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July 25, 2008

Is State Backing Away from N. Korea’s Terror De-Listing?

If you want to know what I think, no.  I think it’s posturing.  But Yonhap catches some significance in these remarks that I had missed: “It’s a 45-day minimum notification, but we certainly expect, and we’re watching very carefully, to see20whether or not North Korea is going to come through on the essential issue, which is verification, and to act accordingly,” Rice said. “I just wanted to clarify it’s a 45-day minimum notification, not maximum.” Rice reiterated her skepticism about...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
July 24, 2008

For the Thousandth Time, Secretary Rice, We Are Not Giving Up Our Nukes.

Somehow, I don’t think Condi Rice’s “‘very strong message’ about  [North Korea’s] nuclear disarmament obligations” quite got through: North Korea reportedly asked to be recognized as a nuclear state at a meeting of foreign ministers from countries in six-party talks on Wednesday. North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun urged the U.S. to stop its hostile policy toward the North, saying verification of the nuclear facilities and stockpiles it has declared is not a duty but cooperation.  [Chosun Ilbo] Somewhere, Jack...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
July 21, 2008

Agreed Framework 2.0 Update

Updates:   According to this AP report, we’ve now presented  the North Koreans with a proposed verification protocol and invited North Korea to stall for two more months and gut it  offer comments.   South Korean negotiator Kim Sook  says, “The ball is actually in the North Korean court ….”  True to form, State is withholding all details about what the protocol would consist of.  And as if in response for my rant below  about the lack of media skepticism, Reuters’s...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
July 9, 2008

Obama ‘Pivots’ Positions on N. Korea Terror De-Listing

The New York Sun picks up the story of Kim Dong Shik and Barack Obama’s first broken promise: In an interview yesterday, the executive director of the Korean Church Coalition for North Korean Freedom, Sam Kim, said he traveled to Congress in early June to remind Illinois legislators of a 2005 letter signed by Senator Obama, among others, that called on the North Korean regime to provide details about the case of the Reverend Kim Dong-Shik. Rev. Kim, who helped...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
July 5, 2008

Absolute Must Read: Chris Hill Explodes at Reporter Over Leaked Plan to Accept Incomplete, Incorrect N. Korean Declaration

James Rosen of Fox News has written the single most detailed and  best-written criticism of  Chris Hill’s  Disagreed Framework I have yet read, and that certainly includes anything I’ve written.   Rosen’s narration of Hill’s many public reassurances that  he would accept  nothing less than a “complete and correct” North Korean declaration is devastating.  I had wished for the time to write something like it myself, and that is now done for me.  And yet that is not even the best...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
July 2, 2008

Mission Accomplished!

There are more bad reviews for the Bush Administration’s decision to pay full price not for North Korea’s nuclear disarmament, but for  a “declaration” that omits its nuclear weapons, its nuclear proliferation, and a good share of its nuclear programs. *   National Review thinks Kim Jong Il must be smiling:  “The deal that emerged from the six-party talks is indeed making for dramatic headlines and good television. What cannot be said is that it is making us safe.”  *...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
July 1, 2008

Oops, We Changed the Wrong Regime

People can differ about the merits of  overthrowing noxious regimes  and the  various ways  that can be pursued, but I’m guessing this is one item  Condoleezza Rice wasn’t  pursuing for her legacy showcase:  Rice’s  sudden  turnabout on  de-listing North  Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism may soon plunge  the Japanese government into crisis.  Japan must now  decide whether to join the United States in providing aid to a country that kidnaps and refuses to account for unknown numbers of...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Japan/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks
June 30, 2008

The New York Times: Now 33% as Coherent as Dick Cheney!

Dick Cheney  and the New York Times have one thing in common:  both have  opinions about  the latest version of  Bush’s  North Korea policy: Cheney froze, according to four of the participants at the Old Executive Office Building meeting. For more than 30 minutes he had been talking and answering questions, without missing a beat. But now, for several long seconds, he stared, unsmilingly, at his questioner, Steven Clemons of the New America Foundation, a public policy institution. Finally, he...
Categories Appeasement/Media Criticism/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/WMD
June 28, 2008

Chris Hill Busted Again

[Update 1 Jul 08:   According to a reader tip,  the day after I published this post and the photos below, a State Department desk officer contacted Mrs. Kim through supporters to talk about her letter.  So Chris Hill can’t tell this particular lie again, but  he’s still going to do what  he wants to do.  The next lie, I suspect, will be delivered directly to Mrs. Kim.  It will consist of unenforceable promises to account, eventually,  for the fate...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
June 27, 2008

George W. Bush: A Uniter at Last!

