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Category: WMD

February 23, 2007

The Administration’s North Korea Strategy: Pop Smoke

[Update:   A friend just sent me John O’Sullivan’s  must-read criticism of the deal on National Review Online (thanks!),  and it’s  an absolute direct hit.   O’Sullivan actually attributed Bush’s new policy to Jimmy Carter (ouch!).  Safe to say, conservatives pretty much all want  this deal  euthanized.   I could  swear I’d seen the Kipling reference before somewhere.] [Update 2:  More “Barrel of a Gun” spin from Pyongyang:  In another sense, North Korean authorities seem to be trying to re-integrate the disparity...
Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 22, 2007

Richardson on David Albright: Put Me Down for “C”

Update:   Albright has published  his views here  in slightly more detail, and I’m even less persuaded than I was before.  Albright completely mischaracterizes the HEU evidence by ingoring  evidence he can’t refute (North Korea’s admissions, Musharraf’s admissions, Libya) and arguing as if all of our  evidence consisted of a receipt for  aluminum tubes we’d found in A.Q. Khan’s lint filter.   The key point  about aluminum tubes  is that they’re  used to make gas centrifuges to enrich uranium.  I’ve never...
Categories Appeasement/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 21, 2007

‘Paying the Clown’

[Corrected, Updated]   Harvard Professor Sung Yoon Lee  dissects the North Korea sellout  in the Daily NK and manages to say in one paragraph, with crisp eloquence, what it’s taken me about four posts to say less clearly. Energy, food, economic aid, and legitimacy are a necessary condition to the North Korean regime’s long-term survival, for the quintessential criminal regime of Kim Jong Il–despite its claims of juche (self-sufficiency)–is unable to function over the long-term without aid from abroad. At...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 21, 2007

The Two (South) Koreas

I have concluded that there must be some South Korean law against holding cabinet meetings. South Korea’s point man on North Korea said Wednesday that there is no evidence to support reports that North Korea may have a uranium-enrichment program. “We do not have any information on whether North Korea is carrying out a concrete plan to run a uranium-enrichment program,” Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung said at a meeting of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs and trade.  [Yonhap] National...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 13, 2007

The Not-Quite-Agreed Framework

[Originally, “Hill:  We Have a Deal.”] [Update:   I’ve pasted the full text of this “agreement” onto the bottom of this post.  Thanks to a reader.] Uh oh. The U.S. envoy to talks on nuclear program said Tuesday that a tentative agreement had been reached on initial moves for the communist nation’s disarmament. “I’m encouraged by this that we were able to take a step forward on the denuclearization issue,” Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said. He declined to...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 11, 2007

Curb Your Enthusiasm

See if you can spot any patterns here.  Let’s begin on a very high note: McClatchy News, Feb. 7:   The U.S. envoy to international talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis said Thursday that he was optimistic negotiators were nearing a breakthrough. Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Feb. 7,  Headline:   North Korea:  A Breakthrough at hand as talks resume today?  [OFK note:  at least they didn’t say “peace is at hand.”] NY Times, Feb. 7:   The long-stalled six-way talks on...
Categories Diplomacy/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 9, 2007

Negotiating With Terror

I normally don’t really give a rat’s ass what al-Qaeda says in its videotapes, but this does seem more than mildly newsworthy: And in yet another gambit that smacks of desperation, [al-Qaeda in Iraq leader  Abu Omar] al-Baghdadi tries to rile up the French and the Chinese against American global hegemony, and addresses those nations as “the freemen of the world.” Not only that, but he adopts a scolding tone with North Korea, essentially invoking the “sharing is caring” line,...
Categories Diplomacy/Media Criticism/Terrorism (NK)/WMD
February 1, 2007

Axis, Schmaxis (6)

North Korea and Iran are cooperating in developing long-range missiles, the deputy director of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency said yesterday. Army Brig. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly said during a speech that North Korea test fired a long-range Taepodong missile in July, and Iran is working on a space launcher that would help develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could hit the U.S. “Not only North Korea, but Iran has shown some significant developments in their [own] missile systems,” Gen....
Categories Axis of Evil/Iran/WMD
January 29, 2007

Deceptive Headline Watch: Yonhap

You don’t get self-fisking journalism very often, but here’s one that just falls off the bone like an overcooked roast (mmm, roooast).  Here’s the headline: U.S. must choose between sanctioning N.K. and compromising for denuclearization: report Well, what are we supposed to take from that, I wonder?  It could only be that inexplicable American obsession with people counterfeiting its currency that’s preventing us from denuclearizing North Korea.Until you read the actual quote, which says: “Currently the (George W.) Bush administration...
Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks/WMD
January 25, 2007

