OCCOM BILL wrote:kuvasz wrote: OCCOM BILL wrote:Interesting response Kuvasz. Rather Michael Moorish in that you use a good deal of leading facts to obfuscate the issue instead of addressing it directly. Interestingly, the main thrusts of my argument were almost completely sidestepped:
Gracious me, using facts on you, I apologize profusely for using facts upon which to base my arguments, but since you haven't yet, I thought it best to have at least one of us anchored in reality.
Cute, but I was referring to your facts about Rummy and Cheney etc, that have nothing to do with any discussion you're having with me.
Why not? It showed with clarity that with North Korea, like with Iraq, top level Republicans are perfectly willing to supply aid and comfort to the alleged enemy if money can be made. Placed in juxtaposition with their bare-chested alpha male attitude once in power shows the latter as merely hypocritical posturing that is used only to sway the uninformed and is quite relevant in that much of what is said by the Busheviks is said not out of conviction but for domestic political effect, and it includes their "no ransom, no blackmail" meme. Both of these memes were subverted with the Chinese holding US service men hostage until Bush forked over $25,000,000 in 2001
OCCOM BILL wrote:kuvasz wrote: OCCOM BILL wrote:1. Carter stuck his nose where it had no business being and helped broker an idiotic agreement that paid a murderer to not build nukes. This he did
reportedly just before Clinton was going to order a strike on the Yongbyon Nuclear Power Plant, that would have ended this crisis once and for all. Reportedly, Clinton ultimately decided to go with Carter's plan because he feared 100,000 people might die if NK decided to strike South Korea
(though, doing so would have been suicidal). The results of not ordering that strike is literally MILLIONS of North Koreans dead instead.
Your posts have been devoid of cogent argument, with neither major nor minor themes presented. However, I have noticed your hard-on about Jimmy Carter in earlier posts so it is not a surprise here. But, Jimmy Carter was asked by the North Koreans to plead their case on the international scene and through his actions prevented the incineration of millions of North Koreans and tens of thousands of South Koreans (and most certainly my Air Force S.Sgt brother stationed on the 38th parallel). Yet for that, President Carter earns your contempt. And I ask, just what kind of human being are you to revel in such a path of mindless destruction when negotiation is available? You, and C-plus Augustus.
While I can understand your bias on account of your brothers location, I can't let you get away with insulting me while posting such utter nonsense. Kuvasz, Kim is 10 times more dangerous now than he was when we started bribing him. Mindless was negotiating with the terrorist Kim and paying his ransom. Defending the failed attempt; is bordering on idiotic.
Hardly so. Since the NKs have not produced any more refined plutonium since 1994. Perhaps you wanted war on the Korean peninsula in 1994 instead. Back in 1994 we thought it was critical to stop the plutonium production process immediately because we took the position that we didn't know whether North Korea was yet a nuclear power. The 1994 "Framework" was an agreement meant to address the immediate threat posed by North Korea's plutonium production facilities. It accomplished that and was followed by subsequent negotiations on ballistic missiles, nuclear weapons and other issues. (Those who criticize the 1994 agreement or call it appeasement do so by comparing it to their imagined resolution of the 1994 crisis -- one brought about by force and/or their indomitable will and uncompromising moral clarity.
There are two distinct nuclear weapons program the NKs have. One based on plutonium, another based on enriching uranium. The plutonium program has been on ice since 1994 -- no one disputes this. The uranium program is up and running. But we don't know quite how long it's been going or how far along it is. The best information we have suggests that the NKs got the key uranium-enriching technology from the Pakistanis back around 1998. Precisely when they started or accelerated production is in dispute.
The key difference is that the NKs already have all the technical know-how and hardware they need to get weapons-grade plutonium. In fact, a lot of it has just been sitting there waiting to be processed. With plutonium they can be up and running in no time. With uranium, they're years away from mastering the process of enriching it, though they've got the key hardware and have started working on setting it up to use. Nuclear weapons experts familiar with the Korean situation say it's the difference between months (with plutonium) and years (with uranium).
OCCOM BILL wrote:Late 1993: NK threatens to withdraw from the non proliferation treaty after Hans Blix reports he can no longer provide "any meaningful assurances" that North Korea is not producing nuclear weapons.
