Does anyone have access to Int’l ed. of Newsweek?? Thom Hartmann said yesterday that it’s reporting that Bu$hCo-definitely ill – cutoff their access to Int’l banking system Sept. 23, which would explain things.

Posted by: jj | Oct 12 2006 18:30 utc | 4

If you read Brz.’s “Grand Chessboard”, you know they want to keep N. Korea portrayed as a threat to justify keeping xUS forces in Asia, etc. Here’s art. I mentioned above from Int’l ed. of Newsweek. (T. Hartmann got date wrong.) Selig S. Harrison – Did US Provoke N. Korea
igned a widely heralded denuclearization agreement with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang pledged to “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.” In return, Washington agreed that the United States and North Korea would “respect each other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations.”
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Four days later, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sweeping financial sanctions against North Korea designed to cut off the country’s access to the international banking system, branding it a “criminal state” guilty of counterfeiting, money laundering and trafficking in weapons of mass destruction.
The Bush administration says that this sequence of events was a coincidence. Whatever the truth, I found on a recent trip to Pyongyang that North Korean leaders view the financial sanctions as the cutting edge of a calculated effort by dominant elements in the administration to undercut the Sept. 19 accord, squeeze the Kim Jong Il regime and eventually force its collapse. My conversations made clear that North Korea’s missile tests in July and its threat last week to conduct a nuclear test explosion at an unspecified date “in the future” were directly provoked by the U.S. sanctions. In North Korean eyes, pressure must be met with pressure to maintain national honor and, hopefully, to jump-start new bilateral negotiations with Washington that could ease the financial squeeze. When I warned against a nuclear test, saying that it would only strengthen opponents of negotiations in Washington, several top officials replied that “soft” tactics had not worked and they had nothing to lose.

Posted by: jj | Oct 12 2006 19:07 utc | 6

Perhaps they’ll get it now
By Reuven Pedatzur (Haaretz)

The conclusion that Israel should draw from the nuclear test carried out by North Korea is that we must prepare as quickly as possible to confront a nuclear Iran – not necessarily because North Korea will send nuclear technology and know-how to Iran, but because if the president of the Untied States does not decide to attack the Korean nuclear installations, Iran will complete the development of the bomb. And since the chances of an American military attack on North Korea are virtually nil, Israel must formulate its future nuclear policy on the basic assumption that in the not-too-distant future, the ayatollahs will be in possession of nuclear arms.
The underground nuclear explosion in North Korea is the last nail in the coffin of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The failure to prevent North Korea from becoming a nuclear power must be ascribed to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush….
The pattern of relations between the U.S. and North Korea is quite similar to that of the relations between the U.S. and Iran. Just as diplomatic talks did not lead to a cessation of the North Korean nuclear program, they will not lead to a cessation of the Iranian program. Just as North Korea exploited the legitimacy granted to it by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) until it decided to pull out, the Iranians are also acting under the sponsorship of this treaty.
It has once again become clear that a country that is determined to attain nuclear weapons will succeed in doing so, and its membership in the NPT will have no effect. It makes no difference whether sanctions are imposed on North Korea, or whether there are negotiations with it about limiting the development of its nuclear power; the message has already been conveyed to Iran: It is possible to complete the development of the bomb and to pay a small price for that, if any.
Therefore, the quicker the policy-makers in Jerusalem accept the fact of a nuclear Iran, the better. Because formulating a policy vis-a-vis a nuclear rival requires not only equipping ourselves with the necessary fighting systems, but also the designing of new ways of thinking, a total change of strategy, and the inclusion of the public in the process.
One of the concerns is that North Korea’s nuclear test and its implications are liable to lead to pressure on Israel’s leaders to approve a military attack on nuclear sites in Iran, in order to stop the Iranian program. Such a move would be a serious strategic mistake, since there is insufficient intelligence about Iran’s nuclear sites, most of which are buried deep underground. The consequence of an Israeli attack is liable to be the cessation of the program for a few months only.
Israel must continue to try to convince the international community that a nuclear Iran endangers the entire free world, and to hope that decisive steps will be taken against it. The only effective way is an American military operation. American air power is capable of attacking targets in Iran repeatedly, and over a long period, thus exhausting Iran and bringing about a prolonged cessation of its nuclear program.
Unfortunately, however, the chances of an American military attack on Iran are not great, and thus we return once again to the need to prepare to confront a nuclear Iran. This preparation must include a substantial change in Israeli nuclear policy – the abandonment of vague deterrence and the transition to open nuclear deterrence…
This change in Israeli nuclear policy must be implemented with advance coordination and with the consent of the Americans. We can assume that Washington is willing to allow Israel to abandon the vagueness if the threat to it is nuclear. Israel must take advantage of the fury that is presently being aroused by North Korea in order to promote the inevitable change in its nuclear policy.

Posted by: Bea | Oct 12 2006 20:20 utc | 8

Re: beq’s #5, above…
Who is Michael Rubin, and how can it be concluded that the DPRK test “…has stripped any plausibility to arguments that engaging dictators works”? Doesn’t the North Korean test plainly lead to the opposite conclusion, since the only “engagement” the US has been involved in during the Bush administration has been antagonism from afar or malicious neglect?
I know that most people have no attention spans whatsoever, but the thaw in the relationship between NoKo and its neighbours was being reported as late as 2003… and these were the direct results of Clinton’s diplomatic efforts and Japan/South Korea’s “sunshine” initiative. Troop levels were being stepped down and diplomatic envoys between North Korea and the rest of the world were increasing… Kim Jong-Il even left the damned “Hermit Kingdom” in 2000 to personally meet with former SoKo President Kim Dae-Jung when people were actively involved in diplomatic “engagement”; now we have leadership in the USA and Japan who think that intimidation and neglect are the only viable policies and suddenly we are facing a nuclear East Asia. Nobody sees any cause-and effect here???
“Non-engagement” and bullying from a distance resulted in Kim Il-Sung temporarily withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in 1993 (anybody fucking remember this?)… and pronouncements about “Axes of Evil” and sanctions have escalated things to the levels we now see them. How do gorram “experts” like this Rubin get away with making statements like these that are SO PLAINLY contradicted by anything remotely approaching an observable fact and allowed to use their “authority” to promote such incredibly destructive policies without anybody calling them on it???
I’m going to go vomit for awhile.

Posted by: Monolycus | Oct 13 2006 4:05 utc | 10