North Korea-Should we be concerned?

“Exactly.

Since little George started talkin� tough we've destabilized the region and allowed NK to possibly produce more nukes or at least move closer to producing them. Who knows how many people starved to death as a result of our stop and go food aid policy?

Now we�re back to the proposing the same sort of program that was in place under Clinton plus offering the security guarantee they wanted in the first place.

What an inept bunch of bunglers.”

“Disappointed!”

“Disappointed, sure! Surprized is the question?”

“It's funny. GWB is trying to correct all his foriegn policy f-up's by using the strategy of his democratic opponants. First it was Kerry calling for the UN to run the military operations in Iraq, and now this.”

“I am critical of President Bush for not consulting the foreign policy experts on TT.”

“(CBS/AP) North Korea demanded massive energy aid Thursday at six-nation talks where Washington insisted that the North give up nuclear weapons development, Japanese news reports said.

The North wants the equivalent of 2,000 megawatts of power per year � an estimated one-fourth of its current total consumption � in exchange for freezing work on its nuclear program, the Kyodo News agency reported, citing diplomatic sources on the second day of talks in the Chinese capital. In the United States, a megawatt can supply power to about 1,000 homes.






Let's give them Enron.”

“Nuke the little commie bastards.

We'll test our nukes first. Somewhere north of Seoul.”

“North Korea deserves our aggression much more than Iraq, imo.”

“We better pray that more actual threats don't surface while we're stuck in Iraq (for who knows how long). Thanks George!”

“My heavens. Why would we defend South Korea. They have no oil.”

“When evil-doing evil-doers take nukular submarines from a man of the cloth, is it cause for concern? That's a toughie! Let me ask Uncle Dick. I hope he doesn't tell me to go f*ck myself!”

“Thank goodness we have a strong leader who doesn�t believe in appeasement. Not like that scumbag Clinton who kowtowed to North Korea.



BEIJING, Sept. 19 - North Korea agreed to end its nuclear weapons program this morning in return for security, economic and energy benefits, potentially easing tensions with the United States after a three-year standoff over the country's efforts to build atomic bombs.

The United States, North Korea and four other nations participating in nuclear negotiations in Beijing signed a draft accord in which Pyongyang promised to abandon efforts to produce nuclear weapons and re-admit international inspectors to its nuclear facilities. Foreign powers said they would provide aid, diplomatic assurances and security guarantees and consider North Korea's demands for a light-water nuclear reactor.

continued...



Looks like we really showed 'em.”

“According to NPR, there's a lot missing, like verification and solid agreements on what level of aid will be provided for power generation nukes.”

“Too bad we didn't take care of NK before Iraq. I always did disagree with the timing on the Iraq war, but oh well.”

“No, too bad Klinton didn't take care of NK when they were fleecing us the first damn time.”

“Hey, I knida like this blame game thing.”

“

Anti-U.S. Posters from North Korea: http://thrillingwonder.blogspot.com/2007/01/anti-us-north-korean-posters.html”

“How many do mArKo and you own?”

“Interesting! Those NORK army training pics are wild, too.”

“They can FLY!”

“I think we should quit worrying about their nucular weapons program so much and start worrying about their 100 ft. soldier program.”

“Stick I think he is bigger than that....(LOL)

Its height above the base line on the east front to the top of the Statue of Freedom is 288 feet;

I think the funniest thing is the soldiers who return from the DMZ and tell me about the ROK soldiers training in the winter without their shirts on....the joke is " We are not in South Korea to keep the North from invading the South. We are there to keep the South from invading the North.”

“That does it! The Bush administration is completely incompetent!

They broke the Agreed Framework based upon sketchy intelligence about a program that may not even have existed causing North Korea to restart it's plutonium program and produce real atomic bombs?!!

Can we just remove the whole gang now before they totally #&%!$ everything up?

U.S. Had Doubts on North Korean Uranium Drive

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 — Last October, the North Koreans tested their first nuclear device, the fruition of decades of work to make a weapon out of plutonium.

For nearly five years, though, the Bush administration, based on intelligence estimates, has accused North Korea of also pursuing a secret, parallel path to a bomb, using enriched uranium. That accusation, first leveled in the fall of 2002, resulted in the rupture of an already tense relationship: The United States cut off oil supplies, and the North Koreans responded by throwing out international inspectors, building up their plutonium arsenal and, ultimately, producing that first plutonium bomb.

