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| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
it makes things much clearer and finite on the issue of negotiations.
in addition |
Yes, our Bush/Bolton tag-team negotiations really is a site to behold for the rest of the world. Why, everyone wants to be like us:
| quote: | Oct. 16, 2006 issue - On Sept. 19, 2005, North Korea signed a widely heralded denuclearization agreement with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang pledged to "abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs." In return, Washington agreed that the United States and North Korea would "respect each other's sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations."
Four days later, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sweeping financial sanctions against North Korea designed to cut off the country's access to the international banking system, branding it a "criminal state" guilty of counterfeiting, money laundering and trafficking in weapons of mass destruction.
The Bush administration says that this sequence of events was a coincidence. Whatever the truth, I found on a recent trip to Pyongyang that North Korean leaders view the financial sanctions as the cutting edge of a calculated effort by dominant elements in the administration to undercut the Sept. 19 accord, squeeze the Kim Jong Il regime and eventually force its collapse. My conversations made clear that North Korea's missile tests in July and its threat last week to conduct a nuclear test explosion at an unspecified date "in the future" were directly provoked by the U.S. sanctions. In North Korean eyes, pressure must be met with pressure to maintain national honor and, hopefully, to jump-start new bilateral negotiations with Washington that could ease the financial squeeze. When I warned against a nuclear test, saying that it would only strengthen opponents of negotiations in Washington, several top officials replied that "soft" tactics had not worked and they had nothing to lose.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15175633/site/newsweek/ |
Love those Bushy coinkidinks, don't you?
| quote: | | if it was successful like they say, we can cross off certain intel anomallies that we had prior to the test that either mitigated our theories or substantiated them. plus all the intel that we gleaned from watching them prep for one. |
Seems like the only way this Administration works when it comes to its intel abilities - post facto style. Invade Iraq to see if they have WMDs. Oops, don't have 'em, but at least we found out AFTER we invaded! Nutbag N. Korea tests nukes, and hey sure enough we NOW know they have 'em.
Terrific logic always on display by this Administration.
___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
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