Early 1994: Jimmy Carter on a "private" mission, without any authority whatsoever travels to NK and negotiates, again without any authority to do so, the so-called agreed framework. Clinton, without congressional approval, decides to go against the advice of his own cabinet (who said strike Yongbyon), and accepts the ridiculous blackmail arrangement: NK agrees to cease plutonium production in exchange for the U.S. agreeing to provide 500,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil annually until construction of two light-water reactors is complete. However, Kim doesn't give up his Nuclear ambitions. Soon after he starts work on a purified Uranium program. (For those who don't know; both purified uranium and plutonium go in Nukes. They are not the same however. Plutonium requires a complicated implosion detonator that is extremely difficult to manufacture. Purified Uranium works with a gun-type system that any machinist could build. See Fat Man and Little Boy for more details) So, we are now paying a kings ransom to a murderous bastard who is now working on even more dangerous nuclear weapons than we bribed him not to work on in the first place. And Kuvasz here thinks that's a good idea.
First, I reject the application your own inflammatory language with the reality of the situation. Your continuing use of the terms "blackmail, "ransom," and "appeasement" leads me to question the thoughtfulness, and sophistication of your position here.
But, let's take this apart a little at a time.
Carter went to NK and most likely prevented a nuclear war. The US government did not stop him from going to North Korea. The '94 "Framework" details were negotiated by the US government, not Carter. It was not a treaty subject to congressional approval; however the implementation of the details were subject to congressional influences.
Former Washington Post reporter Don Oberdorfer, in his book "The Two Koreas," said Clinton and his top advisers were discussing options for deploying troops and military equipment to South Korea when Carter called to say that North Korean leader Kim Il Sung had agreed to the freeze. Carter urged a resumption of dialogue between the United States and North Korea. At the time, U.S. military officials were greatly concerned about a North Korean preemptive strike on South Korea and Japan in response to the planned US military buildup, as well as projections for as many as 1 million dead in a full-scale war.
The resulting deal, known as the Agreed Framework, committed North Korea to shuttering its nuclear reactor in exchange for regular fuel oil shipments and the construction of two light-water nuclear reactors. But it was concluded just as the Republicans took control of Congress, and the administration was immediately forced on the defensive to preserve it
Kim and his advisors decided to pursue equipment for the purification of uranium in the late 1990's, most likely by accepting a deal with another of our great allies, the Pakistanis who had been buying missile technologies for their own nukes.
Why? Korean military very likely convinced Kim Jong Il that a diplomatic solution with the US through dialogue was not going to work, and therefore the only assurance of their security were to get a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible. They had quite a long relationship with Pakistanis, selling them missiles to which the Pakistanis were affixing their own nukes. They probably heard from the Pakistanis how much more secure they felt having acquired a nuclear counterbalance to that of India. It was likely seductive to the North Koreans, particularly when they had seen a series of hostile statements out of the United States, including the Pentagon report making them one of the seven countries eligible for a preemptive strike, and various other things said by the president and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and other hawks.
While uranium enrichment as such was not explicitely forbidden by the details of the 1994 framework, it was certainly and admittedly so by the spirit of the "Framework" that called for the Korean peninsula to be nuclear free. While this was occurring in the late 1990's, the shipments of oil and other trade items and financial aid to the NKs were slowed, in numerous cases as a direct affect of GOP congressional forces who did not like what the "Framework" detailed.
The Bush administration's refusal to endorse the "no hostile intent" statement of the October 2000 agreement between North Korea and the United States further cemented the belief in the North Koreans that Bush administration could not be trusted not to attack them.
With all of this, and the belief that Bush administration could not be trusted not to attack them, the NKs proceeded forward with their uranium purification throughout 2001-3.
But this was not unknown to the Bush administration even in its earliest days, since in 2000 the Clinton administration had planned to bundle the two issues, nuclear material purification and missile weapons (most assuredly at the insistence of the Japanese) in further negotiations with NK. Clinton administration officials told the incoming Bush administration that they had detected evidence that the NKs were actively seeking technologies to purify uranium.
