In Pyongyang, Kim Jong Il should be celebrating. In Tehran, Ahmadinejad should be be gloating. Worldwide, tinpot tyrants must be taking notes. The message delivered to the world by Condi Rice’s State Department, with the “joint agreement” just reached at the six-way talks in Beijing is that — yes, indeed — nuclear blackmail pays. Having cheated on the Clinton “Agreed Framework” nuclear freeze, trashed the nonproliferation treaty, and tested an intercontinental missile and a nuclear bomb, Kim is now about to rake in his latest pay-off from the U.S. — which is offering a heap of rewards in exchange for the same hollow promises with which Kim suckered us last time.
While U.S. envoy Christopher Hill was negotiating this debacle, I spent some time reporting an article for The Weekly Standard, compiling a list of Kim Jong Il’s main sources of income over the past decade — as a rough guide to what North Korea’s promises are worth: Cash for Kim. Given the lies, murk and propaganda of the government of North Korea, there was no way to produce exact numbers and neatly reconciled accounts. But what’s clear is that Kim’s regime, while inflicting Stalinesque conditions on its own people, and threatening the rest of us, has been raking in billions via aid and alleged global criminal rackets (some of them much closer to the U.S. than you might think). These include counterfeiting U.S. dollars, selling illicit drugs, peddling counterfeit cigarettes and cleaning up on what amounts to North Korean slave labor. To that list, we can now add another $200 - $400 million worth of fuel with which the the U.S. now hopes to appease Kim — the latest pay-off in his nuclear blackmail racket.
This deal is no achievement, and it won’t buy peace. It is tribute paid to a murderous tyrant, it is a complete betrayal of what America stands for. And it won’t work.
Compliments to this marvelous bit of “nuke boost” artwork from Cox & Forkum, who get it – unlike the diplomats who get paid to protect our interests, and are instead delivering support to Kim.
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Brian:I guess this is the kind of thing that happens when a president’s been seriously weakened and desperately needs to accomplish something that can be represented as a “victory.” He negotiates a deal with the devil, and sells it as peace in our time.
There’s a dark irony here . . . Hillary Clinton chides President Bush to solve the Iraq problem by the time he leaves office, that his successor won’t be burdened with it. That’s an impossible goal, and whoever follows Mr. Bush will have to deal with Iraq. Yet Mr. Bush’s failure to “solve Iraq” before he leaves office won’t endanger the world nearly as much as these “successful” negotiations with the NoKors will.
Or so I believe.
Brian
Feb 14, 2007 - 12:44 am Jason:President Bush says he’s “learned the lessons of history” a lot.
Evidently someone needs to buy him some new books.
Feb 14, 2007 - 1:22 am Ted:I was hoping we would be smater than Madeline Albright did the deal include a condo in Vegas.
Feb 14, 2007 - 8:02 am Alex Reed:Here we go again! One would think that one rocky trip down the proverbial primrose path with Kim would have left our State Department lads with a keen determination not to have their affections toyed with again by any of the sweet nothings bandied by the Kimster. But, no, incurable romantics that they are (though a quality guaranteed to garner frissons of delight and endearment in all other situations), they seem here to have succumbed to group amnesia on the subject of Kim’s cheatin’ ways. When it comes to Kim, their hearts beat as one in trust and understanding, love is love and not fade away!
Feb 14, 2007 - 8:13 amLike Ms. Rosett, John Bolton does not see a happy outcome to the State Department’s proposed remake of the Clinton stinker, “Promises, Promises”, now retitled, “Crude at Heart”, and to be followed, inevitably, in the Guiliani Administration by, “Who’s Sorry Now?”. In this morning’s Washington Times, Bill Gertz reports Ambassador Bolton’s assessment:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20070214-120013-3871r.htm
And this franchise has legs: The mullahs’ script writers are hard at work in their fortified underground studio. President Ahmadinejad is getting ready for his close up…..