You Know, I Was Trying to be a Decent Sort

Journal the_mad_poster's Journal: You Know, I Was Trying to be a Decent Sort 4

Journal by the_mad_poster on Monday September 19, 2005 @09:03AM

Well, here's the thing. I was being nice. I was being reasonably docile. I was keeping my mouth shut and leaving well enough alone. So here you go. I'm going to keep being relatively nice, calm, and docile, and I'm going to give you a calm, reasoned, non-acidic response to a JE Railgunner wrote with comments disabled.

As usual, Bush made a mistake, and Railgunner's JE is just another attempt to justify his failing long after the fact.

I'll make this short and sweet:

1. Bush said North Korea had multiple agreements with the U.S. At the time, they didn't. He was wrong. This is a fact. You can't dispute it without making things up or outright lying.

2. Bush said "We're not certain as to whether or not [North Korea is] keeping all terms of all agreements.". He said this on national TV. Again, no denying it unless you just make things up or flat out lie. It is also an untrue statement. To the contrary of what Mr. Gunner says, the government (the presumed "we" in "we're not certain") scrambled - Bush's own WHITE HOUSE, in fact - scrambled to respond to the comments indicating that they had absolutely no reason to believe that North Korea was in violation of the agreement (singular).

Mr. Gunner provides this summary of a quote from Madeline Albright. The quote was given on Meet the Press more than three years after Bush's slip up:

Ladies and Gentlemen, from September 2004, on Meet the Press, Madeliene Albright admitted that North Korea had duped the Clinton administration, and that Kim Jong Il began to acquire nuclear weapons on her watch.

As usual, Mr. Gunner fails to quote the entire thing (although at least he provided a link to the whole thing for once) and just runs off with his own literal interpretation. He also fails to understand exactly what Albright is saying, as he apparently does not understand what the agreement was.

Albright's quote has nothing to do with North Korea "acquiring nuclear weapons" and everything to do with fuel rods. Under the agreed framework, North Korea was to remove these fuel rods from the Yongbyon reactor and "can" them. This was done, as agreed. The process was completed in April 2000 under scrutiny from the IAEA.

One problem: the fuel was to be removed from the country only after nuclear components for their first light-water reactor began to arrive. This didn't occur until.... drum roll please.

April 2001

WHO was president in April 2001 again? Because I seem to think the guy's last name wasn't Clinton. Because, you know, up until this point all parties to the agreement were in full compliance with the terms of the treaty. The fuel rods didn't disappear on Clinton's watch, they disappeared on BUSH's watch (but not in April 2001, we'll get to that).

Gee. Big surprise.

So, what is Albright talking about? Well, here's the entire relevant question and response:

MR. RUSSERT: But didn't North Korea develop a nuclear bomb on Bill Clinton's watch?
MS. ALBRIGHT: No, what they were doing, as it turns out, they were cheating. And the reason that you have arms control agreements is you don't make them with your friends, you make them with your enemies. And it's the process that is required to hold countries accountable. The worst part that has happened under the agreed framework, there was these fuel rods, and the nuclear program was frozen. Those fuel rods have now been reprocessed, as far as we know, and North Korea has a capability, which at one time might have been two potential nuclear weapons, up to six to eight now, we're not really clear. But in this period of time when there has not enough action been taken, I think that the threat from North Korea has increased.

Which part of that, then, is her accepting responsibility for the failure to remove the fuel rods? Fuel rods that were to be removed at a time when BUSH was in office? Fuel rods that were accounted for until AT LEAST late 2002 when Pyongyang kicked out the inspectors? Hell, since it wasn't until mid-2003 that we started to suspect they were reprocessing them, they might have been accounted for by the CIA and similar organizations until a few months into 2003 (http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/030825.htm).

You can argue over whether or not the treaty was flawed for not demanding the earlier removal of the rods, but we'll never know whether or not that's actually true since Pyongyang, apparently inflamed by numerous outbursts from Bush (though given the fickle nature of Mr. Jong-Il, that may well of simply served as a convenient excuse), angrily put a stop to cooperation two years into the Bush presidency and began to reprocess the rods shortly after that.

And, as usual, I'll probably be the one who gets the blame for starting a cross-journal flame war despite this being the rest of his JE:

Now, I forgive you, because I know that in 1994 when this agreement was made, you know, the one that the Commies didn't even let the ink dry on before breaking, that you were probably still in grade school and were just starting to notice girls, so the current events of 1994 were not in your realm of priority, because you were probably too busy buying Nirvana CD's (or maybe even Soundgarden) because MTV told you to like them.
But that's OK, buddy, I'm here for you! And for the record - people here do like you. In fact, believe it or not, I like you. (Even if I did get a chuckle over how stupid Ellem made you look here.)

Nice.

P.S. - ellem making me look "stupid" was actually ellem pointing out that I knew not what I was speaking of, and I readily admit to that. The only part of it that might have made me look "stupid" was the typically puffy-chested way I went about starting the "conversation", but I don't feel any stupider, so maybe that's not it.

Remember, kids. In modern American culture, only "stupid" people admit their errors. It works for Bush and a number of other scumbag politicians, it can work for you too!

This discussion was created by the_mad_poster (640772) for no Foes, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.