North Korea as Bush's Berlin Wall moment?

North Korea says it plans to blow up the cooling tower of its Yongbyon nuclear plant, the one used to produce plutonium to build atomic bombs, possibly as early as Friday.

That highly dramatic, televised act would speak to the North Koreans’ commitment to stop building nuclear weapons, the culmination of 17 months of intensive Bush administration diplomatic efforts.

You can see where all this potentially points. Cable news would run endless slo-mo of the crumbling cooling tower as b-roll to Bush’s proclamation that his administration succeeded in heading off one of the leading threats to world peace. For Bush, it would be a rare foreign policy victory. It could even stand as a top legacy of his administration.

But it may be too soon to unfurl the "Mission Accomplished" banner.

First, much of this may not come to pass. After all, it depends on the notoriously unpredictable North Korean regime. Second, if it did, its true meaning and value may not be known for months or years.

The background: In a speech at the Heritage Foundation June 18, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice began elevating expectations of progress in long-stalled "six-party" de-nuclearization talks between the U.S., North and South Korea, Russia, China and Japan. Very soon, she said, the North Koreans would provide a formal declaration about its nuclear stockpile that U.S. officials expected to see as long ago as last December. The White House said the declaration could be given to the Chinese, who chair the six-party talks, as early as today.

At the same time,  North Korea has begun issuing invitations to its planned destruction of the cooling tower at Yongbyon, which was idled as a result of the six-party talks.

If it all happens as scripted, the Bush administration would move to take North Korea off its list of state sponsors of terrorism and start easing U.S. sanctions.

Many conservatives angrily oppose this strategy, believing North Korea can’t be trusted. Many liberals have openly expressed smugness, believing Bush was wrong seven years ago to upend a deal worked out between the Clinton administration and North Korea.

Meanwhile, the definition of success grows smaller as it grows nearer.

The expected North Korean declaration probably won’t deal with two big Bush administration concerns: That Pyongyang has operated a secret uranium enrichment program, in addition to its plutonium program; and that North Korea helped build the alleged Syrian nuclear plant that was bombed last September by Israel.

-- Robert Ourlian

Photo Credit: KCNA via KNS/AFP/Getty Images

Comments

[Publicola]

Amccoy,

There was no deregulation of the mortgage industry, What had happen was traditional lending institution and some less than honest brokers got together and found a way around the normal regulated wall and started selling the paper to people that wanted to make a fat buck.

One of the things I have been disappointed about the American people is the short memory we tend to have about the realities of what happens around us. I still remember Bear Sterns hedge fund managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin (both were not Republican) They were indicted on conspiracy and fraud counts, the first criminal charges to hit Wall Street in the housing market meltdown.

The eventual implosion of their two hedge funds cost investors $1.8 billion and started the domino effect that led the demise of Bear Stearns itself, which barely avoided bankruptcy in a rescue buyout by JP Morgan Chase & Co.
Also over 600 people arrested along with them that were involved in this.
lets not forget it was Jimmy Carter that aloud independent mortgage companies to become a reality and with little regulation.

"The takeover of Fannie and Freddie was also predicted" yes it was, in fact Jimmy Carter tried way back in the day to increase government control by trying to force congress to take control over both.

Now lets talk about the dollar (We give up one's freedom when we in debt ourselves to another!) With that said the leaders of our country have been selling are freedom for the last 16 years to China.
In the past China held over $1 trillion in T-Bills and in 2008 the held $486 billion in T-Bills. You ask why this is so important to the US economy?
With China own deficits out of control do to the interest rise of there currency vs the US dollar, China is no longer accumulating T-Bills and it has been selling off T-bills sideways to gain dollars to buy oil, steel, and cement. After all the are the second largest country behind the US in oil consumption, and with there growth burst they need money.

Now that Iran has offered to sell oil to any one but the US in other currencies, will further drive up the price of oil and weaken the dollar!

Why do they need money? After all the sell $17 billion dollars a month of goods to US alone. Most of the goods bought from China are in the form of loans from the government of China made to the US and US companies. With this type of practice it lowers the value of the Dollar.

US companies keep telling the investors of positive gains in there stocks from having its products made in China, but they don't tell is that most of the gains or fictitious because of the interest rate they are paying years down the road. ( I wonder why we are in a bind today? Republican's stopped the free labor way back in the day, so the Democrat's found new ways for cheap labor by out sourcing, and what could not be outsourced they imported in the form of H1B and H2B )

So in turn we as Americans have traded US jobs that would stop the rescission in the US for fictitious gains to line corporate America's pocket book. So is China to blame? No they just knew how to market them self to greed, corporate America found ways to to get rich quick and never stopped to think what the out come would be to Americans.

We as Americans are to blame as well, we wanted it cheaper and cheaper and never thought about what the cost would be until now, and we expect the government to bail us out when we the consumer's are the ones to blame in whole.

Now lets talk about the price of oil, The Opec nations have been stock piling precious metal since the mid 70's. They buy gold to hedge against the the low price of oil and over the last 50 years have been testing the market in this area to see what it does globally to the price of oil ( and if you can't grasp what this means, they have been trying to control the price of oil for the last 50 years ) Now that China and Japan started to call due the T-bills and the US Dollar started to get weak, The Opec nations started to sell of its gold in the market at a much higher price it had paid for it. ( and they call us capitalist ) and since the dollar showed signs of falling and the so called experts on the news kept saying we were heading to a depression, so investors started buying more metals to hedge against losses. This caused the price of oil to rise a long with Iran, Venezuela, most of the Opec nations, and Russia slowing down exports of oil to the USA.( this is one area you can blame Bush for not selling weapons to Venezuela for getting in bed with Iran and Russia )

Who has power in the congress? How has had the most power in congress over the last 50 years?
Contrary to popular belief, most of the time (in modern political history) Congress and the President are at odds; that is, most of the time the same political party does not control the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. Only 10 times (20 years) since 1945 have both branches of Congress and the Presidency been controlled by the same party.

