Replies to post #1445 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[FinnTroll]

The question of timing here is an interesting one. The leaders on both sides (US and NK) are far from stupid or ignorant. Either side has the means to defuse the confrontation rather than escalate it at this time. Instead both sides seem bent on ramping up the tension. One purpose of this brinksmanship may be to encourage our respective populations to accept (even welcome) circumstances in the future that are more distasteful than the present, but preferable to a full scale nuclear confrontation.

I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist, but I remain watchful.

[brainlessone]

zeev did you meant to post this here? the intro suggested otherwise.

is the upshot of all this that NK seeks to get more plutonium?

[sylvester80]

From what I read it was because Bush froze oil shipments to NK including providing power (which was part of the agreement). Of course also part of the agreement was for NK to stop their nuclear research. So each one just keeps escalating it a notch...

What's kind of funny is that NC voluntarily admitted that they have been doing nuclear research, during their last NK-U.S meeting, and it came as a shock to the administration. The U.S. administration was clueless. Which is why we don't even know where the labs or the nukes are. But instead of us continue talking on this issue, we broke off the talks, cut off the oil and power part of the agreement and the rest is history.

[sylvester80]

From Paula.....
-------------------------------------------------------
Zeev, I admit a great deal of ignorance in matters of foreign policy.

I read this on the Yahoo fuel cell thread.

http://messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&action=m&board=4687441&tid=erc&sid=4687441&....

If the poster is correct, I am more afraid of our government's agenda than that of the North Koreans (which would seem to be survival).

12/27/02 12:07 pm
Msg: 69851 of 69919

The North Koreans had nuclear weapons before Clinton was in office. President Clinton's agreement accomplished having NK's plutonium-generating reactors shut down and locked up under UN , onsite supervision. In exchange for halting the production of plutonium from NK's reactors, Clinton negotiated an exchange of GE light water reactors (to deliver electrical power) and regualar shipments of heating fuel oil. The GE lightwater reactors were never built.

Because the NK's secretly developed a uranium enrichment program to develop fissile material by another, somewhat less efficient route, Bush cancelled the fuel oil shipments--and chose to walk away from further negotitations. Because the North Koreans believe that this Bush administration is interested in active military invasion of other countries and regime change (I wonder where they got that idea?), they have been prodded to engage in brinksmenship by putting their plutonuin reactors back on line and possibly using the already manufactured plutonium locked up under the Clinton agreement into bomb production.

The Bush Administration's war rhetoric is the most ham-handed foreign diplomacy I've seen in 40 years. Everything Bush and his hawks decide to do works to produce the very events good diplomacy would strive to curtail. Bush has talked himself into a corner--unwilling to talk to North Korea unless they do waht he wants first (while they possibly assemble many new bombs in a matter of months) and leaving the NK's to assume a military strike against them isn't out of the question. This is dumb.

[goodluck]

I think their mistake is even worse than that. Many conservatives actually believe their propaganda that it was Reagan who virtually "willed" the "evil empire" to death with his '83 speech and his military buildup. But the USSR was decaying long before Reagan even took office, it was a rust belt without the means to renew itself like our own rust belt has; that is the problem with central planning, it can't adjust itself to new realities. It can only see its own reality and no other.

But these guys (Bush admin folks, many Republicans) think in their mindless way (or, what is essentially the same thing, pretend to think, for their own political purposes) that Reagan uttered some magic words and mobilized everyone with them. Its nuts. And its dangerous. We're seeing how dangerous now with Iraq and Korea. They could have dealt with these problems quietly, they could have kept them under the aegis of the UN, they could have postponed probably indefinitely any really serious problems, excepting of course the Al Qaeda problem which clearly must be dealt with (where's James Bond when you really need him, anyway? always disappearing!), but now they are risking alienating a good deal of the world which their heavy-handed, grandstanding ways, most of which aren't really even about the other countries anyway, but are about DOMESTIC POLITICS, e.g., Rove's grand plan to distract everyone from economic issues to win the election. I wrote back in Aug/Sept that it was a brilliant plan domestically (short term at least) and a disaster internationally--and this is still true. But we NEED the rest of the world--especially places like Indonesia--in order to fight Al Qaeda. Indonesia is a heaven for Osama--a place with a million out of sight corners which will serve as havens, a place with millions of potential recruits who will grow to hate the US with a passion, given the way we are currently acting in the world.

But of course, what the Republicans will do now is simply point out how honorable we are (at least how honorable Republicans are), and of course anyone else who follows us like the British and the Australians, and everyone else in the world is either woefully misguided or just a bunch of corrupt shils anyway (the proof of which is that they don't follow our lead), who gives a shit what they think? Nothing is our fault, it is all their fault....

Ugh, I'm being called, must stop this rant.... I've had enough and I'm not gonna take it anymore....