North Korea: Yes we do have nuclear weapons

[westofyou]

Well that sounds wonderful. I'll be eagerly awaiting THAT thread.

Nah.... I'll leave you to draw the similarities, from what it reaped.

http://www.historyguy.com/PhilipineAmericanwar.html

This was America's first true colonial war as a world power. After defeating Spain in Cuba and in the Philippines in 1898, the U.S. purchased the Philippines, Puerto Rico and several other islands from the Spanish. However, the Filipinos had been fighting a bloody revolution against Spain since 1896, and had no intention of becoming a colony of another imperialist power. In February of 1899, fighting broke out between the occupying American Army and the Filipino forces.

Echos of the same...

"I am not afraid, and am always ready to do my duty, but I would like some one to tell me what we are fighting for."

--Arthur H. Vickers, Sergeant in the First Nebraska Regiment


Early Fallujah

"Talk about war being 'hell,' this war beats the hottest estimate ever made of that locality. Caloocan was supposed to contain seventeen thousand inhabitants. The Twentieth Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native. Of the buildings, the battered walls of the great church and dismal prison alone remain. The village of Maypaja, where our first fight occurred on the night of the fourth, had five thousand people on that day, -- now not one stone remains upon top of another. You can only faintly imagine this terrible scene of desolation. War is worse than hell."--

Captain Elliott, of the Kansas Regiment, February 27th

[Johnny Footstool]

Sounds like you are down with the UN when they act upon idealogical lines that you agree with, but other times they are simply a farce?

I'm not "down" with the UN any more than I am at odds with them. I was pointing out that Bush convincing UN nations to sign a resolution was no big deal since he couldn't provide enough evidence to convince them to actually join us in military action. The only "farce" was the Bush administration thinking they could get the military support of the world without ever providing hard evidence.

[Blimpie]

Nah.... I'll leave you to draw the similarities, from what it reaped.

http://www.historyguy.com/PhilipineAmericanwar.html

This was America's first true colonial war as a world power. After defeating Spain in Cuba and in the Philippines in 1898, the U.S. purchased the Philippines, Puerto Rico and several other islands from the Spanish. However, the Filipinos had been fighting a bloody revolution against Spain since 1896, and had no intention of becoming a colony of another imperialist power. In February of 1899, fighting broke out between the occupying American Army and the Filipino forces.

Echos of the same...

"I am not afraid, and am always ready to do my duty, but I would like some one to tell me what we are fighting for."

--Arthur H. Vickers, Sergeant in the First Nebraska Regiment


Early Fallujah

"Talk about war being 'hell,' this war beats the hottest estimate ever made of that locality. Caloocan was supposed to contain seventeen thousand inhabitants. The Twentieth Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native. Of the buildings, the battered walls of the great church and dismal prison alone remain. The village of Maypaja, where our first fight occurred on the night of the fourth, had five thousand people on that day, -- now not one stone remains upon top of another. You can only faintly imagine this terrible scene of desolation. War is worse than hell."--

Captain Elliott, of the Kansas Regiment, February 27th

Thanks for the reference WOY. For what it's worth, I sincerely enjoy reading your posts. Because I am somewhat new to the board, I am just curious--how do you instantly reference sources from such a diverse variety of topics? My money is on you having your own personal shrieve that Googles upon your every command. Am I getting warm?

[Blimpie]

I'm not "down" with the UN any more than I am at odds with them. I was pointing out that Bush convincing UN nations to sign a resolution was no big deal since he couldn't provide enough evidence to convince them to actually join us in military action. The only "farce" was the Bush administration thinking they could get the military support of the world without ever providing hard evidence.

Sounds like this would be an apt time to jettison this thread with my own form of diplomacy...how about the old, "Agree to disagree...."

[westofyou]

Thanks for the reference WOY. For what it's worth, I sincerely enjoy reading your posts. Because I am somewhat new to the board, I am just curious--how do you instantly reference sources from such a diverse variety of topics? My money is on you having your own personal shrieve that Googles upon your every command. Am I getting warm?

