Fully Documented Example of A Bush Failure - NO Denying It

Journal the_mad_poster's Journal: Fully Documented Example of A Bush Failure - NO Denying It 7

Journal by the_mad_poster on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @03:04PM

What you see below is one recorded instance of a specific, serious Bush failing, completely on the record and independantly verifiable, including an example of mainstream rug-sweeping where there should have been a sharpened harpoon ready to skewer the words.

This is absolute, verifiable proof of Bush administration failure that cannot be denied, short of explicitly denying widely-recorded history, by the right wing who's major arguments rely on three things:

1. Blaming liberals for using ethereal complaints against Bush.
2. Blaming the media for using ethereal complaints against Bush.
3. Claiming that what happened just simply didn't happen.

From CNN, March 9th, 2001:

TOKYO, Japan -- The Bush administration's tough talk on North Korea's communist regime has raised concerns in Asia about regional security.
One Japanese editorial warned that "treating Pyongyang like an enemy will ensure that it becomes one."
However, some analysts said that holding the North and its million-man army accountable isn't likely to derail South Korea's efforts to reconcile with Pyongyang.
China, North Korea's main ally, was silent on the Kim-Bush summit.
However, Li Xiguang, director of international communications at Beijing's elite Qinghua University, urged Bush to continue the policies of his predecessor.
"It would be counterproductive to change the policy of engaging North Korea," Li said. "If that changes, the North could react with hostility and become more confrontational and defensive."
The general sentiment seems to be that Bush should try to capitalize on the Clinton administration's progress toward curbing the North's long-range missile threat.
Bush's summit in Washington on Wednesday with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung was closely scrutinized across East Asia, where democratic South Korea, Japan and Taiwan rely on the 87,000 U.S. troops based in South Korea and Japan for their security against communist countries such as North Korea and China.
Bush told Kim that the United States will not immediately resume Clinton-era talks with North Korea, which achieved a moratorium on its missile testing in September 1999 in exchange for the partial lifting of sanctions.
Caution may lead to hostility Bush said* he was skeptical about North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and expressed doubt that a missile deal could be verified, given North Korea's penchant for secrecy.
On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said he may try to expand prospective missile negotiations with Pyongyang by including U.S. misgivings about its conventional force.
He also said Washington would consider modifying a 1994 agreement aimed at halting the North's suspected nuclear weapons program.
North Korea did not immediately react to the Bush-Kim Dae-jung summit. But a statement released on Wednesday by its Foreign Ministry said Pyongyang sees Bush as hostile.
His administration is "increasingly assertive for a hard-line stance toward Pyongyang," which could jeopardize reconciliation between the two countries, the statement said.
It also said the United States should not assume that the North would be willing to "totally disarm itself first" as part of any agreement.
Clinton era progress After decades of enmity, the Clinton's administration engineered the first visit of a high-ranking North Korean military official to Washington, and negotiations in Pyongyang in October involving then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
Kim Dae-jung's reconciliation policy with the North helped produce a groundbreaking summit in Pyongyang with Kim Jong Il last year, the first family reunions across the border since the 1950-53 Korean War, and efforts to reconnect an inter-Korean railway.
For years, officials in Japan, South Korea and the United States have coordinated closely on North Korea policy.
"It is imperative that Washington and Seoul understand and trust each other when dealing with North Korea," The Japan Times said in an editorial. "Treating Pyongyang like an enemy will ensure that it becomes one."

* Actually, this is what Bush really said in March 2001 during a joint press conference with South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung:

We're not certain as to whether or not [North Korea is] keeping all terms of all agreements.

Which would be okay if weren't for two niggling little facts:

1. The U.S. and North Korea only had one agreement, a Clinton administration treaty to stop producing weapons-grade nuclear fuel in exchange for aid, at the time.
2. North Korea was in full compliance with the agreement.

Given the well-established instability of Jong-Il, White House lackeys scrambled to push to the press the fact that they have no evidence to indicate that Pyongyang wasn't compliant, and quickly explained away this gaff by insisting that Bush was talking about future concerns, apparently in the present tense, because "that's how the President speaks".

In other words, the president didn't even have a simplistic understanding of our ties to North Korea, a highly unstable regime with potential access to nuclear weapons and the definite ability to deliver any such weapons by air to the lands of established allies, so instead he just arbitrarily threatened them.

This is an indisputable account of a Bush Administration failing. More to follow.

References:
March 07, 2001 White House Press Release
Original CNN Article
Time Editorial

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