But now, American intelligence officials are publicly softening their position, admitting to doubts about how much progress the uranium enrichment program has actually made. The result has been new questions about the Bush administration’s decision to confront North Korea in 2002.

“The question now is whether we would be in the position of having to get the North Koreans to give up a sizable arsenal if this had been handled differently,” a senior administration official said this week.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/washington/01korea.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin”

“You gonna replaceem with demorats?”

“Seriously?

You could replace them with monkeys. Nobody could possibly be worse.”

“Vile just LIVES to blame the US for all the world's problems.
LOL”

“Think it through.

We almost went to war with North Korea in the 1990's over their plutonium program.

Negotiations created the "Agreed Framework" whereby NK stopped plutonium production and put what they had produced under seal with international inspection in exchange for oil and light water reactors.

The Bush admin. accused NK of cheating on the agreement based upon sketchy intelligence that they had started enriching uranium (a longer way to the bomb) which gave NK an excuse to kick out the inspectors, break the seals and use that plutonium to produce bombs - all while the Bushies sat idly by.

NOW they say they aren't so sure about that intelligence about the enriched uranium program.

Could they #&%!$ up any worse if they tried (assuming of course that their ultimate aim wasn't to make the world a more dangerous place)?”

“From reading the article, it sounds like it could be a diplomatic or cya maneuver. I wouldn't put it past the Bush admin to have bungled intelligence, or even trumped it up for the diplomatic milieu they faced at the time. However, not being a dimwitted wingnut, I'm not going to jump up and down waving my arms decrying Bush - like some people we all know and love (to laugh at).

It's interesting that the article doesn't mention SK's intelligence indicating basically the same thing. Just a week or two ago I read some SK official was claiming the Norks had a working uranium enrichment program. Nor did the article mention anything about the large purchase of centrifuge-grade aluminum a couple years ago.

It's going to have to take more than a slanted NYT article to get me upset about this.

Edit: South Korea's chief nuclear negotiator says North Korea has tried to develop a second, secret nuclear programme based on the enrichment of uranium.

Chun Yung-woo said, however, that Pyongyang was not thought to be operating such a system at the moment.
last edited: 3/01/07 1:51:54 PM”

“"Nor did the article mention anything about the large purchase of centrifuge-grade aluminum a couple years ago."
- Mutt
1:45:14 PM


Damn mutt... reading is FUNdemental:

[...]
Outside experts, including David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear arms, have suggested in recent days that something similar happened in North Korea’s case. “The evidence doesn’t support the extrapolation” to the judgment that North Korea was making crucial strides in its uranium program, Mr. Albright said in an interview. “The extrapolation went too far.”

He said administration analysts were right in thinking that Dr. Khan had sold North Korea about 20 centrifuges. Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, confirmed that in a memoir published last year. But, Mr. Albright said, intelligence agencies overstated whether North Korea had used those few machines as models to construct row upon row of carbon copies.

His report zeroed in on thousands of aluminum tubes that the North Koreans bought and tried to buy in the early 2000s. The C.I.A. and the Bush administration, the report said, pointed to these tubes as the “smoking gun” for construction of a large-scale North Korean plant for the enriching of uranium. It was assessments about the purpose of aluminum tubes that were at the center of the flawed Iraq intelligence.

In the North Korea case, intelligence analysts saw the tubes as ideal for centrifuges. But Mr. Albright said the relatively weak aluminum tubes were suitable only for stationary outer casings — not central rotors, which have to be very strong to keep from flying apart while spinning at tremendous speeds.

Moreover, he added, the aluminum tubes were “very easy to get and not controlled” by global export authorities because of their potentially harmless nature. So that purchase, by itself, Mr. Albright added, was “not an indicator” of clandestine use for nuclear arms.”

“Yeah, so? David Albright may or may not be right. Is he privy to all the intel? Right. Obvious to everyone is that the Norks were building up an enrichment program. They acquired the centrifuges *and* a buttload of high strength aluminum. The extent to which they were actually enriching is the question here. It seems diplomatic forces may be at work on this declassification.

My point is that with such limited info, you in all your wingnut glory are jumping to a very wild - and childish - conclusion. I, on the other hand, and most other people not consumed with a pathological hatred of Bush's cult of personality, simply say "this is interesting - let's wait and see what else comes to light".”

“Ofcourse Vile knows that even The Clinton Administration officials admit the North Koreans broke the agreement within a year of it being signed.....THEY ARE SOCIALISTS thats what Communist/Socialists do they write agreements to bind thier enemys hands and never really have to worry about keeping them.”