"The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, ......." and" But the bellicose bark was accompanied by the bite of a toothless old hound:
"The proclaimed actions taken by North Korea are unacceptable and deserve an immediate response by the United Nations Security Council."

OK..so whats wrong???...What do you expect Bush to say..Lets go bomb the hell out of them.. write all the critical analysis you want, but lets at least have it make some sense.. this article is a bit mindless of who we are dealing with..

As far as one on one negotiations, Bush could be correct to avoid such a ploy. This is a regional affair and China and other nations there should be in on the negotiations.. the author appears clueless to this important point!

As far as appealing to the North Korean people, who are starving while their Dear leader is living a very high life style, makes alot of sense.

As far as talking to N. Korea and Iran..I agree we should never stop talking - but as N Korea made a fool out of Clinton and stole the $4billion to help fund his nuclear weapons, there is no gurantee anything would be different this time!

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

"gang-bang diplomacy of six-party talks."

I'm gonna want some one on one action with you, sweetheart.

:-)

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

.... but didn't that article seem pointless?

I dunno, I usually like her stuff, but that piece seemed very lightweight and trivial to me. I can't muster up anything worthwhile to comment about what was actually written, that hasn't been written a thousand times before in a thousand different places. We know Bush's foreign policy skills are non-existent, we know he's busy grandstanding for the domestic audience in the run-up to the mid-term elections and we know a thousand times already that he chooses to talk to his 'adversaries' through third-parties.

Please, tell us something that gives us a fire in the belly, tell us something we don't know! Sheesh... I'm getting so jaded with the regurgitation of the same diatribe against this man, I think I'm reaching insult fatique.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

We still have no confirmation of a nuclear test. A big bang can many things. Also it is one thing to do a controlled explosion in a cave in a mountain and quite another weaponizing a device.

The idea that Israel, with an illicit possession of a military nuclear arsenal of hundreds of weapons, is justified and in fact its conventional aggression and unspoken nuclear threat is somehow reasonable, because of a perceived existential insecurity caused by it’s neighbours, while North Korea’s "demonstrations" of force, is not, seems inconsistent and incongruous. The North Korean action can only be seen as the obvious and logical further step to deal with an intractable situation more or less set up to be confrontational by the US's refusal to discuss directly while continually threatening the Pyongyang regime. This idea that the North only reacts to strength and the threat of force is both stupid and myopic. That US forces based in Japan and Korea gives their threats a “regional” context is only a ploy to avoid responsibility for US hegemony which equally threatens China. North Korea has clearly stated that if the US provides security guarantees it would give up its nuclear program. But, the hawks in the Bush administration cannot accept anything less than "regime change". And that is the problem.

A bit of an anomaly North Korea provides everyone with a satisfying reason not to face reality and to follow their own delusions. The Japanese conservatives/right wing/nationalists/etc. can justify re-militarisation and the repeal of Clause 9 of their Constitution, while blustering and visiting Yasakuni Shrine under the protective umbrella of the largest offshore billet of US forces. While China and US can go on pretending that NK is the problem they can work together on while in fact they see one another as the real future adverseries. South Korea, can play the victim, under the skirts of US defence umbrella and maintain their "special" position, getting ex foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon to the position of General Secretary of the UN, a highly inappropriate choice, relegating what is left of that institution to a rubber stamp for a morally and ethically bankrupt terrorist state, the USA. Seeing it that way you really wonder what they all could do without North Korea as "a problem"?

Proliferation in fact suits the Americans. It provides some ill conceived legitimacy to their own weapons development programs, bringing a new generation of nuclear weapons into their arsenal. The US has funded a program to redesigning their war heads to make "usable" nukes. This of course is against the basic tenet of the NPT and the UN Charter, and the IAEA, etc. not to mention the general direction in which civilization would prefer to be going. The US couldn’t care less as it plans and develops Space Based weapons, Biological and Chemical weapons all banned but never the less being developed with no international oversight. To Bush, Blair, and the other New World Order dogs of war in the world, this is the edge they need, they think, to grab more power, and resources for their corporate elite masters while pretending to be global "policemen".

The idea of usable nukes is the negation of humanity and the contradiction of those weapons' "raison d'etre". The disarmament of the US should be the top priority for the peoples of the world, including Americans. Whatever the problems we have will neither be solved by conventional or nuclear war or war with "new improved" weaponry. That is too obvious. The US has not been able to think in more than two dimensions and appears to have only one tool in its kit, coercion. Again, totally unacceptable.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Both as just throwing everything at the wall so no matter what actually sticks, your rear is covered... and as diplomacy at the point of a gun.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

"in any event, this was a worthless Huffington Post article."

Gee whiz Conservasaurus... oh hold on its your other pen name here, Techubus.. why are we not surprised by this comment.

People will start to take you seriously when you start being honest and stop deceiving others.
Until then, you have the respect of a maggot.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]