State of the Union 2007: "Whatever you voted for, You Didn't Vote for Failure!"

What many people voted for was to avoid being tarred with the brush of unpatriotism and to prevent Bush-Cheney fantasy WMD's from being turned on Americans.

France: North Korea nuclear test was a failure

According to the Associated Press, French authorities claimed that North Korea's test was so low yield, it must have been a failure. Other analysts tried to shoosh the French, worrying that North Korea might conduct another test. What???? Is everything knee jerk? Does anyone think these things through?

The whole Western world is tap dancing as fast as a frog on a frying pan to Kim Chong-il's tune. John Bolton, the most personable diplomat since Ghengis Khan is screaming for sanctions and wingnuts are coming out of the woodwork arguing we should put all the North Koreans out of their misery to get Kim. The Japanese want to starve the North Koreans into submission. China's afraid they'll all stream across the Yalu and eat the bark off their trees.

I say encourage Kim to run eight or nine tests to start! We estimate Kim only has enough plutonium for eight bombs, don't we? Kim can't pedal what he blows up under the Korean mountains to Al Qaeda or Iran!

But if we make things ever worse for North Korea with sanctions--cut of access to Japanese markets and blolckade shipping, we can almost GUARANTEE a high-priced sale of a nuclear device to some wealthy non-state actor or state-sponsored terror organization.

Negotiate with the jerk! Let him humiliate you from time to time. Make him look good with his people with food, health care, fertilizer, equipment, and energy. Make him dependent on and glad for inclusivity in the community of nations.

Encirclement/isolation didn't convert China and it won't convert North Korea.

Beating the crap out of kids doesn't improve their behavior. Starving and kicking dogs doesn't bring them to obedience. Ignoring their tantrums and rewarding their occasional good behaviors appears to be the way to go.

Chicken Littling is not the answer. Let's act like adults for a change. And let's rein in the bully boys.

Doc Rock

Paper Tigers: North Korea a Future or Weapons?

Chris Hill the State Department's latest empty threat-monger has put us in the enviable position of either being paper tigers (once again) or having to flex muscles we've wasted and bled away on the Bush-Cheney-Rumfeld triumph in Iraq--at least Congress has ponied up $20 mill to celebrate mission accomplished in 2007!

Kim Chong-il, the bouffanted rock-star Dear Leader of North Korea, must be cowering in his bunker waiting for our bunker buster to end his cowardice!

The Bush bully boys need to learn not to throw aound threats that we can't deliver on, don't have the stones to deliver on, don't have the friends to help us deliver on. There were those who argued that the Bush's planned misadventure in Iraq would leave us in just this state. And it has.

Korea specialists such as myself argued in the run up to Iraq, that North Korea and Iran were much more important and threatening states and Iraq, piled on top of Afghanistan would leave us impotent to deal with these threats! Ironic, isn't it, that in bringing about Iraqi regime change, we removed the only countervailing force/challenge to Iran in the region.

Then we sent that arrogant loose cannon, Bolton, to P'yongyang to insult Kim Chong-il out of dealing with us and it's been all down hill from there.

The queston prior to our invasion of Iraq which I raised then is the same I raise now--is Iraq or North Korea more likely to sell missiles and/or WMD's to non-state actors such as Al Qaeda?

Doc Rock