N. Korea policy ‘will work’
David Edwards and Ron Brynaert
Published: Tuesday October 10, 2006
At a debate in 2004, President Bush explained that his policy against bilateral talks with North Korea would be effective in preventing them from becoming a nuclear power.
The president says, “We began a new dialogue with North Korea. One that includes, not only the United States, but now China, and China has a lot of influence over North Korea. Some ways more than we do. As well, we include South Korea, Japan and Russia. Now there are 5 voices speaking to Kim Jong Il, not just one. And so if Kim Jong Il decides again not to honor an agreement, he’s not only doing injustice to America, he’ll be doing injustice to China as well. And I think this will work. It’s not going work if we open up a dialogue with Kim Jong Il.”
In 2002, the United States released $95 million to North Korea as part of an agreement to replace its nuclear program.
“In releasing the funding, President George W Bush waived the Framework’s requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors,” the BBC reported in 2002.
Bush’s Presidential determination said that the decision was “vital to the national security interests of the United States.”
The directive said that the United States was “continuing to make significant progress on eliminating the North Korean ballistic missile threat, including further missile tests and its ballistic missile exports.”
As I clearly recall, reading the New York Times at a coffeshop just weeks prior to the Iraqi invasion in 2003, the North Korean WMD issue surfaced at an inopportune moment. I was stunned to read a quote from Bush that dismissively glossed over the sabre rattling statements out of North Korea. Bush actually said, couched in sophomoric sarcasm, that Kim Jong was trying to trick America into believing that they had nuclear weapons ambitions and that Bush was not going to fall for it. In the following days, spin doctors backed off on his assinine remarks.
Now we have McCain assaulting the reality-based community with revisionist nonsense. Condi Rice made similar remarks just last year as noted in the Times editiorial page yesterday and Snow is now insinuating that the North Koreans are trying yet still to pull the wool over our eyes.
The big question that no one is asking, in view of the intelligence failures that the Bush team was supposed to have fixed after 9-11, is how did this administration get caught completely off guard once again, without a clue as to what the North was up to.
Bolton’s Johnny-come-lately fulminations only demonstrate once again that the Bush crowd was caught once again unprepared with their pants down.
From May 2004…
Rolling Blunder
How the Bush administration let North Korea get nukes. <strong>
By Fred Kaplan
May 2004
Washington Monthly
On Oct. 4, 2002, officials from the U.S. State Department flew to Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, and confronted Kim Jong-il’s foreign ministry with evidence that Kim had acquired centrifuges for processing highly enriched uranium, which could be used for building nuclear weapons. To the Americans’ surprise, the North Koreans conceded. It was an unsettling revelation, coming just as the Bush administration was gearing up for a confrontation with Iraq. This new threat wasn’t imminent; processing uranium is a tedious task; Kim Jong-il was almost certainly years away from grinding enough of the stuff to make an atomic bomb.
But the North Koreans had another route to nuclear weapons—a stash of radioactive fuel rods, taken a decade earlier from its nuclear power plant in Yongbyon. These rods could be processed into plutonium—and, from that, into A-bombs—not in years but in months. Thanks to an agreement brokered by the Clinton administration, the rods were locked in a storage facility under the monitoring of international weapons-inspectors. Common sense dictated that—whatever it did about the centrifuges—the Bush administration should do everything possible to keep the fuel rods locked up.
Unfortunately, common sense was in short supply. After a few shrill diplomatic exchanges over the uranium, Pyongyang upped the ante. The North Koreans expelled the international inspectors, broke the locks on the fuel rods, loaded them onto a truck, and drove them to a nearby reprocessing facility, to be converted into bomb-grade plutonium. The White House stood by and did nothing. Why did George W. Bush—his foreign policy avowedly devoted to stopping “rogue regimes” from acquiring weapons of mass destruction—allow one of the world’s most dangerous regimes to acquire the makings of the deadliest WMDs? Given the current mayhem and bloodshed in Iraq, it’s hard to imagine a decision more ill-conceived than invading that country unilaterally without a plan for the “post-war” era. But the Bush administration’s inept diplomacy toward North Korea might well have graver consequences. President Bush made the case for war in Iraq on the premise that Saddam Hussein might soon have nuclear weapons—which turned out not to be true. Kim Jong-il may have nuclear weapons now; he certainly has enough plutonium to build some, and the reactors to breed more.