However, most of the time, Congress has been controlled by the same party. The "odd man out" has literally been the President. Since 1945, the House and Senate have been controlled by different parties only five times (10 years). And there have been only two complete turn-overs of Congress since 1945: one in 1949 and the other in 2007.

Also we did not print more money to spend (this is an urban Legend spread by any party running for office) remember Jimmy Carter still holds the record for worst US President in USA history!! and this congress has a lower approval rating than Bush does, even as of today!

I am a Constitutionalist in my views and this will scare you because I believe in the republic for which this nation stands and all votes count and the mob does not rule. So put away your little red skirt and sword because we are not in Rome.

The Publicola age 37 so you can't say I am as old as Mc Cain!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Publicola]

I can also back up the facts I posted here just by going threw old news paper reports. Also the housing problem stated when Clinton was in office, he was the one that forced the banks to change policies.
“They were in trouble already and then were asked to loosen their restrictions on mortgages” Add Clinton to the long list of people who deserve a share of the blame for the housing bubble and bust. A recently re-exposed document shows that his administration went to ridiculous lengths to increase the national homeownership rate. It promoted paper-thin down payments and pushed for ways to get lenders to give mortgage loans to first-time buyers with shaky financing and incomes. It’s clear now that the erosion of lending standards pushed prices up by increasing demand, and later led to waves of defaults by people who never should have bought a home in the first place.
President Bush continued the practices because they dovetailed with his Ownership Society goals, and of course Congress was strongly behind the push. But Clinton and his administration must shoulder 50% of the blame. Here is the link: http://www.criterioneconomics.com/docs/20080226%20Market%20Commentary.pdf

The Publicola
http://thepublicola.blogspot.com/

[The Publicola]

Jimmy Carter is off this week to save Cuba.

With Carter on the loose, the American public needs to watch out.

It seems that almost wherever he goes and whatever positions he pushes, Jimmy Carter leaves a wake of devastation and disaster.

Carter, we should note, has been cozying up to North Korea for years. He helped the U.S. and the communist country come to agreement during the Clinton years to defuse a tense situation over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Under the wacko deal Carter arranged, the U.S. would stop complaining about Korea's nuclear weapons program as long as the U.S. gave aid to North Korea and helped the communists build more modern nuclear reactors.

The U.S. was well on the path to doing this when the new Bush administration sounded the alarm and immediately stopped the cockamamy plan dead in its tracks.

North Korea was not cooperating with the U.S. to stop its weapons program, but we should continue helping them to build nuclear reactors. Make sense?

Of course not.

But that's Jimmy Carter for you.

It's also Jimmy Carter the hypocrite. Carter has always claimed to be the champion of human rights worldwide.

Yet North Korea is one of the most, if not the most, repressive regimes on the planet.

The Stalinist nation is headed by a young madman named Kim Jong-il. Kim likes to watch American movies like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and then act out his fantasies on his own citizenry. Millions of North Koreans are starving at any given time.

Does Carter have much to say about this?

Of course not. North Korea is an enemy of the U.S., so Carter goes easy on them. When he met Kim, Carter didn't criticize him – he kissed him!

But there is nothing new here.

The media would have us forget Jimmy Carter's presidential record.

But I won't.

Remember Carter's human rights program, where he demanded the Shah of Iran step down and turn over power to the Ayatollah Khomeini?

No matter that Khomeini was a madman. Carter had the U.S. Pentagon tell the Shah's top military commanders – about 150 of them – to acquiesce to the Ayatollah and not fight him.

The Shah's military listened to Carter. All of them were murdered in one of the Ayatollah's first acts.

By allowing the Shah to fall, Carter created one of the most militant anti-American dictatorships ever.

Soon the new Iranian government was ransacking our embassy and held hostage its staff for over a year. Only President Reagan's election gave Iran the impetus to release the hostages.

I believe Carter's decision to have the Shah fall is arguably the most egregious U.S. foreign policy mistake of the last 50 years. [Former President Bush's decision to allow Saddam Hussein to stay in power is a close second.]

With the Shah gone, the whole region was destabilized. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan; no doubt a direct link to the rise of the Taliban can be traced to this invasion. Iraq also took advantage of the Shah's departure to invade Iran. A long war followed that helped make Saddam's Iraq a great Middle Eastern power.

And decades after Carter's ignominious act, Iran is still bent on destroying America. President Bush named it one of the three nations in the "axis of evil." Iran is developing both nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver these weapons to its enemies.

We can thank Jimmy Carter for all of this.

Since Carter left the presidency, he has had little to say about the human rights abuses in Iran. Why should he? Iran opposes the U.S.

Instead, he has focused his attention on Israel, America's lone democratic ally in the Mideast. Recently, Carter suggested that the U.S. should cut off aid to Israel, so angry was he after Israel sought to defend itself in the wake of suicide bombings.

Fair enough. But what has Carter said about Arab or Muslim countries that have had long records of human rights abuse – Syria or Libya or Iran or Iraq?

Not much. One reason may be money. As NewsMax's Dave Eberhart reported recently, Carter and his Carter Center foundation are recipients of millions of dollars of Arab money. (See: Carter's Arab Funding May Color Israel Stance.)

So I give Carter his due. At least he is not a hypocrite in one sense. He is good to the dictators and butchers who give him money.