George W. Bush in praise of North Korea on nuclear activities WTF?

[Whoa_Nelly]

Threats to attack Iran (and will probably go through with it), but basically a shake of the finger at NK :mad:
It's clear that this is part and parcel of posturing for geo-political boundaries: NK offers the opportunity of a partnership, using the carrot of Free Trade, to create a presence of aggression toward China, and possibly Russia, while Iran, with no real diplomacy employed on the part of the US, as it represents more ingress toward the greater vast reserves of oil found in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Why does this remind me of the beginning of the Viet Nam War, and the drumbeat to a much larger scale of war with which the US has ever been involved? :eyes:

(And never a word about the human rights abuses in NK) :grr:


http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23930255-601,00.html

George W. Bush in praise of North Korea on nuclear activities

PRESIDENT George W. Bush last night warily welcomed North Korea's declaration of its shadowy nuclear activities and announced steps to ease trade sanctions and remove it from the US terrorism black list, but he warned Pyongyang to fully give up its atomic ambitions and come clean on its role in spreading nuclear know-how overseas.

<snip>
He announced that the US would remove trade sanctions under the Trading With the Enemy Act, and notify Congress that in 45 days it intended to take North Korea off the State Department list of nations that sponsored terrorism.

"We will trust you only to the extent you fulfil your promises. I'm pleased with the progress. I'm under no illusions. This is the first step. This isn't the end of the process. It is the beginning of the process," he said.

"If North Korea continues to make the right choices, it can repair its relationship with the international community ... If North Korea makes the wrong choices, the United States and its partners in the six-party talks will act accordingly."

[FSogol]

1. It is so he can crow about his "success" n/t

[global1]

3. So This Is About Bush's Legacy?......

Why all of a sudden does he begin to posture toward diplomacy with NK after 8 years?

[colt equalizer]

2. Pretty sure the consensus a while back was if NK didn't clean up its act, Bush would hit them.

Not trying to be argumentative, but if you google Bush attack North Korea there was a lot of talk a few years back about the need for them to give up their nuke program or Bush would hit 'em. In fact, I think we came darn close to thinking he was about to do it just a couple years back.

[tuckessee]

4. There's still a lot of threat in there.

"...If North Korea makes the wrong choices, the United States and its partners in the six-party talks will act accordingly."

[Dangerman]

5. This does not make any sense.

If Bush declares that diplomacy works against a member of the "axis of evil", why the hell he should be done the same route in Iraq five years ago? Iraq never had weapons of mass destruction, so why didn't Bush use diplomacy like he used in North Korea instead of occupying Iraq?

Hypocrisy reinvented.

[Elwood P Dowd]

6. Rich repukes want the slave wage workers in North Korea.

They have millions willing to work for lower wages than the Mexicans and Chinese. Corporate American simply cannot afford $2.00 an hour in Mexico or 50-cents an hour in China.

[spanone]

7. this whole thing stinks to me

[gatorboy]

8. What are the Freepers saying about this?

The title, "George W. Bush in praise of North Korea" MUST have caused at least a few exploding heads over there.

[Elwood P Dowd]

9. Here is the deal folks.....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/bush-congress-consider-n_b_24818.html

<snip>

This proposed deal goes beyond the other awful trade deals that we've watched the Bush administration and Congress consider recently - it goes beyond the job-destroying Central American Free Trade Agreement and even beyond the proposed trade pact with Malaysia, a country that prohibits a minimum wage. This trade pact "would be the U.S.'s largest pact since the North American Free Trade Agreement passed Congress more than a decade ago."


The Journal story, of course, is filled with hedging. No one wants to come out and say this is what the trade negotiations are all about, or that they really want this North Korea piece - even though its obvious Big Money is salivating for it. What they want is the issue to go back into the background and get quietly passed without anyone noticing. They would rather the public ignore the effort to validate the "joint-venture Kaesong industrial complex in North Korea" that "combines South Korean capital with North Korean labor" (read: combines multinational corporate cash with exploitable slaves). By the time the complex is in full operation in 2012, "it could employ more than 750,000 North Koreans" – again, North Koreans who are literally enslaved and barred from leaving their prison.

Geopolitically, this is like the Dubai Ports controversy on steroids. During that controversy, the Bush administration ignored its own military officials’ warnings and tried to allow a foreign government to purchase our critical infrastructure – effectively going on record as saying our international trade policy prioritizes profits over national security. Now, we have a U.S. administration publicly considering economically rewarding a country that is test firing missiles, developing nuclear weapons, and threatening our allies - rewarding this global threat with a trade pact that validates that aggressor’s enslavement of its population.

<snip>