As far as baseball goes I have a library of over 125 books and I work in my home, so I have the ability to reference them at any moment, that and I have a good memory for dates and people, But the 200 bookmarks and no boss looking over my shoulder gives me ample time to peruse the web for what I want to find. I guess I'm just skilled in research........ now if only someone would pay me for it.

[Johnny Footstool]

"Agree to disagree...."

Fair enough.

[Blimpie]

I guess I'm just skilled in research........ now if only someone would pay me for it.

You would be suprised how many companies WOULD pay for that service. I used to be in research myself, but I had to leave the house to do it....Lucky for you! :gac:

[Blimpie]

You gotta give Hussein style points--if nothing else....perfume bottles???

NEW YORK — Richard Spertzel (search) knew from the start that danger lurked in the U.N. Oil-for-Food program.

Spertzel isn't another lawmaker complaining about the multibillion-dollar program. Nor is he a notable critic of all things tied to the United Nations. A recognized expert in biological warfare and bio-terrorism, Spertzel was a U.N. weapons inspector working in Iraq to monitor Saddam Hussein's (search) government.

"I went to the U.N. as a die-hard supporter of that organization. I left as one of its most outspoken critics," Spertzel told FOX News. With an education that includes three advanced biology degrees, he's also worked with numerous U.S. agencies, including the State Department and CIA.

Spertzel led the U.N. biological weapons inspection team in Iraq after the first Gulf War, allowing him to get a closer look at the Oil-for-Food (search) program. Although he said his team used to joke about the program in Baghdad and said the Oil-for-Food team was a joke among United Nations Special Commission inspectors, they soon realized that it was no laughing matter.

This story is part of a special FOX News investigation into the Oil-for-Food scandal. For the complete report, watch the FOX News Channel on Sunday at 9 p.m. EST for a special "Breaking Point" — "United Nations Blood Money: Kofi Annan Under Fire."


"The Oil-for-Food people spent most of their time in the cafeteria, as opposed to being out in the field making sure that the material was going to the locations that it was supposed to," Spertzel said. "It was such common knowledge it had to be known."

In an arrangement negotiated by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (search), the United Nations collected 2.2 percent of every oil sale — totaling $1.4 billion in all — to ensure Oil-for-Food was on the up-and-up. Instead, Saddam stole billions, collecting kickbacks from oil buyers and dishonest aid suppliers who often stuck the Iraqi people with third-rate food and medicine that was unfit for human consumption.

This is all enough to make Abdul Wadood Al-Talibi (search), an Iraqi health official, ill.

"This is a sickening problem," Al-Talibi said.

Al-Talibi told FOX News of shipments of spoiled food, expired medicine and useless equipment that apparently were never checked by the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food team in Iraq.

"The U.N., they are telling me that they don't know. I don't buy that," Al -Talibi said. "When it comes to the millions of Iraqi money, and they don't know? God forgive them."

Richard Williamson, who served as the U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations during much of the program's run, said Annan was concerned about the stories of deprivation of many Iraqis and thought sanctions that were in place after the 1991 war were, in part, causing that.

"I think history shows that a lot of that deprivation was a result of Saddam Hussein taking his country's wealth before Oil-for-Food and after Oil-for-Food to build his palaces, to pay for his personal guard, to pay for his torture chambers, in other words, to, for the instruments that helped him stay in power," Williamson said.

Spertzel's main concern at the time was that Saddam could be re-arming if the Oil-for-Food inspectors weren't paying attention. That's why weapons inspectors tried to take it upon themselves — rather than leaving it up to the Oil-for-Food team — to make sure any shipments that might have military applications didn't end up with Saddam's military.

"Our resident inspection team was tasked with basically doing the work that should have been done by the Oil-for-Food people," Spertzel said.

Bolstered by the increases in Oil-for-Food revenues that Annan negotiated, Saddam booted the weapons inspectors out of the country in 1998. Oil-for-Food became, increasingly, "Oil-for-Arms."