Yet Bush has neither threatened war nor pursued diplomacy. He has recently, and halfheartedly, agreed to hold talks; the next round is set for June. But any deal that the United States might cut now to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program will be harder and costlier than a deal that Bush could have cut 18 months ago, when he first had the chance, before Kim Jong-il got his hands on bomb-grade material and the leverage that goes with it.
The pattern of decision making that led to this debacle—as described to me in recent interviews with key former administration officials who participated in the events—will sound familiar to anyone who has watched Bush and his cabinet in action. It is a pattern of wishful thinking, blinding moral outrage, willful ignorance of foreign cultures, a naive faith in American triumphalism, a contempt for the messy compromises of diplomacy, and a knee-jerk refusal to do anything the way the Clinton administration did it.
more…
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0405.kaplan.html</strong>
John Simpson,
Now you are resorting to total fantasy in your misquotation of Democrats and in your citing Drudge as a source for anything.
Here’s a hint—Druge, like many conservative leaders and members of the media, make things up. That’s how they con people like you into supporting them. That’s how they convince people that, despite all the evidence of their failures, that the Democrats are to blame.
Of course that was before Katrina, before Foley, and before the release of intelligence data on Iraq. It is getting harder and harder for them to pass off their lies.
Hey Ron:
Nice meeting you here. Always nice to flame-proof a blog with old friends…
John Simpson:
Oops! This was my response:
Posted by Anonymous | October 10, 2006 5:06 PM
Fe,
We’re all just continuing where we left off, getting ready for November, and then 2008.
Speaking of old friends, should I invite Lala over?
Ron:
You know me better than that!!!
John Simpson,
Well, liberals and all of our ilk are certainly delusional about this race.
So, how about letting us enjoy it for as long as it lasts?
Come 11/7 you can sit back and watch the destruction on any channel you choose. Enjoy!
Kerry WAS RIGHT - says John Nichols at The Nation!!!
(I know, I’m fainting too)
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=128967
JK Blog Manager:
The cookies are now baked! The javascript error that was messing up the oven has been corrected.
Posted by JK Blog Manager | October 10, 2006 4:59 PM
Uh, try again JK Blog Manager.
Just for the record. Jerry Studds had consensual sex with a 17 year old - not a minor. He was censured by the House for it. I suspect, but am not sure, that the elapse of 10 years was probably due to the fact that it was the only such contact and homosexuality was barely coming out of the closet then - not a hot button wedge issue. Studds had been in office 10 years, admitted the one time mistake and apologized for engaging in a relationship which, although not illegal, was improper for a mentor/vulnerable adolsescent relationship. His constituents apparently found that sufficient and continued to re-elect him.
As for the WTC bombing in ‘93 being on Clinton’s watch. That was February 26th, 1993. A whole 25 days into his watch. Four of the bombers were in custody in 2 weeks. Ramzi Yousef took 2 years of intense work. He had been allowed into the country a year before- without a passport. His companion was detained because he had a pamphlet on “how to make a bomb” in his luggage. Yousef was let in anyway.
Bush I had not responded to the Pan Am 103 bombing, Reagan had not responded to the bombing of the Marine barracks bombing in ‘82 in Beirut - in addition to two attacks on the embassy. According to Clarke, those two acts were the most lethal acts of foreign terrorism against the US until 9/11. The attack on the Cole occurred in 10/92. By the time the CIA and FBI certified the attack as the work of al-Qaeda, W was in office. BushCo decided 3 months was ‘too late’ to respond. I suspect that may have EMBOLDENED bin-Laden and Co to put 9/11 in high gear.
bin Laden formed al-Qaeda in ‘90. After three years under (former CIA director) Bush I, the CIA and FBI had no clue who he was or what al-Qaeda was.
