Kerry Says Bush Has Ignored North Korean Threat -NYT

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 - Senator John Kerry on Sunday accused the Bush administration of letting "a nuclear nightmare" develop by refusing to deal with North Korea when it first came to office.

The current fear that North Korea may be preparing to test a plutonium bomb is a consequence of Mr. Bush's preoccupation with Iraq, Mr. Kerry said in an interview. He presented his charges in a 15-minute telephone call he made to The New York Times.
...
While intelligence analysts are still debating whether the activity is a harbinger of a test, Mr. Kerry insisted that the fact that North Korea was threatening such an action was a sign of failed diplomacy. "I think that this is one of the most serious failures and challenges to the security of the United States, and it really underscores the way in which George Bush talks the game but doesn't deliver," Mr. Kerry said.
...
"They have taken their eye off the real ball," Mr. Kerry said, his voice almost shaking in anger. "They took it off in Afghanistan and shifted it to Iraq. They took it off in North Korea and shifted it to Iraq. They took it off to Russia, and the nuclear materials there, and shifted it to Iraq."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/13/politics/campaign/13korea.html?hp

it sounds right on and i just expected that kind of quote to come from a more partisan source...

glad to hear this is making it to the news. i realize its a huge issue but its hard to accept that the media will do right by the public and by kerry and actually include him.

keep talking kerry - we need you out in front with your experience and intelligence.

eom

Not about Bush, but Kerry made a strong, timely response to bushcrap and the NYT put it up on the front page, said strength included. That's gotta be some kind of first.

There's even a seperate article in which Edwards keeps to the same message. A democratic *message* to stay on. We have a message! happy dance.

Poor North Korea is going to get a complex they are so ignored.

:smoke:

Please, please, please... go back and look at the news around the two to three weeks after the IWR vote.

Big story at the time.

Bush administration had learned that North Korea was making moves (again - after standing off under the Clinton Admin.) towards nukes... and sat on the information for around six weeks. Why? They received the information during the time of the hard political (and public) push for support for the IRaq war and the IWR. While some anti-IWR senators raised the issue of North Korea (being a more direct and immediate threat) - the bush administration sat on the information (and thus DID NOTHING) - until after the IWR vote. Politics, again, trumped national security.

Then review and rehash our attempts to negotiate with North Korea a year ago. Pay close attention to the role of John Bolton in the State Department - who got a diplomat who was making headway with the North Koreans booted from the effort, and who later was kicked out of the negotiations himself after his very bellicose rhetoric led to the North Koreans refusing to continue meeting unless Bolton was NOT at the meetings.

This is one of the many examples that make a mockery of Bush's stance on getting tough on terrorism and being able to make the world safer.

N. Korea is a really big mess. How the heck do you force a country with nukes to do anything? Frankly, I don't know what can be done with N. Korea if they don't want to do it. We must stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The U.S. policy of helping countries go nuclear must end!!!

This is the path to victory.

nt

They knew Kerry would come after them and they tried to cover their ass. These people are so obvious it's pathetic. We are really going to hear "forest fire!" "forest fire!" now. Not only are they obvious, but so predictable.

"It is also highly unusual for Mr. Kerry to seek out a reporter on a Sunday, when he had no public appearances scheduled, to attack Mr. Bush."

:wtf:

Hmm, which is more important? Partisan politics or the threat of nukes? Decisions, decisions. Don't you just love that librul media?

I have to hand it to Kerry for speaking up. He should. Someone has to.

Some time from now, we'll get a confirmation that North Korea has used a nuclear bomb and has killed people with it. We'll learn that the Bush Administration had received intelligence forewarning of such use, to go along with the sighting of the mushroom cloud in North Korea September 10.

Condescending Rice will spin the news by saying something along the line that this was not specific enough and the administration had no way of knowing that the information meant that North Korea actually had a nuclear bomb and would use it some day.

And the media will just march in lock-step with the White House spin and not hold it accountable.

Nice call Walt - and nice job Kerry.

"Hypothetical questions are not real," he said, arguing that North Korea was a case for preventive diplomacy ...

You mean when Bush said he loathed Kim and called him a pygmy, that wasn't diplomacy?

it's not just about North Korea, it'a about China too. Guess who side China will take if push comes to shove! Then we really will be up shit creek with no paddle.

How could Bush ignore this so long?

and will get him in front of the issue before Lil Kim blows up a nuke.

"Senator Kerry wants to return to the failed policies of the previous administration, where the U.S. was duped. We've been down that road before and we have no intention of letting it happen again."

Coming from an Administration were duping governments and countries into going to war -and who seems to have got most of its intelligence from selective and deliberately faulty sources-* has no credibility on this subject at all