The Bushista Foreign Policy Reelection Campaign
If we frighten North Korea enough they will nuke California, which will help Bush and the Republicans by:
- Reestablishing Bush's credentials as a "war president"
- Getting rid of Barbara Boxer
- Insuring California's electoral votes don't go to the Democratic party
- Providing new ruins for their campaign ads
- Strengthening his appeal to the Chickenhawk wing…excuse me, the Thunderchicken wing of the Republican party
3/7/2004
PRESIDENT BUSH, misled by Vice President Cheney and other hard-liners, instructed the US delegation at the recent six-nation Beijing talks on North Korea's nuclear program to say he was losing patience with the diplomatic effort to persuade Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear capability. This was a serious blunder.
Bush's message was delivered on the third and last day of the talks -- just as host China was trying to shepherd North Korea, the Americans, South Korea, Russia, and Japan into agreeing on a final communique. The statement the six participants had been drafting was intended to stipulate the steps they would take to resolve the crisis.
There were to be three phases. The first would be an agreement in principle under which North Korea would state its willingness to dismantle its nuclear program and the United States would state its willingness to provide security guarantees to the North. In a second phase, North Korea would freeze its nuclear activities and accept inspectors to verify the freeze. This would be a down payment on an explicit commitment to proceed to the dismantling of the North's entire nuclear program.
Once the freeze was verified, South Korea would provide energy aid, which Pyongyang defined as direct delivery of electricity. In a final phase, the complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantling of North Korea's nuclear facilities would take place in coordination with a written security guarantee from Washington and the resolution of all other issues.
Bush's directive expressing a loss of patience came after Chinese diplomats had said they wished to include in the diplomatic communique mention of North Korea's demand that as a quid pro quo for its cooperation, America's hostile policy toward Pyongyang would be ended. Since Secretary of State Colin Powell and Bush himself have already said the United States has no intention of attacking North Korea and would be willing eventually to establish diplomatic relations with the North, Bush's ill-timed instructions were a gratuitous sabotaging of the talks.
