Good to see we have a plan for North Korea..

Bettor days

EOG Dedicated
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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=305 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top align=left>The Sunday Times</TD><TD vAlign=top align=right>July 09, 2006</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>West mounts 'secret war' to keep nuclear North Korea in check

Michael Sheridan, Far East Correspondent
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR><TR><TD height=5> </TD></TR><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=305 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top>A PROGRAMME of covert action against nuclear and missile traffic to North Korea and Iran is to be intensified after last week?s missile tests by the North Korean regime.
Intelligence agencies, navies and air forces from at least 13 nations are quietly co-operating in a ?secret war? against Pyongyang and Tehran.
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 align=right border=0 VALIGN="TOP"><TBODY><TR><TD id=mpuHeader name="mpuHeader"></TD></TR><TR align=right><TD align=right><SCRIPT type=text/javascript>NI_MPU('middle');</SCRIPT></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>It has so far involved interceptions of North Korean ships at sea, US agents prowling the waterfronts in Taiwan, multinational naval and air surveillance missions out of Singapore, investigators poring over the books of dubious banks in the former Portuguese colony of Macau and a fleet of planes and ships eavesdropping on the ?hermit kingdom? in the waters north of Japan.
Few details filter out from western officials about the programme, which has operated since 2003, or about the American financial sanctions that accompany it.
But together they have tightened a noose around Kim Jong-il?s bankrupt, hungry nation.
?Diplomacy alone has not worked, military action is not on the table and so you?ll see a persistent increase in this kind of pressure,? said a senior western official.
In a telling example of the programme?s success, two Bush administration officials indicated last year that it had blocked North Korea from obtaining equipment used to make missile propellant.
The Americans also persuaded China to stop the sale of chemicals for North Korea?s nuclear weapons scientists. And a shipload of ?precursor chemicals? for weapons was seized in Taiwan before it could reach a North Korean port.
According to John Bolton, the US ambassador to the United Nations and the man who originally devised the programme, it has made a serious dent in North Korea?s revenues from ballistic missile sales.
But the success of Bolton?s brainchild, the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), whose stated aim is to stop the traffic in weapons of mass destruction, might also push North Korea into extreme reactions.
Britain is a core member of the initiative, which was announced by President George W Bush in Krakow, Poland, on May 31, 2003. British officials have since joined meetings of ?operational experts? in Australia, Europe and the US, while the Royal Navy has contributed ships to PSI exercises. The participants include Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Italy, Spain and Singapore, among others.
There has been almost no public debate in the countries committed to military involvement. A report for the US Congress said it had ?no international secretariat, no offices in federal agencies established to support it, no database or reports of successes and failures and no established funding?.
To Bolton and senior British officials, those vague qualities make it politically attractive.
In the past 10 months, since the collapse of six-nation talks in Beijing on North Korea?s nuclear weapons, the US and its allies have also tightened the screws on Kim?s clandestine fundraising, which generated some $500m a year for the regime.
Robert Joseph, the US undersecretary for arms control, has disclosed that 11 North Korean ?entities? ? trading companies or banks ? plus six from Iran and one from Syria were singled out for action under an executive order numbered 13382 and signed by Bush.
For the first time, the US Secret Service and the FBI released details of North Korean involvement in forging $100 notes and in selling counterfeit Viagra, cigarettes and amphetamines in collaboration with Chinese gangsters.
The investigators homed in on a North Korean trading company and two banks in Macau. The firm, which had offices next to a casino and a ?sauna?, was run by North Koreans with diplomatic passports, who promptly vanished.
The two banks, Seng Heng bank and Banco Delta Asia, denied any wrongdoing. But the Macau authorities stepped in after a run on Banco Delta Asia and froze some $20m in North Korean accounts.

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Havent really heard anything about this. Im glad we are working behind the scenes to handle this situation rather than just sitting back and letting this fucker Kim Jong Il reload and that nutbag Ahmenijad nuke Israel. On a side note this country is yet another example of just why Communism does not work.
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doc mercer said:
Since Bush entered the Oval Office in January 2001, Kim's estimated stockpile of plutonium has quintupled

So has Dickhead Cheney's bank account!LOL

Something does have to be done about this shit, though!
I don't want those tools firing off missiles, even if they
don't work now! They only have to get one of 'em to work
and: POW!!; there goes Waverly, TN!!

I'm sure Bush can make a mockery of it somehow, though!
He's real could at squandering worldwide support!
I know, let's invade Bolivia, you know, since North Korea
is the ones threatening us! It's the logic he used last time!
Oh yeah, last time still aint over, yet!!
 