The problem has been that there is enormous mistrust. The United States believes that the North Koreans cheated on the 1994 "Agreed Framework" [to freeze their nuclear program in return for aid] that had been reached with the Clinton administration. While the North Koreans kept frozen certain facilities, the United States says that North Korea clandestinely went about another method of obtaining nuclear materials. North Korea thinks that the United States backtracked on the statements made during the Clinton administration about not having hostile intentions toward North Korea. It says that the Bush administration, through a variety of means, including statements by George Bush personally, was in fact expressing great hostility to North Korea.
There is some truth in this, and the distrust by the North Koreans has been heightened further by stories in the press recently about a Pentagon memo calling for regime change in North Korea.
But here is support for your position, albeit, from one whose track record is suspect, Richard Pearle.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/themes/debate.html
OCCOM BILL wrote:kuvasz wrote: OCCOM BILL wrote:2. Said agreement failed, completely, to do any such thing.Not only has Kim killed Millions, he went right ahead and developed Nuclear weapons anyway (as your own sources confirm), making the agreed framework 100% appeasement to a madman who delivered absolutely nothing in return. It did however provide an example: If you threaten the US with terrorist-like threats, we'll cave in to your demands. Not a very good policy. Rather unilateral if you ask me.
Now you are mixing issues. No one believes that Maximum Leader Kim is anything but a gangster who is in charge of the worst totalitarian state the world has ever seen. But he is the head of a government that had an active nuclear weapons program with enough conventional air missile weaponry to wreck havoc on the world's second largest economy before North Korea would be wiped out by an American attack.
Nonsense. We could easily have vaporized every living thing in NK if we went nuts
Using conventional weapons, we could cripple his forces sufficiently that he'd be lucky to get a single shot off to Japan. Seoul was the concern
and it is debatable whether he'd have retaliated at all. If he didn't, his considerable conventional arsenal was still a credible threat against future aggression
and to attack was certain suicide. I don't think he would have.
Argue with Defense Secretary Perry, from your own link provided.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/themes/debate.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/themes/lessons.html
OCCOM BILL wrote:kuvasz wrote: Your timetable is also out of kilter. The CIA believed through indirect sources (aka
the Chinese) that the NKs had purified enough radioactive material to make 1-2 nukes prior to the crisis Carter helped cool down. In fact, what the Carter negotiations were able to do was slow down the production of nuclear materials after that time and until the NKs decided that begging our C-plus Augustus to come to the negotisting table would get them nowhere, they themselves implored Bush to come to the negotiating table all during 2001-03. It was then that the NKs decided that the only way to get the Americans to negotiate was to crank up their breeder reactors again.
First, it was plutonium they were working with prior to Carter's arrival. The rest is pure nonsense
NK was secretly working on Nukes before Bush stopped paying the ransom money
Hell it was widely reported that that's why he stopped paying it. And you think slowing his pace was a good thing? That wasn't the deal and never would, or should, have been. Your suggestion that multi-lateral talks are a bad thing is ridiculous. I've never heard anyone say that before.
See this link if no other in this post. It is a video of a lecture by given by Americans negotiators who are experts on North Korean weapons programs. The video is streaming, but can be downloaded (it is nearly an hour talk and 100mb in size.)
http://www.cfr.org/pub7079/gary_s_samore_adam_ward/north_koreas_weapons_programs.php
The 94 "Framework was exactly designed to stop the North Koreans from enriching any more plutonium. And it worked.
And, there you go again, "ransom" money, as if entering negotiations with a country with a 1,000,000-man army to reduce the risk of nuclear weapons production is somehow morally equivalent to dealing with Bruno Hauptman to return the Lindbergh baby.
Why do you insist that negotiations are the same thing as appeasement?
The NKs' did not move immediately forward on further plutonium enrichment after signing the 94 Framework. They was stopped, in '94 and did not start up again until 2003, when the NKs gave up on Bush coming back to the negotiating table when they pulled their plutonium rods and covered the cameras at the storage site
OCCOM BILL wrote:kuvasz wrote: Bush destroyed any semblance of cooperating with the NKs because of his ideologically poisoned position that anything that Clinton had been involved with was tainted goods.
Either you're kidding or this is some kind of paranoid delusion. Bush learned that we were paying bribe money, while Kim was building weapons anyway. Of course he stopped paying. Hello?