"Saddam was using ... some of the Oil-for-Food money, basically to re-stock," Spertzel said, adding that the money the United Nations was supposed to be controlling and overseeing was being "siphoned off" by the former Iraqi dictator so he could buy weapons.

After Operation Iraqi Freedom — the second Gulf War waged in 2003 — Spertzel returned to Iraq as part of the CIA's Iraqi Survey Group (search), led by former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay, then later by Charles Duelfer. The group was sent to determine what happened to the weapons of mass destruction Saddam admitted he had years ago, which he used to gas his own people, the Kurds.

CIA investigators recovered no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. But it was only part of the story.

"Baghdad exploited the mechanism for executing the Oil-for-Food program," Duelfer said.

Getting much less attention was the Duelfer report's lengthy and detailed analysis of how Oil-for-Food gave Saddam the resources and opportunity to re-arm with the help of foreign governments. Romania, North Korea, Belarus and even U.N. Security Council members like Russia and France were just some of the countries that sold Saddam everything from military spare parts to surface-to-air missile launchers.

Also under the guise of Oil-for-Food, Saddam was able to build underground bunkers so hardened that even dozens of missile strikes to palaces above them didn't do much damage.

The Iraqi Survey Group also found that supposed "humanitarian" imports under Oil-for-Food gave Saddam the ability to restart his biological and chemical warfare programs at a moment's notice. Spertzel said what scared him the most in Iraq was the discovery of secret labs to make deadly weapons like the nerve agent, sarin, and the biological poison, ricin, in spray form.

"If that were released in a closed [area], such as Madison Square Garden or, even some, some of your smaller closed malls, shopping malls, it would have a devastating effect … killing hundreds or thousands," Spertzel said.

But Spertzel believes Saddam was cooking up an even more sinister plan — putting the poisons on department store shelves across the United States and Europe. He said that plan was "actively pursued" as late as March 2003. And that plan was at least, in part, funded by Saddam's corrupt Oil-for-Food activities.

"Some of the photographs that were obtained from this same laboratory had multiple different shapes of glass spray bottles, perfume spray bottles — presumably to mimic different brand names," Spertzel said. "Can you imagine somebody going into Macy's department store and spray a little bit of a perfume to see whether they like the scent, only instead of perfume they're getting a face full of sarin?

"That would kill within, within a few minutes. If this were to appear at a couple different locations, imagine the economic impact in the U.S. — people would be afraid to buy anything."

Spertzel said the United Nations and the secretary-general could have done more to stop Saddam from acquiring deadly weapons and to oversee the program more efficiently.

"The two are tied together," he said. "They let the world down. No question about that."

FOX News' Jonathan Hunt, Per Carlson, Brian Gaffney, George Russell, Grace Cutler and Betsy Petrick contributed to this report.

[zombie-a-go-go]

Joker Brand Cosmetics?

[Rojo]

Slate/Fred Kaplan

The real story is a little bit more complicated than the "dominant frames" that some are working off of.

It's Time To Talk to Pyongyang
Negotiating with dictators is odious, but the alternatives are far worse.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, Feb. 11, 2005, at 11:12 AM PT


So the North Koreans say they have a nuclear weapon. Why should anyone be surprised? And why does everyone in the Bush administration and the White House press corps seem to think the announcement is something new?

Back on April 25, 2003—nearly two years ago—the Washington Post published a front-page story by Glenn Kessler headlined "North Korea Says It Has Nuclear Arms: At Talks with U.S., Pyongyang Threatens 'Demonstration' or Export of Weapon."

What is truly new about this week's story is the North Korean foreign ministry's outright refusal to take part in the next round of six-party talks on nuclear disarmament, though Pyongyang officials have threatened such a boycott before, and the ministry may soften its adamancy before the month is out.

We don't know whether the North Koreans possess any actual nuclear weapons until they test one. We do know that they have reprocessed enough plutonium to build a dozen or so nukes, and President Bush's reckless policies—no less than Kim Jong-il's—must be held responsible for that frightening development.