Doc Mercer

EOG Master
Bettor:

I say face the facts that Bush has put the entire world on a date with nukes
flying

His "Cowboy Big Mouth" has backfired ... he has the Diplomacy Skills of a Gorilla in heat in a China Shop

Who can blame N Korea? Bush calls em a member of his "Axis of Evil" .. invades and occupies Iraq and Cheney is shooting his mouth off about dropping nukes on Iran

Again, N Korea is doing the same thing everyone else would do if faced with dealing with Nutcase George Bush
 

Bettor days

EOG Dedicated
Doc:
I say face the facts that the left is just as culpable as the right. But IMO its the leaders of these countries who want to put us up against the wall by blackmailing us with nukes. Did you want bush to invade NK? Do you know how many people would have died in a war like that. or would you have supported invading Iran? again would mean much more casualties than in we have had in Iraq so far. I for one am glad that we took out Saddam. This guy wasnt really popular among Muslims in the arab world. If we would have tried to take out Irans ayatollahs we would be seen as fighting the entire muslim faith y saying a government cannot work on Islamic principals. It sucks that we went to Iraq for shitty reasons, but it would be a great thing to establish some sort of friendly relationship with a country in the middle east. If things with Iran do get out of control hopefully we could use our position in iraq and kuwait to persuade them to not let it escalate. I dont know. All I know is if Iran didnt have us knocking on their door they wouldnt even be looking at any nuke deal right now. Who can blame NK? i think the whole world is pretty much on our side on this.
 

Doc Mercer

EOG Master
Bettor:

NK and Iran know they can fuck with us as we dont have the resources right now to do much

"Interesting" year so far and if we get out of this year without a major shootout in the Gulf region I would be shocked
 

Doc Mercer

EOG Master
Japan said Monday it was considering whether a pre-emptive strike on the North's missile bases would violate its constitution, signaling a hardening stance ahead of a possible U.N. Security Councilvote on Tokyo's proposal for sanctions against the regime.

Japan was badly rattled by North Korea's missile tests last week and several government officials openly discussed whether the country ought to take steps to better defend itself, including setting up the legal framework to allow Tokyo to launch a pre-emptive strike against Northern missile sites.

"If we accept that there is no other option to prevent an attack ... there is the view that attacking the launch base of the guided missiles is within the constitutional right of self-defense. We need to deepen discussion," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said.

Japan's constitution currently bars the use of military force in settling international disputes and prohibits Japan from maintaining a military for warfare. Tokyo has interpreted that to mean it can have armed troops to protect itself, allowing the existence of its 240,000-strong Self-Defense Forces.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060710/ap_on_re_as/nkorea_...
 

The General

Another Day, Another Dollar
Who can blame N Korea? Bush calls em a member of his "Axis of Evil" .. invades and occupies Iraq and Cheney is shooting his mouth off about dropping nukes on Iran

Again, N Korea is doing the same thing everyone else would do if faced with dealing with Nutcase George Bush

Good point<!-- google_ad_section_end --><!-- / message -->
 

Doc Mercer

EOG Master
Bush has ACCOMPLISHED NOTHING in Iraq except spend 300 billion and the lives of 2500 of our finest kids to set up an Islamic Puppet Govt ....

Bush is Bin Laden's finest recruiting tool

Who the hell would want to deal with Bush? What other leader would call Jong a "pgymy"????
 

dirty

EOG Master
doc mercer said:
Bush has ACCOMPLISHED NOTHING in Iraq except spend 300 billion and the lives of 2500 of our finest kids to set up an Islamic Puppet Govt ....

Bush is Bin Laden's finest recruiting tool

Who the hell would want to deal with Bush? What other leader would call Jong a "pgymy"????


That didn't answer BD's question....does that surprise anyone..
 

Bettor days

EOG Dedicated
Ill be an old man b4 that happens Dirt. Its all Bush is the Devil, Cheney is a killer, yackity shmakity , blah blah blah
 

Doc Mercer

EOG Master
Bush fucked around with Iraq accomplishing nothing and look at all the countries scambling to get nukes and launch missles

Clinton has been gone for over half a decade ... I love how the Repugs
like to blame Clinton and the NY Times for Bush screwup

Bush is all lip service and Jong played him like the Cheney Trained Chimp he
truly is
 

Bettor days

EOG Dedicated
Not just Clinton buddy. I dont remember anyone dealing with NK. Why put it all on Bush? Did ANY other president since 1973-74 deal with these people?
 

Doc Mercer

EOG Master
Bush is, let me chuckle first, COMMANDER IN CHIEF

Maybe someone with some Diplomacy skills might be able to handle things a tad bit smoother ...

Bush and Cheney have lived for the day when they can nuke millions of innocent civilians
 

Bettor days

EOG Dedicated
Wow.. bold statment doc. What are you going to say when that does not happen? When time passes and we are all still alive? In 2008 when there is another election? When the "concentration camps" you speak of arent filled to the brim with good people?
BTW DOC YOU NEVER TOLD ME WHICH LEADER BEFORE BUSH TRIED TO SOLVE THIS NK PROBLEM?
Im sure you simply overlooked the question and not dodged it.
 

Doc Mercer

EOG Master
I love the Repugs like yourself ...

MF has been in office since the scandal of 2000 and it is always the blame game

Name one area Bush has had success in .... NOT ONE !!!
 