OCCOM BILL wrote:kuvasz wrote: Again, here we are now 40 months hence, the NKs have a dozen more nukes, and we are discussing the same things with them now we could have been talking about with them over three years ago.
No, here we are a decade later, and they now have Nukes. Had Carter not interfered, or Clinton had the sense to listen to his cabinet, we wouldn't be facing a Nuclear Korea that is at least 10 times more dangerous than they were. Get it?
OCCOM BILL wrote:kuvasz wrote: OCCOM BILL wrote:3. More voices standing together against Kim is better.Yes, Kuvasz, the more the merrier. This doesn't mean that we cede power to other countries; it means countries of a like mind will not be excluded at Kim's whim.
More voices, you say? As if the voice and power of the USA is insufficient? You, such a patriot on other threads dismiss American power as insufficient to protect us here when it suits your ideologically driven position. Could you stoop any lower than to denigrate US power as incapable of forcing our enemies to the negotiating table? Instead, according to your position, the enfeebled US must go around begging for the Chinese to help us with the North Koreans. Perhaps you consider negotiations over nuclear weapons a subject of merriment, however, no sane person does, cheese head or not.
This one gets the award for most idiotic paragraph of the day. I'd like to see every country on earth follow us in everything. The more that do, the stronger we are (not just militarily
) the better off we are. This babbling about denigration and begging and whatnot is 100% a figment of your imagination. Please refrain from attributing your idiotic fantasies to me.
It was pure sarcasm, using the same over the top rhetorical techniques used by the right wing when casting their opponents as supporters of terrorists, and apparently done so well it was taken as real.
Donald Gregg, U.S. ambassador to South Korea in the first Bush administration, says he has repeatedly advised the White House to begin
"direct talks" with North Korea but has been rebuffed because Washington does not want to appear to cave in to nuclear blackmail. Gregg says that virtually every expert on North Korea agrees that only direct talks can resolve the crisis.
He was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on March 7, 2003.
OCCOM BILL wrote:kuvasz wrote: Inclusion of other powers in negotiations with NK provides them, as well as the Chinese with potential tools to undermine clear US security objectives on the Korean Peninsula and elsewhere in East Asia.
Dude, snap out of it. It does no such thing.
Then you are calling some of the most informed international Korean specialists' idiots as well.
http://www.nytimes.com/cfr/international/mustreads031003.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=top
http://www.cfr.org/publication.php?id=6224
http://www.cfr.org/background/background_northkorea_bg.php
http://www.cfr.org/publication.php?id=6224
http://www.cfr.org/publication.php?id=6195
OCCOM BILL wrote:kuvasz wrote: While North Korea and its nuclear capacities are a clear, present, and future danger to the security of the US, it is not the only one, nor can the objective of a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula alone be the overriding principle and linchpin of US foreign policy in the region.
This is true, but largely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
No its not, Its called aware enough about the world that one is not so caught up in the moment that the future has no meaning and that it is dumb to fill your belly with the seed corn needed for the next year's harvest.
OCCOM BILL wrote:kuvasz wrote: It may well be your naive opinion that US, Japanese and Chinese security interests travel parallel lines, however, while they may do so, they will always be lines that never meet.
Again, where is the dispute? Other than provide a space for yet another Ad Hominem what does this sentence say to you?
See above to Japanese concerns about NK missiles interests, and consider if the Japanese would put pressure in the US if the NKs agreed to stop missile upgrades in exchange for withdrawing Japanese support of other US strategic positions in the Far East.
OCCOM BILL wrote:kuvasz wrote: If you do not know how to respond, perhaps you should not do so. Anyone who trusts the Chinese to look out for anyone but themselves is suspected of knowing nothing of East Asian history and current affairs. Nor should anyone pay attention to one who believes that the Chinese will not use any advantage to further their own hegemonic goals.
Inviting the Chinese to talks is hardly the same thing as trusting them to look out for us. Your paranoia is showing again. That second sentence was silly. The third was completely idiotic. Really. Look for yourself.
See:
Beyond North Korea: A Chance for America to Check China's Rise
"The Bush administration's North Korea policy has brought a different kind of challenge in its relations with China, which is emerging as a credible alternative to the United States as the leading power in Asia - not through its military might, as the Bush administration has long feared, but rather through the strength of its diplomacy.