A little history to explain what's going on. In 1993-94, the North Koreans threatened to reprocess their nuclear reactor's spent fuel rods into plutonium—the fastest way to get nuclear weapons. After a tense standoff, Kim Jong-il and President Bill Clinton signed an "Agreed Framework." The rods were locked in a pool and placed under continuous monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In exchange, the United States promised to furnish North Korea with two light-water reactors for fuel and, eventually, to establish full diplomatic relations. By the end of the decade, the deal was collapsing. The United States never came through with the reactors or the relations; Kim secretly pursued nukes through enriched uranium. But those fuel rods, which could have processed enough plutonium for more than 50 bombs by the time Clinton left office, stayed locked up.

In October 2002, the CIA caught on to the enriched-uranium ploy, and the North Koreans, once presented with the evidence, confessed (though they later retracted the admission). In December, the North Koreans tried to replay the crisis of 1993, threatening to unlock the fuel rods, kick out the IAEA's monitors, and reprocess plutonium unless President George W. Bush supplied fuel aid and promised not to invade. Bush didn't go along, saying that even sitting down with North Koreans would reward "bad behavior." Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wanted to topple Kim's horrible regime. To negotiate with the regime would legitimize and perpetuate it.

So in January 2003, the North Koreans carried out their threat. U.S. spy satellites spotted a convoy of trucks moving from the reactor to the reprocessing facility. Bush did nothing in response. Despite urgings from Secretary of State Colin Powell, he refused to negotiate. Briefings from his military advisers indicated the attack options were too risky. Intelligence agencies didn't—and still don't—know where all the nuclear targets are. And the North Korean army has thousands of artillery rockets—some loaded with chemical munitions—deployed near the South Korean border, a five-minute flight from the capital, Seoul. A U.S. attack would miss some of those rockets; a North Korean retaliation could kill hundreds of thousands of South Koreans. Every U.S. ally in the region has said a military option is out of the question.

Not until last June did Bush authorize James Kelly, then the assistant secretary of state, to put a specific offer on the table. Yet the offer was nearly identical to a deal that the North Koreans had proposed 18 months earlier, before they started reprocessing the plutonium. They would need a much more attractive bargain to cash in the chips, once they had them.

Now that the elections are over—the one here and the one in Iraq—will Bush start to focus on this genuine nuclear crisis? Now that the secretary of state is his trusted adviser, Condoleezza Rice, will he pursue a negotiating strategy?

Maybe, but there's no evidence for thinking so. Rice, at least in the past, has seemed to agree with Cheney and Rumsfeld that regime change—and, therefore, not negotiation—is the proper policy toward Kim Jong-il. In January 2001, during the transition leading up to Bush's first term, several Clinton officials briefed Powell and Rice on progress that had been made toward cementing the Agreed Framework and negotiating a further treaty banning North Korean missiles. Three of those officials told me that Powell was very interested in their briefing, while Rice was noticeably cold. (Shortly after the inauguration, Powell told reporters Bush would resume where Clinton left off on the Korean talks; the White House brusquely denied this claim and Powell, in what was the first of many defeats, had to backpedal.)

The North Koreans have said consistently and repeatedly that they will dismantle their nuclear weapons program if the United States does three things: drop its aggressive stance toward the country; establish diplomatic relations; and resume the aid promised in the 1994 accord.

If Kim Jong-il was the sanest leader on the planet (and those who have negotiated with him say that he's not as loony as he seems, that he's well-informed and can behave quite rationally), he might still have good reason to desire a cache of nuclear weapons. First, from Bush's "axis of evil" to Rice's "outposts of tyranny," the administration has never relaxed its open hostility to North Korea. Any leader of Pyongyang could justify wanting nukes as a deterrent. Second, North Korea is an impoverished country with nothing to put on the table in negotiations. Nukes give Kim a potent bargaining chip. It's an unpleasant thing to be put over a barrel by some terrible tyrant, but if we want him to forgo nuclear weapons, we have to give him something that he values in return.

