NORTH KOREA CONDUCTS NUCLEAR TEST

Asherman, hahaha. People like me? Most of the human race and most Americans agree with me that Bushie is taking us all in the wrong direction. Time to change course and very few agree with your side.

I primarily think of him as an idiot. Thinking of him as a partisan shill is secondary.

China balks at interfering with North Korean trade
China balks at interfering with North Korean trade
By Tim Johnson
McClatchy Newspapers
10/11/06

BEIJING - At the busiest checkpoint along China's border with North Korea, about 200 trucks a day roll across the Yalu River and deliver merchandise to dictator Kim Jong Il's isolated regime. The Dandong checkpoint is one of nine road routes from China to North Korea along the 880-mile border. There are also three rail connections.

Trade bustles between the countries, so Beijing naturally flinches at accepting punishing U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang over its apparent nuclear test earlier this week.

The United States and Japan are pushing the U.N. Security Council to approve stiff sanctions on North Korea, including international inspections of all cargo moving into and out of the country to detect weapons-related material. That would mean stopping ships at sea, checking truck cargo and inspecting rail freight.

With tempers high, China has softened its opposition to sanctions, but hasn't yet made clear what measures it would support. China's ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Guangya, said Tuesday: "I think there has to be some punitive actions but also I think these actions have to be appropriate."

The task of crafting U.N. sanctions that would weaken North Korea's will to maintain its nuclear program is bedeviling diplomats. The U.S. Navy and allies' naval forces - under the umbrella of the Proliferation Security Initiative - already stop ships on the high seas that they suspect of carrying North Korean missile parts.

Even if China and Russia, both of which share a land border with North Korea, go along with a muscular U.N. plan to inspect North Korean cargo, they may not want international inspectors to take part.

"I doubt that China or Russia are going to permit the United States to go in and check what's going across in two-way trade," said Philip E. Coyle, a former director of weapons testing at the Pentagon who lives in Sacramento, Calif.

Washington has maintained some level of sanctions against Pyongyang since the onset of the Korean War in 1950. The diplomatic, trade and financial sanctions are designed partly to curb what Washington says is North Korea's counterfeiting and drug trafficking.

Japan also maintains some sanctions and reaffirmed Tuesday that it wants to stiffen them as soon as experts confirm Pyongyang's claim of a nuclear test Monday. Japan deployed jets over the Sea of Japan to examine high-altitude dust samples for radioactivity.

Experts say that inspecting ships leaving North Korean ports wouldn't be difficult. The nation's merchant shipping fleet, some 200 vessels, is largely decrepit. Spy satellites can monitor vessels flying under foreign flags that dock in North Korea.

"You can see when a ship comes in and goes out of North Korea, no matter what flag it is," said Sheila Smith, a researcher at the East-West Center in Honolulu.

But maritime ship-boarding tactics aren't always successful.

In 2003, the Bush administration began the Proliferation Security Initiative as an ad hoc global mechanism - free of U.N. oversight - to board ships and search for and seize weapons-related cargo. The program's target: North Korea.

The initiative, which Washington says more than 70 nations support, has been opaque. U.S. officials publicly acknowledge only 12 maritime interdictions.

"The Proliferation Security Initiative has evidently been a failure. North Korea has gone on and been able to assemble a (nuclear) device," said Allan Behm, a security and risk consultant in Canberra, Australia.

Attacking North Korea's overall trade may be part of Japan's strategy in coming days. It's mulling a halt of North Korean imports - largely seafood and mushrooms - worth around $116 million last year.

Chinese traders along the border with North Korea wince at any measures that might affect commerce, which has enriched them.

"You know, the economy of Dandong largely relies on trade with North Korea, and the local people are enjoying a better life because of it," Zhang Yi, the owner of the Dandong Xinlong Trade Company, said in a telephone interview.

"What damage it would do to people along the border if all trade stops!" he exclaimed.

The two-way trade between China and North Korea rose to $1.58 billion last year, although it appears to be dipping this year because of a cash shortage in Pyongyang.

Russia has only a 12-mile border with North Korea. Trade between them was $166 million in 2005, according to European Union statistics.

South Korea sustains the biggest economic lifeline to North Korea, and observers are waiting to see whether President Roh Moo-hyun rolls back a "sunshine policy" of economic engagement with Pyongyang.

Unification Minister Lee Jong Seok, speaking to a National Assembly panel in Seoul, apologized for North Korea's nuclear test, saying there would be changes to the engagement policy, but he ruled out immediately halting cooperation with Pyongyang.

Many South Koreans remain indifferent to the crisis. Some 2,195 South Koreans were traveling in communist North Korea on Tuesday, including 505 tourists who left on a three-day trip to Diamond Mountain, a money-earning resort, the semi-official Yonhap news agency said.

Diamond Mountain and the inter-Korean industrial complex in the border town of Kaesong are Seoul's showpiece cooperation projects with the North.

"If South Korea does something to interrupt these economic interactions, it is going to be very hurtful to North Korea," said Lee Dong-bok, a former intelligence official in Seoul.