"China succeeded in brokering the deal that brought Washington and Pyongyang to the negotiating table this week. But North Korea is only the latest diplomatic opportunity for China. Over the past year or so it has assumed an increasingly important role as a regional economic leader and military player."
Eating our seed corn.
http://www.cfr.org/pub5889/elizabeth_c_economy_eugene_a_matthews/beyond_north_korea_a_chance_for_america_to_check_chinas_rise.php
The "multinational talks" you allude to are designed for a specific personal and domestic political reason which should have absolutely no place in international negotiations. George Bush himself was quoted in Bob Woodward's recent book, "Bush at War," as saying: "I loathe Kim Jong Il. I've got a visceral reaction to this guy, because he is starving his people. And I have seen intelligence of these prison camps...that he uses to break up families and to torture people. It appalls me."
Bush has a strong personal dislike for Kim. The question is whether he still thinks that the United States can reach a negotiated settlement with North Korea on nuclear and other issues. It does appear that his personal views have had a significant impact on the administration's willingness to negotiate, at least by the traditional definition of that term. He has no intention of direct negotiations with NK, and if he did so, he would be excoriated by the ring wing of his political party
But here is a link that does support your position, and followed are several others that do not.
http://www.cfr.org/publication.php?id=5972
I chose the latter position because I do not trust the Chinese any more than the North Koreans.
and I refuse to accept Bush's approach to out-source our foreign policy to China on the Korean Peninsula
http://www.cfr.org/publication.php?id=5366
http://www.cfr.org/publication.php?id=5891 http://www.cfr.org/pub6209/lee_feinstein/date_with_a_dictator_negotiating_with_north_korea_is_an_unattractive_option__but_the_only_good_one.php
OCCOM BILL wrote:kuvasz wrote: OCCOM BILL wrote:Other items of interest from that Ad Hominem laden onslaught:
Since you don't participate much in discussions here; I'll assume your accusations of my Republican Partisanship and Bush machismo, etc. are honest mistakes. Those
are common misconceptions about me. See my reaction to the first debate
here.
Blah, blah, blah.
It ain't the meat, it's the motion, and counting posts as an effective way of determining value to discussions on A2K is as bogus as your claim that you are not steeped in Republican partisanship.
I did no such thing. Your paranoia is showing again. I simply thought you had made an honest mistake
but see now you are being deliberately obtuse. Check out my voting record
here.
The entire bases of your argument here has been simple-minded talking points of far right wing ideologues, and if you speak as they do, if you believe as they do, you have shown that you are one of them. You are simply mouthing what Richard Pearle has said in the Frontline article.
OCCOM BILL wrote:kuvasz wrote: btw: I read A2K threads regularly, but do not respond to many since most of what is presented here has been hashed out long ago on Abuzz.
This is the first such site I've joined and I'm starting to see what you mean already.
I have over 25 gigs on my hard drive of postings from 4 years posting to Abuzz, A2K, Yahoo, Smirking Chimp, and Democratic Underground and other political sites on a multitude of issues that can be can cut and pasted into dozen threads a week here. Actually, for the most part, A2K has become boring
note when I joined, I was one of the first to sign up for A2K but rarely post anymore.
OCCOM BILL wrote:kuvasz wrote: But I am glad you enjoyed the thoroughness of my documentation of my position; a level, unfortunately I should note, that your own efforts never quite seem capable of rising to.
After this post, I'm not sure why I'm responding at all or that I will again. Half of what you type either doesn't make sense or has nothing to do with the discussion. You seem like a friendly enough fellow, but your insults are getting old and you're arguing against
easily retrievable facts. Tone down the rhetoric a little and we'll get along just fine.
OCCOM BILL wrote:kuvasz wrote: I spent my summers as a youth in Fondulac near Lake Michigan and La Crosse on the Mississippi River and assume that qualifies me as a yogurt head.
Ah, I see. Tornado Alley and the one place on the Mighty Mississippi one might have trouble swimming up stream. Summers eh? Would that mean you grew up a Flatlander?
Oddly enough I do refer to myself as a "Flatlander, but for far different reasons. The philosophical theory of emergent evolution can best be described by the metaphorical Flatland. Just email Fresco for a tour de'force on it, and tell him I sent you, or take up reading Ken Wilber.
