[AmericanInTokyo]

My, how many times do we have to learn the hard way about Communism, negotiating, tactics in an Asian context, and showing signs of weakness or going overboard on the overstated "we will not invade" nonsense?

Thank you Colin Powell, as well as the minions of career State Department personnel, in power no matter if either a Democratic or Republican Administration.

Time for the State Department to step back, and for D.O.D. to drive the issue for the Administration.

[hchutch]

Sheesh, Kim Jong-Il must REALLY want that can of whoop-ass.

Wait your turn, pal. We got business with Saddam first.

[goldstategop]

Appeasement never works. If Colon Bowell and Foggy Bottom haven't learned the lesson by now they never will. A display of force, not piddling diplomacy is what will convince North Korea's power mad dictator to stand down before war becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[per loin]

Gee. They give us the finger, put together a huge army, build nukes, and tell us they are gonna use them on us. I wish I could figure out what they are trying to communicate.

[Dialup Llama]

>My, how many times do we have to learn the hard way about Communism, negotiating, tactics in an Asian context,

What is different about negotiation tactics in an Asian context?

[linn37]

well we tried....tee hee

[linn37]

well we tried....tee hee

[Psalm 73]

They may sound a different tune after we beat the snot out of Iraq and then help Iran to a "regime change".
What we do in Iraq will be so quick and so violent that even thick-headed lunatics like Kim Jong Il will gasp and break a sweat.
God Bless the American military and our Brittish and Aussie allies - once again we save the world from itself.
Let's Roll !!

[Admin Moderator]

Please, let's stick to original titles. Thank you.

[DWSUWF]

"...Thank you Colin Powell, as well as the minions of career State Department personnel, in power no matter if either a Democratic or Republican Administration..."

Bingo.

Give that walking proof of the 'Peter Principle' a gold watch and get him the Hell out of this administration.

How many young American fighting men will have to die... Soon... Because of this in-over-his-head buffoon's verbal diarrhea?

Send Powell home before his sophomoric miscalculations result in something horrific.

[headsonpikes]

Eat grass, Kim baby!

You can eat lead later.

[TLBSHOW]

.S. and North Korea: Sleeping With the Enemy

You probably know that it has long been U.S. policy to abet the genocidal communist dictatorship of North Korea. You probably didn't know just how much you and other taxpayers are helping a regime that maniacally hates America and starves its own people to build its military.

Bill Clinton's scheme to pacify Pyongyang was idiotic to start with and looks worse with each passing day. Since 1994, the United States has given North Korea:


$591 million in food aid.

$900 million in oil aid, even though we rely on petroleum imports.

$6 billion to build nuclear reactors, thanks to Slick Willie and his stooge envoy Jimmy Carter.
Of course, if the U.S. even considers canceling its despised aid, the blame-America-first crowd, foreign and domestic branches, will shriek.

http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2003/1/6/193224

[BlueLancer]

""People do not think that there is going to be a war in the Korean peninsula," a Unification Ministry official told Reuters."

Good ... then we can immediately withdraw our aircraft and troops from that hellhole.

Three-tour 2nd Infantry Division vet (1980,1988,1994)

[McGavin999]

It's pretty obvious at this point that NK is throwing a temper tantrum and demanding attention from the US. Notice how they are saying it's none of Japan's business. LOL, none of their business? No, because they want to force the US to talk to them and the Chinese are using the NK's to try to sway the US off the Iraq path. Looks like the Bush administration is not falling for it.

The key to this is the lack of panic on the part of the South Koreans.

[DoughtyOne]

I hate to harp on this again. Well that's not true. I love harping on this.

Does everyone remember why we face the North Korean issue today? We face it because nearing fifty years ago the United Nations accepted a cease-fire that has never resulted in a ceasation of war. We have a truce, but still exist under a state of war for all intents and purposes.

Did the United Nations seek to resolve this issue? It's been 47 years. What deadlines were set along the way? What ultimatums were delivered?

Today the United Nations is as silent as a church mouse on the subject of North Korea posessing nuclear weapons.

I mention this because this is the legacy of the United Nations in a nutshell. They damn our allies, coddle our enemies and inceasantly involve us in quagmires that are assured to keep our troops involved for decades if not centuries.

North Korea, Cyprus, Bosnia, Kosovo, Lebanon... the list goes on. Can anyone name a war, skirmish or peace process the United Nations involved the United States in that has been resolved, all troops disbursed back to their home nation? If you can think of one instance, you're doing better than I can.

The initial mandate of the UN was to prevent wars through providing a means of debate and resolution of differences by peaceful means. This mandate has seldom been met. Where it has a bandaid has been placed on the problem, which once removed will result in us being right back where we were, one two six twenty or fifty years before. Nothing is resolved. The issues still remain. War is still imminent even up to half a century later.

Instead of fighting the fight to an end and obtaininga just surrender that everyone can live with, we now expend vast sums of money on expeditionary forces in perpetuity.

Unless we kick North Korea's ass, it's going to be on the verge of war 2000 years from now. That's the sad truth.

Soviet Russia, North Korea, China... the list goes on. These pariah nations seldom if ever receive criticism from the UN. Our allies, specificly Israel are singled out over and over again for special condemnation from the UN. Noticibly free from criticism accept in an offhanded manner are Yasser Arafat, Hesballah and the other rogues of war.

The UN is worthless. It is less than worthless. It is a net negative. It sucks our funds and then just plain sucks in return.

Kofi Annan could do the world a favor. He could disolve the organization. Course we could withdraw under a momentary period of clarity and sanity, but neither will happen. We'll coddle the North. We let them develop their nukes. We'll let those nukes be proliferated to the middle east and terrorist cells. We'll huff and we'll puff and we'll absolve our national security agencies when the unthinkable happens. Then we'll explain how unimaginable it all was and put every citizen of the US in shackles to keep it from happening again.

Yakov Smirnov had it right. What a country!

[r9etb]

My, how many times do we have to learn the hard way about Communism, negotiating, tactics in an Asian context, and showing signs of weakness or going overboard on the overstated "we will not invade" nonsense?

I disagree. The U.S. made a reasonable concession in order to facilitate negotiations, and now NK has taken on the role of war-monger.

They've kindly strengthened our hand.

[Centurion2000]

Why do I get the impression that the Japanese are just going to one day announce that they have 50 ICBMs and MIRV warheads??

NK is going to go down in flames. Japanese , SKorean, or American flames but they WILL go down.

[gnarledmaw]

Bargaining from a position of weakness, with a tyrant from an eastern culture...My, those folks in Washington are clever...

[mhking]

As the Pacific Front simmers....

[concerned about politics]

Just like I tell the facist liberals in this country - "Stop leeching off the productive. Get off your whining facist lazy butts and do something constructive for once in your life."

[Austin Willard Wright]

How many times will it be before that world policing is a chimera and a waste of valuable resources which should be devoted to homeland defense rather than playing nursemaid to the world? If the Korea crisis doesn't show the fallacing of trying police (and bribe) ever corner of the world at tje time, what does? Unfortunately, for the utopian Wilsonians who believe that prudence is a sign of weakness, nothing succeeds like failure.