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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: frankw1900 who wrote (57808)	11/19/2002 2:55:42 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

If you believe Woodward got told any stories out of school, I think it's a mistake I think that Bush and Powell opened up to him, and Rice gave Woodward a little. It is not in the except, but news reports lead me to believe that Rove put his foot in his mouth with one remark. (Bush's appearance at a stadium reminded him of a "Nazi Rally!" Whew!) Cheney and Rumsfeld obviously would not give Woodward the time of day. He had to go by the NSC notes on them. This admin has kept news tighter than any in my memory.

To: frankw1900 who wrote (57808)	11/19/2002 4:28:16 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

Is North Korea going to shape up or ship out? We know that Bush is really pissed. TWT. REVIEW & OUTLOOK No More Carrots for North Korea Finally, the allies hold Pyongyang accountable. Tuesday, November 19, 2002 12:01 a.m. At last. North Korea finally is being punished, not rewarded, for meddling with weapons of mass destruction. Friday's joint decision by the U.S., the European Union, Japan and South Korea to suspend fuel-oil shipments to the gulag state to protest its uranium-enrichment program marks an encouraging first step toward putting in place a new policy for containing--and perhaps ultimately toppling--Kim Jong Il's evil regime. For too long the approach has been all carrot and no stick; the worse Pyongyang behaved the more goodies it got. Now the party's over. Over the weekend, spin doctors in Seoul were busy suggesting that it is still possible to salvage parts of the 1994 Framework Agreement under which Pyongyang promised to abandon its nuclear program in return for 500,000 tons of free oil annually and two new light-water reactors. But no one really believes that's actually going to happen. Next month South Koreans elect a new president--probably opposition leader Lee Hoi Chang, who has pledged to stand alongside the U.S. in taking a tough stance on the North's nuclear program. We understand Washington's one concession to current President Kim Dae Jung, in allowing the delivery of a final fuel-oil shipment already at sea, was aimed at avoiding an open rupture with Seoul ahead of the December 19 polls. In any case, even if South Korea insists on continuing the light-water reactor project in the North (construction of which, incredibly, has not been frozen), it won't make a practical difference. Although it hasn't received the same publicity as the freeze on oil, the Department of Energy has quietly suspended the transfer of American nuclear know-how, says nonproliferation expert Henry Sokolski. Without this, the reactors can never become anything more than two empty concrete shells. While the 1994 agreement may now be dead and buried, that is only the first stage in formulating a new U.S. policy toward North Korea. The immediate priority is to prepare a tough response in case Pyongyang's answer to the freeze on oil and nuclear technology is the expulsion of the handful of international monitors currently preventing the reprocessing of its plutonium stockpile at Yongbyon. That could allow North Korea to build as many as 30 nuclear bombs a year, according to the worst-case scenario put forward by Brent Scowcroft and Daniel Poneman in an article in The Wall Street Journal last week. Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Friday the U.S. would view any attempt to compromise the integrity of the Yongbyon stockpile as "a very, very serious step." While Mr. Powell has been encouragingly robust over Korea (probably in part a result of the firsthand look he got at the North when he was stationed in the South), we tend to prefer the view of others in the Administration who say any plutonium reprocessing by Pyongyang would be so dangerous as to constitute a "regime-ending event." That doesn't necessarily mean war. For one thing, the regime is weak enough that it may one day collapse of its own accord. There's also the possibility, albeit a faint one, that Kim Jong Il will watch U.S. actions in Iraq and decide he doesn't want to become another Saddam. Ultimately, however, a new government in Pyongyang is probably the only sure nonproliferation policy. For now, there are steps that could be taken. As Messrs. Scowcroft and Poneman argued in their op-ed piece, these could start with an embargo on trade and investment and a ban on remittances to the North from offshore Koreans. With U.S. leadership, Seoul and Tokyo would likely go along. One easy step that could have been taken long ago would be to extend broadcasts by Radio Free Asia, which currently transmits just two hours of programming a day into North Korea. More North Koreans ought to know what they are missing by being imprisoned in Kim Jong Il's medieval fortress-nation. Meanwhile, scary outbursts continue to emanate from Pyongyang. Yesterday it reiterated its threat to resume testing of ballistic missiles capable of reaching U.S. soil--a concern expressed earlier this month by the head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. Yesterday too, North Korea retracted a radio broadcast Sunday that appeared to declare that Pyongyang already had nuclear weapons. Commendable though it is, stopping oil shipments and nuclear technology transfers are only first steps rather than ends in themselves. What's needed now is a coherent strategy for ending the nuclear threat by removing those responsible for it and, in the process, freeing North Korea's enslaved population from the world's most brutal regime.

To: frankw1900 who wrote (57808)	11/19/2002 6:18:25 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi frankw1900; Re: "I don't think bush is putting up with Powell. It's good cop, bad cop. Eisenhower and Dulles, only Dubya is Dulles." Inherent in the "good cop / bad cop" story is the fact that neither of the cops are going to do anything truly harmful to the suspect. Instead, it's an act put on for the benefit of the suspect. The "bad cop" threatens her, but the "good cop" barely manages to keep the "bad cop" under control. The whole purpose of "good cop / bad cop" is to get the suspect to confess without having to torture him. The "good cop / bad cop" analogy implies that the US is bluffing. If there was no bluff, then the cops would simply beat the confession out of the suspect. They don't use "good cop / bad cop" in nasty states where torture is rife. Instead, they just apply the electrodes and turn em on. -- Carl