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

To: michael97123 who wrote (147081)	10/6/2004 9:14:35 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Lets start with North Korea -- for 2 years Bush refused to engage in direct 2-way talks with North Korea. The result? No talks were held for 2 years, during which time the situation in North Korea went from serious to critical. Instead, we lamely insisted on 6 way talks -- and the result? Nothing. We needed 2 way talks and we still do. Bush made a direct threat against North Korea -- a rogue nation in every sense of the word, and one given to policies that can directly harm us in the worst way. To make a threat and then leave them for years to go about their business of perfecting and building their nuclear weapons and weapons delivery systems is such a serious form of negligence that Bush should be ashamed to even pretend to have protected the national security interests during the term of his Presidency. Two way talks continue to be essential. We are fools to avoid directly engaging North Korea -- fools because we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by getting closer to North Korea. Getting past their bizarre isolation is half the battle -- Bush lost that battle by refusing to engage them and by using proxies instead.

To: michael97123 who wrote (147081)	10/6/2004 9:49:52 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Now with respect to Iran, they can plainly see our vulnerability today and they can plainly see the opportunity we provided them to press ahead with their plans to build nuclear weapons -- we handed them this opportunity on a silver platter the day we invaded Iraq. Sanctions won't work on Iran, and they will have their bomb unless we take military action. We are in no position to do more than bomb them. Will bombing them do the job? And at what cost? We shot ourselves in the foot in Iraq and now we can't make a credible threat to take action against Iran. We could go nuclear on them -- one hell of a frightening prospect for all concerned and a tragic option forced by the stupidity of premature and misguided commitment to a low-level threat from Iraq.