Most of the time, yes. One of the perks of being me.
We need to send Mdm Albright over to North Korea as a special envoy. She can bring the blueprints for our cruise missles as a gift of goodwill.
She's actually the highest ranking US diplomat ever to go there. Notice that they didn't really break the rules much when we actually spoke to them instead of threatening them. Funny how that works. Interestingly enough, we actually mounted a credible threat of war in early 1994--but it worked because we also had a carrot on the end of that stick.
Since then, we yanked the carrot and the stick really lost its efficacy, bigtime.
Then just maybe they will like us.
I could care less if they like us. I'm a pragmatist, and I look at a situation and say "hmmm, how do we get what we want?" Clinton's way had us a LOT closer to that than your boy's way.
That sort of response on your part is pretty indicative of someone conceding an argument.
I think it's a tad irrelevant whether NK produced NO plutonium under Clinton and produced it under Bush.
Actually, no, it isn't. It's exactly the damn point of all this. Fissile material for powering the bombs is kinda the point here. I assume I don't have to explain how nukes work? I'm not a physicist, but I did stay on a lumpy mattress at a Holiday Inn last night. Terrible room service.
THEY ALWAYS INTENDED TO ACQUIRE NUKES. IT NEVER MADE MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE WHO WAS THE PRESIDENT.
Sure, in their heart of hearts they want them, but why? They want them so A) they won't get the same treatment as Iraq did (and they're right in this regard), and B) so we'll treat them as a legit, sovereign power. Because we did engage them as a legitimate sovereign entity under Clinton instead of insulting and threatening them, because we actually negotiated with them we largely got what we wanted--them to not produce plutonium that was weapons grade. Yeah, they were going to maintain the capability,
but they also submitted to international inspections to make sure they weren't actually doing so.
Then we went all macho on them, and forced them into a corner. Now they're testing weapons.
Whining "under Clinton they produced NO fissile material, and under W they've gone hog wild with it" is like complaining that you tripped before you hit the ground.
What a crappy analogy. I'm not even sure what the heck that's supposed to mean. The point is to get them to not produce fissile materials for bombs. They did that under Clinton. They reversed course under W. He did nothing about it.
The only whining going on here is from you folks, who simply can't rebut the point that even if BC's policy wasn't perfect, it was worlds better than W's. If you wanna sling mud at BC, great--but it was under W that NK went nuclear bigtime. Whatever limitations there were under BC's policy, W's has been an unmitigated failure.
Let's sum this up:
"Failure" =1994-2001 -- Era of Clinton 'Agreed Framework': No plutonium production. All existing plutonium under international inspection. No bomb.
"Success" = 2001-2006 -- Bush Policy Era: Active plutonium production. No international inspections of plutonium stocks. Nuclear warhead detonated.
Face it. They abandonded an imperfect policy that was clearly working to some real extent...and replaced it with nothing. Now North Korea is a nuclear state.