Congrats Bill Clinton

President Clinton was sent there to finalize the pre-negotiated deal. Nothing more and nothing less. He was uncharacteristically quiet when they landed in CA.

It's just not the same now that we have an intelligent, articulate statesman in the Oval Office.

works for me.

All we got in return was two individuals. We got the short end.

Now that President Bill Clinton has extricated Laura Ling and Euna Lee from North Korea, the hard work begins.

There are new indications that North Korea may be transferring nuclear weapons technology to Myanmar, the dictatorship also known as Burma, and that it earlier supplied a reactor to Syria. For many years, based on five visits to North Korea and its border areas, I’ve argued for an “engagement” approach toward Pyongyang, but now I’ve reluctantly concluded that we need more sticks.
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All this was eerily foreshadowed by the North Koreans themselves. Michael Green, who ran Asian affairs for a time in the Bush White House, says that in March 2003, a North Korean official " with hands shaking " read out to him and other American officials a warning: We have a nuclear deterrent. If you don’t end your hostile policy, we will demonstrate, expand and transfer it.

“They’ve done all those things,” Mr. Green notes.

At times in the past, there seemed hope for diplomacy aimed at coaxing North Korea into giving up its nuclear program and joining the concert of nations. These days that seems virtually hopeless.

“Formal diplomatic engagement aimed at rolling back their nuclear program has run its course, at least for the time being,” says Mitchell Reiss, a North Korea expert and former senior State Department official who is now at the College of William and Mary. “The facts have changed. You have to change your strategy.”

todays report of the background story have it that Clinton was the bait and the collection man, he had no part in negotiations. Nothing Clinton might have said or done was of any consequence.

obviously, without Clinton it wouldn't have happened

And during a July call, Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee told their families that the North Koreans had told them that they would be willing to grant them amnesty if “an envoy in the person of President Clinton would agree to come to Pyongyang and seek their release,” according to a senior Obama administration official who briefed reporters.

The proposal was then reported to Mr. Gore, who passed it on to Mr. Clinton

Quote:

obviously, without Clinton it wouldn't have happened

Obviously, because it was clinton whom was summoned by the North Koreans

Quote:

And during a July call, Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee told their families that the North Koreans had told them that they would be willing to grant them amnesty if “an envoy in the person of President Clinton would agree to come to Pyongyang and seek their release,” according to a senior Obama administration official who briefed reporters.

The proposal was then reported to Mr. Gore, who passed it on to Mr. Clinton

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/us/06families.html?_r=1&hp

what is the price of an Obama visit, 10 Americans??
When we pay the ransom we encourage the snatching of Americans...it is not in our interest to do so.