Axis, Schmaxis, Part 5

This blog  has previously tracked reports of  nuclear and missile  co-development between Iran and  North  Korea;  London’s Daily  Telegraph is now  reporting a widening expansion of Iranian-North Korean nuclear cooperation. North Korea is helping Iran to prepare an underground nuclear test similar to the one Pyongyang carried out last year. Under the terms of a new understanding between the two countries, the North Koreans have agreed to share all the data and information they received from their successful test last...
Categories Axis of Evil/Iran/Terrorism/Iraq/WMD
January 23, 2007

That’s funny. I thought the main sticking point was the fact that North Korea built and tested nukes.

South Korea recently asked the U.S. to consider selectively unfreezing at least five of North Korea’s 50 accounts with the Macau-based Banco Delta Asia, saying part of the US$24 million North Korean accounts were acquired legitimately, it emerged Monday. The issue has been the main sticking point in international efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis. [link] … not to mention all of North Korea’s extended absences from the talks, and breaking its last three four  nuclear agreements.
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
January 22, 2007

Phoney War (I)

It is a natural tendency of people to  accomodate themselves emotionally to conditions they cannot change.  At its most extreme, accomodation can explain an abused child’s seeming acceptance of an abuser’s predations.  At its most benign, it  can be a  mostly beneficial tendency to compromise with opposing views.  But there is a difference between  being open-minded  and fooling one’s self.  I’m still leaning against belief that a Democratic Congress with a narrow margin is going into an election year with...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD
January 22, 2007

Wobble Watch

Here I go again,  elevating my metabolism  about the latest U.S.-North Korean “breakthrough” that will probably amount to nothing. North Korea has reportedly agreed to halt nuclear activities including operations at a reactor in Yongbyon, and allow on-site monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency as the first steps to abandoning its nuclear program. The agreement came during a meeting of the chief nuclear negotiators of the U.S. and North Korea that ended Friday in Berlin, sources said. According to...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
January 18, 2007

I’m Kim Jong Il, and I Approve This Message!

The message is, “if you elect  the Grand National Party, I’ll nuke you!”  “South Koreans are well aware that if the GNP takes power, it will destroy North-South relations and leave them only with the calamity of nuclear war,” wrote the Rodong Shinmun, the North Korean Workers’ Party daily. “The GNP and their puppets stand to be destroyed.” The daily again denied the GNP’s charge that the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, in similar remarks on Jan....
Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics/WMD/WTF?
January 17, 2007

Ministry of Empty Promises

Ban Ki Moon tells us how he’ll make the United Nations relevant again: “I pledge my best efforts to help the Iraqi people in their quest for a more stable and prosperous Iraq,” he said. “On North Korea, I will try my best to facilitate the smooth process of the six-party process, and encourage in any way I can the work for a denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” He said he wanted to see substantive progress on the Millennium Development...
Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/WMD
January 16, 2007

China Calls on North Korea to Return Abductees

Some interesting statements emerged from a trilateral summit in Cebu: The leaders of Japan, China and South Korea urged North Korea Sunday to scrap its nuclear weapons and to respond to international humanitarian concerns. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun made the plea in a joint statement after the first summit between the three nations in two years. It is rare for China publicly to raise humanitarian concerns about North Korea....
Categories Abductions/China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Human Rights/WMD
January 16, 2007

Sounds Like a Job for ‘The Dog’

But this time, they mean business: An international energy consortium has asked impoverished North Korea for nearly US$1.9 billion in compensation for its defunct project to build two nuclear power plants in the North under the 1994 nuclear agreement on the North’s freezing of its nuclear activities, diplomatic sources here said Tuesday. North Korea, however, has yet to respond to the claim, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Analysts also said the North is unlikely to respond favorably,...
Categories Diplomacy/NK Economics/WMD
January 11, 2007

Lefkowitz on Kaesong: ‘Material support for a rogue government, its nuclear ambitions, and its human rights atrocities.’

[Updates Below; and a big welcome to  everyone coming in from Gateway  Pundit.]   Ambassador Jay Lefkowitz, the  U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea,  has an excellent new op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (thanks to a reader!) that will provoke an absolute  Category 5 sh*tstorm  between the United States and South Korea, and for the best of reasons.  Without question, the State Department and the Administration have not always lived up the high ideals the Special...
Categories "United" Nations/Human Trafficking/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/WMD