OK, we need a popular DEM to speak up NOW and frame this issue

[ecstatic]

So that the repukes well be on the defense again. NO time to waste! Who will do it? For example, we spent billions in Iraq and now have no money or troops left for N Korea, and that a draft might be coming, thanks to Bush.

ETA: It's important that it be a POPULAR Dem because otherwise the media won't cover it, and the statement needs to be very harsh and unpolitically correct

[Greeby]

1. The media probably won't cover it anyway

I mean, does anyone seriously believe the media makes any pretense at balance anymore? Or that someone would be willing to do Democrats a favour, as opposed to doing for Shrub what Monica did for Clinton :shrug:

[Tesha]

4. It was the lead story in our hick hometown newsrag. (NT)

[Coexist]

2. we don't need to frame it

we need to quote their incompetance back at them:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2352504

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2873057&mesg_id=2873057

[kentuck]

3. True. Since when do we need to "frame" the truth?

Rather than simply telling it in the simplest and bluntest form possible.

[ecstatic]

7. you are right, but, Bush & Co. will use this to prove their agenda

Which is why I say we should frame the issue first!

[ProgressiveEconomist]

5. How's this for a frame:Dubya's been in a "State of Denial" on NK nukes

since October 2002, when HE DID NOTHING about NK's commencing reprocessing spent reactor fuel rods into plutonium. This weekend's nuclear test has been just a matter of time since then.

Under Bill Clinton, those spent nuclear fuel rods were locked in internationally-inspected storage facilities and were slated for removal from NK under an agreement negotiated by for Clinton by Jimmy Carter in 1994. Overruling Colin Powell, who wanted to continue the diplomatic process begun under Clinton, Dubya abrogated the NK agreement in favor of reliance on a "Star Wars" missile defense shield. Of course, there are grave doubts about the practicability of current missile defense technology, and about the wisdom of substantial contracts Dubya awarded to Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and other heavy Republican political contributors.

In other words, proliferation of NK nukes on Dubya's watch are part of a pattern of extraordinary WH incompetence encompassing pre-9/11 antiterror policy, pre-Katrina disaster policy, and the decision to ignore many warnings about entanglement in a ground war in Iraq.

From http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0405.kaplan.html :

"Rolling Blunder: How the Bush administration let North Korea get nukes.

By Fred Kaplan; May 2004

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 ... 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 ...

Yet Bush has neither threatened (North Korea with) war nor pursued diplomacy.... 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."

[Totallybushed]

6. Will this draft thing

never go away?

There's not going to be a draft. Not as long as the Repukes are in power. The ONLY people talking about it are Democratic non-candidates. When this kind of mud is slung, it stands a far greater chance of winding up on the slinger than the slingee, and WILL NOT HURT THE REPUBLICANS.

But it could hurt them Democrats. People will think, "Oh, yeah, gotta fix the mess the Rs made. We need a draft, for sure, and the Dems will give it to us". NOT. What they will say is, "The Dems are calling for a draft to fix the mess the Rs have made. Hmm. It doesn't look all that bad a mess to me."

I know that we need to show the electorate how the Rs are ruling through fear of terrorism, gays, choice, minorities, cultural suicide, etc. But is our indulging in scare tactics the way to do it? Maybe it is. But I don't have to like it.