McClatchy special correspondents Fan Linjun in Beijing and Emi Doi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Keep dreaming, while the Repbulican Party does the heavy lifting.

Right Track/Wrong Track

Associated Press-Ipsos poll conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs. Oct. 2-4, 2006. N=1,501 adults nationwide. MoE ± 2.5. Data from 11/03 and earlier co-sponsored by Cook Political Report.

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"Generally speaking, would you say things in this country are heading in the right direction, or are they off on the wrong track?"

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Right
Direction Wrong
Track Unsure
% % % .

10/2-4/06 31 64
link

Yea, Bushie got what he wanted all right.

Your boy Clinton and Carter tee-d it up for him.

How naive are you to think that Clintons plan was actually going to work? Are you that partisen to not see the stupidity of Carters and Clintons thinking they could trust NK?

woiyo, easy for you to say since we'll never know how far Clinton's saner policy would have taken us. We do know Bushie's confrontational policies have brought us to the brink of WW3. As far as the North Korean situation is concerned Bushie looks like a fool. The world will do little about this just as they'll do little about the Iranian "crisis". The world knows Bushie is the Kook with the Nuke.

There ya go, now everybody's gonna want nukes.

If it can keep Bush away, why not ?

The world is not on the brink of WWIII, and we know exactly (in hindsight) where Clinton's "saner policy" has led.

The decision to bribe the DPRK rather than risk a renewal of a high-intensity ground war on the Peninsula probably was made in good faith, but was certainly naive at best. The result is that the DPRK is now a much greater threat, and the risks of dealing with that problem are immensely greater. The threat to world peace posed by a continuation of the Kim Dynasty will not go away by talking with them. Jong-Il, like his father, believes that diplomacy is basically for weak-willed whimps. At best, diplomacy is a temporary condition that will last only until the DPRK is ready to up the stakes again.

The recent DPRK nuclear test was a wakeup call for a whole lot of folks who wanted to believe that Jong-Il wasn't really a threat and that he could be contained. Iran, whose diplomatic strategy was learned from the DPRK experience, is carefully watching what happens here. If the DPRK does not pay a significant penalty for its nuclear weapons, then Iran will have no reason not to plow forward with their own agenda. A re-militarization of Japan, if that happens, is going to rightfully send shivers down the spines of every far eastern nation. A rearmed and nuclear Japan isn't going to be easily accepted by the PRC, and tensions can only go up.

Apparently the leftish representatives of the Democratic Party posting here would rather focus their attention on demonizing Bush for their own political gain than seriously addressing a regional threat that could go very, very wrong over the next ten years, or so.

Thank god these folks are not in a position to harm the United States with their petty political agenda and hatreds. Their misplaced sympathy for the DPRK, Iran and radical Islamic terrorists in another time would have been unthinkable.

What year is this again? How long has bush been in office? I wonder if a republican gets elected in 2008, are you guys still going to harken back to clinton for every single failure under republican leadership?

The effects of a national policy don't begin and end precisely in four year increments. Clinton inherited the DPRK problem that had been brewing for 50 years (5 Democratic and 5 Republican administrations). He was faced with a choice: take out the DPRK nuclear program with a "surgical" strike and run the risk of becoming involved in a bitter ground war, or he could negotiate a exchange of Western resources to shore up a sinking regime in return for a promise to end the DPRK nuclear weapons program. He made what I'm sure seemed like the best decision to him at the time, but in retrospect it is clear that was the wrong, wrong, wrong decision.

The Bush administration inherited the problems that stemmed from the Clinton mistake, but the window for an effective preemptory strike was long closed and the more immediate threat seemed to be rooted in South West Asia where the Radical Islamic Movement was born and has always been maintained. That was a reasonable decision, though personally I would have preferred dealing with Jong-Il first in a belated effort to stop him before his regime got this far. Oh well, I'm not President and I'm glad of it.

Once more, it is pointless to make a political football out of this by endless finger pointing. The problem is real and it has to be dealt with now, unless the left has a time machine that would let us go back and destroy Jong-Ils nuclear facilities today.

Ash, thank goodness you are not the president. But then again, Bush, being in charge of the NK and Iran matters, scares the hell out of me. I can't think of a worse person to be in charge in these times.

I think this is worth reading..

When North Korea Falls

I could substitute a few names here to elucidate the problem.
But I think you may see my point.

I'm afraid not. But I'd like to see you do your best to explain.

You are quite content with DPRK having nuclear weapons then?

Tico, first give me your view of NK having nukes, and why? Do you think we should immediately attack the country?

Don't answer a direct question wqith a question.

Have the balls to defend your opinions.

I'll give you mine. The obvious intent is to make lots of money selling the things to every terror group in the world.

It may or may not make sense to attack the NK nuke sites. Nonetheless the first step should be a total naval blockade of the place, and a maximal effort to seal it airtight, including informing both Russia and China that they will be held responsible for any NK nukes reaching Iran or other destinations, across their territories.