Bettor days

EOG Dedicated
DOC,DOC, Hello is this thing on? listen man im bored of this. I wish you could just act like the grown ass man you are and answer my question. I dont CARE how much you hate Bush. That blame game comments made me laugh a little, I havent seen a problem in this world that isnt Bushies fault according to you so you cant talk about blame games. I just want to know if you know something about this NK issue than I do but I guess not. So maybe one of your cronies can help me out. HAS ANY US PRESIDENT REALLY TRIED TO SOLVE THIS NK PROBLEM? TRIED TO STOP THEM FROM GETTING NUKES IN THE FIRST PLACE? you dont acquire these weapons overnight.
 

Doc Mercer

EOG Master
<!-- icon and title --> <hr style="color: rgb(43, 41, 94);" size="1"> <!-- / icon and title --><!-- message --><!-- google_ad_section_start --> Washington Monthly explains how NK has gotten nukes on Dubya's watch, just the way Bill Clinton's successful antiterror policy was dismantled the first nine months of Dubya's watch.

On 'This Week w Steph' this morning, Peter Beinart of the New Republic was the first talking head I heard recently point out that N Korea got nukes on Dubya's watch, because Dubya's WH abrogated the Clinton-Carter deal that held NK back from the brink. Sen Chris Dodd (D-CT) briefly touched on the same subject on "Face the Nation".

Here's a great article from Washington Monthly that's more expansive:

From http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0405.kap... :

"Rolling Blunder: How the Bush administration let North Korea get nukes.

{In addtion to centrifuges}, ... the North Koreans had another route to nuclear weapons--a stash of radioactive fuel rods, taken a decade earlier from its nuclear power plant in Yongbyon. These rods could be processed into plutonium--and, from that, into A-bombs--not in years but in months. Thanks to an agreement brokered by the Clinton administration, the rods were locked in a storage facility under the monitoring of international weapons-inspectors. Common sense dictated that--whatever it did about the centrifuges--the Bush administration should do everything possible to keep the fuel rods locked up. Unfortunately, common sense was in short supply. After a few shrill diplomatic exchanges {in 2002} over the uranium, Pyongyang upped the ante. The North Koreans expelled the international inspectors, broke the locks on the fuel rods, loaded them onto a truck, and drove them to a nearby reprocessing facility, to be converted into bomb-grade plutonium.

The White House stood by and did nothing. Why did George W. Bush--his foreign policy avowedly devoted to stopping "rogue regimes" from acquiring weapons of mass destruction--allow one of the world's most dangerous regimes to acquire the makings of the deadliest WMDs?...

The pattern of decision making that led to this debacle--as described to me in recent interviews with key former administration officials who participated in the events--will sound familiar to anyone who has watched Bush and his cabinet in action. It is a pattern of wishful thinking, blinding moral outrage, willful ignorance of foreign cultures, a naive faith in American triumphalism, a contempt for the messy compromises of diplomacy, and a knee-jerk refusal to do anything the way the Clinton administration did it....

Bill Clinton, a president not known for hawkishness, nearly went to war against North Korea in the spring of 1994. Five years earlier, during the presidency of George Bush's father, the CIA had discovered the North Koreans were building a reprocessing facility near their nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. It was this reactor that, when finished, would allow them to convert the fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium. Now, barely a year into Clinton's first term in office, they were preparing to remove the fuel rods from their storage site, expel the international weapons inspectors, and withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...

... on Oct. 21, 1994, the United States and North Korea signed a formal accord based on those outlines, called the Agreed Framework. Under its terms, North Korea would renew its commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, lock up the fuel rods, and let the IAEA inspectors back in to monitor the facility. In exchange, the United States, with financial backing from South Korea and Japan, would provide two light-water nuclear reactors for electricity (explicitly allowed under the NPT), a huge supply of fuel oil, and a pledge not to invade North Korea. The accord also specified that, upon delivery of the first light-water reactor (the target date was 2003), intrusive inspections of suspected North Korean nuclear sites would begin. After the second reactor arrived, North Korea would ship its fuel rods out of the country. It would essentially give up the ability to build nuclear weapons...."
 

Bettor days

EOG Dedicated
How the hell was Clintons antiterror watch successful when all the planning for 9-11 was done on his watch. Warnings were given then, he didnt take out Bin Laden when he had the chance. he was chummy with the saudis too. And we all know how trustworthy the NK are.
 

Doc Mercer

EOG Master
Right ...

Rice had not even heard of Al Queda and 9-11 OCCURED UNDER THE WATCH OF BUSH .... after Bush takes office Investigators are told to "back off" from Investigations into Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks and Bush put the Bin Ladens off limits for investigation and the White House approved Bin Ladens family and 140 high ranking Saudis to be flown out of Logan shortly after 9-11

The Bush and Bin Laden connections go back a lot of years
 

Bettor days

EOG Dedicated
OK so why didnt Clinton take him out when he had the chance. instead of lobbing bombs for the persian gulf. he could have hit him with a drone pointe blank baby! I dont wanna keep attacking clinton either he was a good pres. but he made mistakes too, just like reagan, carter, and everyone before him. Bush did not make the world he lives in it.
 

Doc Mercer

EOG Master
Clinton did make mistakes ....

Bush was sold to this country on a bag of hot dogshit about his belief system
and find him and others from his party to be disgusting talking Religion when
they are the most corrupt band of politicians in our lifetimes
 
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