For the most information on what 40, 41, 42, and 43 did in response to terrorism, read Against All Enemies. Clarke’s facts are not in question. Compared to Clinton’s torch, the rest of them barely had candles.
To all the right wing trolls above:
You lose your argument with me when you compare Iran to Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Such thinking is why we’re in the mess we’re in today—get a clue—Germany had the #1 military in the world in 1939 and the 2nd largest economy. There is no way Iran or North Korea represent as large a threat to the USA as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, even WITH the Bomb. No, I’m not thrilled with NK having the bomb or Iran obtaining one, but you don’t seem to have a grip of the history of WWII or the Cold War.
Its not complicated .Rhetoric can be taken with a pinch of salt .Rhetoric is used as a bargaining tool .Actions are what matters most .N Korea were warned regarding their nuclear testing ..they ignored the warnings and carried one out .The penalties have to be severe otherwise the precedent is set for any rogue state to push the envelope to see how weak the US and UN is .We cannot allow weaker nations to use nuclear threats as a bargaining tool for trade ...Its inherantly dangerous…..All the rest is smoke and mirrors ..” intelligence suggests this ..intelligence suggests that “. Iraq was a war crime and the actions and rhetoric used to validate invading that country were easily comparible with the rhetoric Hitler used to invade Austria and Poland.
Deal with the tangible threats and you will have the world at your side .Try and create enemies and the world will condemn you.
Jimmy Carter’s view on Korea
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101106J.shtml
As usual, BushCo did everything possible to make the situation worse. This crowd wants to keep the world in perpetual stress. that is how they can control the sheeples. Kool-aid for all.
[snip]
Responding to an invitation from President Kim Il-sung of North Korea, and with the approval of President Bill Clinton, I went to Pyongyang and negotiated an agreement under which North Korea would cease its nuclear program at Yongbyon and permit inspectors from the atomic agency to return to the site to assure that the spent fuel was not reprocessed. It was also agreed that direct talks would be held between the two Koreas.
The spent fuel (estimated to be adequate for a half-dozen bombs) continued to be monitored, and extensive bilateral discussions were held. The United States assured the North Koreans that there would be no military threat to them, that it would supply fuel oil to replace the lost nuclear power and that it would help build two modern atomic power plants, with their fuel rods and operation to be monitored by international inspectors. The summit talks resulted in South Korean President Kim Dae-jung earning the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize for his successful efforts to ease tensions on the peninsula.
But beginning in 2002, the United States branded North Korea as part of an axis of evil, threatened military action, ended the shipments of fuel oil and the construction of nuclear power plants and refused to consider further bilateral talks. In their discussions with me at this time, North Korean spokesmen seemed convinced that the American positions posed a serious danger to their country and to its political regime.
Responding in its ill-advised but predictable way, Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, expelled atomic energy agency inspectors, resumed processing fuel rods and began developing nuclear explosive devices.
Having been one of the people who advocate military action because Kim threatened us with attack, non-violence only works if it meets the objectives at least as well as violence.
So now for the big questions?
What are the objectives?
To return the NK-US relations to the 1994 Carter deals which allowed them to keep ther lights on without nukes?
To remove all nuke military and peaceful nuke power capability?
Why should NK give up their nuke capability after we threatened them with the Axis of Evil crap and we refuse to talk to them one-on-one?
We are the ones that slandered them and we should meet with them to resolve the issue. Violence is always an option and may be necessary but should not be the first and only option.
But, it is an election year and Repubs have to show they will use violence regardless of the reason because their whole aim is not peace and stability but war and instability.
Fear sells only if there are buyers. Don’t buy.