In June 2003, Rep. Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican, led a delegation to Pyongyang and proposed a specific 10-step timetable for implementing such an exchange. North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun endorsed the plan.

Was he sincere? Who knows? There was only one way to find out, and Bush didn't go there. Would any disarmament proposal be feasible and verifiable now—two years after the North Koreans started reprocessing all 8,000 of their fuel rods and at least 18 months after they might have started producing nuclear weapons? When Pyongyang first proposed a deal, which explicitly included an offer to put the rods back under IAEA control, there was still a chance to stuff the genie in the bottle. Now nobody knows where the plutonium and enriched uranium are stored, how many bombs there are, or, if they exist, where they're stored.

In short, President Bush may well have blown it. If there is still time to strike a deal, he has to strike one very soon and not just ask the Chinese to persuade Kim to back down. As is, Bush has waited so long to get serious that an accord—if one were reached—will cost us a lot more than it would have a year or two ago. There are only three alternatives to diplomacy, though, and they are grimmer still. One is to launch a war that nobody in the region would tolerate and that we lack the resources to wage. Another is to apply sanctions in order to isolate North Korea, a country that is already, by its leader's choice, the most isolated on earth. The third is to live with the fact that the world's last totalitarian has joined the league of nuclear powers.

If President Bush doesn't like any of those alternatives (and who could?), it's time—it may be his last opportunity—to swallow hard and pick up the phone.

[Phoenix]

I'm all for scientific advances, but this is a humpty dumpty project. .

I don't think I'll take your word for it.

[GAC]

We took it upon our shoulders to attack Iraq *based on the Bush adminstration's insistence that Iraq had WMDs.* IIRC, you supported our attack based on that claim, GAC. The majority of the world community didn't agree, but the Bush administration blew them off and attacked anyway.

These quotes from you seems like an odd about-face from your earlier stance.

Not at all Johnny. Different region/hemisphere of the world, and completely different circumstances. The only similarities IMO is that both Iraq and Korea both had/have a tyrannical dictator.

What was Saddam's objectives in the Middle East region... and what are Kim's in the Korean pennisula? No comparison IMO.

But is the Korean pennisula of the same vital importance to the world community as the Middle East region, where the world depends on the oil?

I think the approach I outlined above is the best response towards this dictator since the Iraq war. The world community (UN included) said that we didn't need to invade Iraq, and that diplomacy would work.

Fine. Here's where the US needs to basically say "OK. Do it. We'll stand with you. We want to be involved in that diplomatic procedure. We are not gonna invade or making any threatening moves towards N. Korea, nor deal with them directly "one on one". But we are not gonna be the "front-runners" in this current situation with Kim, because it's simply not OUR PROBLEM ALONE. We do not view N. Korea's having a few nucs as a problem for America, but for the world community, and especially those in that hemisphere. So this is a problem that needs to addressed by that governing/diplomatic body."

Make these other nations (including the UN) to "step up to the plate" for once. Quit putting the U.S. in the hot seat in situations like this. I have always stated, and am tired of, these other nations always sitting back and looking for the US to always take the lead (and then any heat that arises) when situations like this arise.

But the Korean pennisula is no where near the situation we all faced in the Middle east region with Saddam, Bin Laden, and various radical terrorist organizations. It's a situation that needs to be addressed. But by the world community, with America involvement.

[Chip R]

Joker Brand Cosmetics?

Of course. You don't think he'd come up with that idea himself, do you?

[M2]

I don't think I'll take your word for it.

It's not my word. There's 20 years of failure associated with the project. Best idea I've heard on that front involves major leaps forward in miniaturization and propulsion (R&D projects worth funding, but it won't pay for leopard-skin carpeting in the General Dynamics board room).

[GAC]

If we invade, and we find out Kim was bluffing and has no WMD... being down 0 fer 2 is no place to be.