For all the failings  of his accord with Kim Jong Il, Bush has made remarkable progress in unwittingly brokering an accord between a liberal Democratic presidential nominee, the House’s most conservative Republicans, and the Republican presidential nominee.  To various degrees, all have noted the inadequacy of Kim’s declaration and declared their opposition to de-listing North Korea as a state sponsor of terror unless it permits verfication.  (Which it won’t, of course): This is a step forward, and there will be...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
June 26, 2008

Get Ready for Kim Jong Il’s Incomplete, Incorrect, and Expensive Nuclear Declaration (Updated and Bumped)

[Updated below:     Today, President Bush embarks on the process of throwing away most of our diplomatic leverage against North Korea in exchange for a declaration that’s incomplete, incorrect, and unverified.  Those who rightly criticized President Clinton for  appeasing North Korea after the 1994 Agreed Framework should be honest enough to admit that Bush’s eleventh-hour grasp at a diplomatic legacy  is probably even more dangerous.] [Original Post, 24 Jun 08]   In a speech at the Heritage Foundation  last week,...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
June 20, 2008

Why Should We Believe Chris Hill?

Chris Hill is the man in whom Congress will have to invest its trust if it decides to throw away America’s leverage and let the State Department de-list North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism this summer.  The terms of Hill’s deal with Kim Jong Il are  so  hopelessly vague  and endlessly flexible  that the viability of this whole process rests on two  thin  and brittle reeds: Kim Jong Il’s good faith and  Chris Hill’s veracity.   Enough said?  If not,...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Refugees/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
June 19, 2008

Who Remembers Kim Dong Shik? Answer: The Washington Post, Barack Obama, and Condoleezza Rice

Regular readers know that I’ve been a persistent critic of politicians of both parties who would  politicize and trivialize two  essential and  long-standing principles of American national security policy:  the intolerance of state terrorism, and the intolerance of proliferation.  North Korea’s refusal to be bound by any norms of  human civilization tempts a certain  class of politician to simply exempt North Korea from those principles.  Notwithstanding President Bush’s hawkish and mostly empty  words, his administration is about to  do exactly...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
June 9, 2008

Leaked to OFK: Lugar Will Go to Pyongyang

Or intends to, anyway (the road to Pyongyang is paved with unrealized intentions).  Maybe when he’s there he can clarify Kim Jong Il’s intention not to disarm, or he can help  the State Department boys write Kim Jong Il’s nuclear declaration for  him (which should make it easy to disavow). Sen. Lugar, one the the Senate’s most liberal Republicans, is memorable for his failure to get John Bolton’s confirmation through the committee he formerly chaired.  Lugar is advised by staffer...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
June 2, 2008

Chris Hill Resignation Watch

[Update:   Here, at Channel News Asia, Kim Sook seems to be saying that the North Koreans are refusing to hand over their declaration until the Americans de-list North Korea first.  Remember — State’s best chance of successfully de-listing North Korea means giving Congress notice of its decision in late June and taking advantage of the August recess to wrong-foot its congressional opponents.  As a practical matter,  that means North Korea won’t be de-listed  until August, but of course, that’s...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
May 31, 2008

Kathleen Stephens Nomination Woes Deepen

In  March, I explained why I believe that Kathleen Stephens is the wrong person to be our next ambassador to South Korea.  In  April, I  explained why  Senator Sam Brownback had placed a hold on Stephens’s nomination, effectively blocking it.  Brownback announced his opposition  by going to the Senate floor to deliver an impassioned speech — “Google Earth has made witnesses of us all” — that made use of my own satellite image grabs  of Camp 22.  State had applied...
Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
May 31, 2008

N. Korea to Jack Pritchard: We Won’t Disarm

The U.S. State Department on Friday bashed its former envoy to North Korea, who a day before said Pyongyang is not going to meet Washington’s requirements on denuclearization despite laborious negotiations underway.  [Yonhap] No one should be surprised by anything about  this revelation except the name of the prophet.  This has started a delicious  red-on-red, Mick-on-Keith slap fight  between Pritchard and  the State Department.  Pritchard, of course, was a Clinton holdover, an early defector from the Bush Administration, and a...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
May 15, 2008

Sung Kim’s Sideshow

Yesterday, the State Department’s Sung Kim was paraded before the cameras with seven boxes of documents handed over by the North Koreans. For the most part, the media have glossed this story as a tangible sign of progress in disarming North Korea, a conclusion that doesn’t seem very well supported if you read the entire transcript of the press conference. The key points I take from this begin with the best question asked at the news conference, apparently by Arshad...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks