Old Fogey's Quotes on North Korea

When words don't match action

"States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. . . . In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic."
King George the Incompetent in 2002 State of the Union address
Bush's 'Axis of Evil' Comes Back to Haunt United States
[The GOP conservatives assert that defense is just about the only legitimate function of government and yet the world is now and immensely more dangerous place for us. Piles of money and tragic deaths of our troops and Iraqi people have created a vacuum to be filled by radical Islamists, meanwhile distracting us from the nations who ACTUALLY had programs to build weapons of mass destruction]

"We will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea."
King George the Not-So-Omnipotent, three years ago
Ahem, Korea? The Nuke Thing? Unacceptable.
[Bush came into office with the naive idea that as the world's only superpower all we needed to do was to act (whoops, I meant speak) tougher. Wow, that worked out well, didn't it?!]

"If you say these things too many times and nothing happens or, in fact, your policy begins to head in the opposite direction, of accommodating that which you have previously described as unacceptable, you do make a bit of a mockery of yourself."
Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Ahem, Korea? The Nuke Thing? Unacceptable.
[Yeah, thanks to Bush and company we are not only hated but also mocked all around the world--great accomplishment]

''I would engage directly in face-to-face talks. That's when you deliver your toughest message.''
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson
Democrat Calls for North Korea Talks
[It is a little hard to be a bully in absentia]

"The six-party talks were moribund before and should be declared dead. "
Jon B. Wolfsthal, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
North Korea on Nukes
[Refusal to talk directly with Kim Jong-Il, because he is a 'bad guy' seems to say that diplomacy is the tool of last resort to be used only after military options/threats fail]

“What it tells you is that we started at the wrong end of the ‘axis of evil.’ We started with the least dangerous of the countries, Iraq, and we knew it at the time. And now we have to deal with that.”
Senator Sam Nunn, the Georgia Democrat who has spent his post-Congressional career trying to halt a new age of proliferation
For U.S., a Strategic Jolt After North Korea’s Test
[What a mess we are in, just because Bush and his cronies had a hard-on for Saddam]

"Iran will certainly notice if North Korea gets treated with kid gloves."
Michael E. O'Hanlon, a Brookings Institution scholar
Bush's 'Axis of Evil' Comes Back to Haunt United States
[It is really ironic that this anti-UN administration must now count on that body to save its bacon]

“Think about the consequences of having declared something ‘intolerable’ and, last week, ‘unacceptable,’ and then having North Korea defy the world’s sole superpower and the Chinese and the Japanese. What does that communicate to Iran, and then the rest of the world? Is it possible to communicate to Kim credibly that if he sells a bomb to Osama bin Laden, that’s it?”
Graham Allison, the Harvard professor who has studied nuclear showdowns since the Cuban missile crisis
For U.S., a Strategic Jolt After North Korea’s Test
[Nuclear weapons in the hands of one madman with the capacity to arm madmen around the globe--that's an horrific thought]