http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen01142003.htmlMoon Shadow
The Rev, Bush & North Korea
by WAYNE MADSEN
When President Bush added North Korea to his list of "Axis of Evil" nations, the influence of the self-declared reincarnation of Jesus Christ, the "Reverend" Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church, loomed largely over the White House decision-making process. The decision by Bush to throw into the trash heap of history eight years of a joint American-South Korean-Japanese dialogue with the reclusive Communist regime would ultimately result in Pyongyang returning to using the rhetoric of bygone years. Just as the Bush administration reintroduced to regular use the terms "segregation," "civil rights," and "ban on abortions," the terms "demilitarized zone," "Panmunjom," and "38th parallel" would also re-enter the American political lexicon.
Bush, a self-described "born again Christian" who has maintained close links to Moon, hired David Frum as one of his speechwriters. Frum apparently came up with the term "axis of evil" for Bush's 2002 State of the Union address but it seems likely that Bush, heavily influenced by the propagandists of the rabidly anti-Pyongyang Washington Times, decided North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il was Satan reincarnate. Years before North Korea announced it was restarting its nuclear enrichment facility at Yongbyon, The Washington Times splashed front page headlines about North Korea being a threat while other major newspapers and wire services treated the sensationalistic reports as a non-story or more probably, plain disinformation masked as "intelligence reports" and "leaked" by anti-Clinton Pentagon officials.
For twenty years, Moon's main policy laundering enterprise for his incessant influence-peddling has been The Washington Times, the money-losing newspaper he owns outright through New World Communications, Inc., the paper's parent publishing company. New World also owns Insight Magazine, The Middle East Times (based in Cairo), Zambezi Times (based in Lusaka, Zambia), newspapers in Uruguay and Canada, a textbook publishing company in Russia, and United Press International, the formerly well-respected wire service that fell on hard financial times and was bailed out by Moon's seemingly unlimited cash flows.
Next year, an Insight magazine reporter is poised to take over as President of the venerable National Press Club in Washington. Thus, in a presidential election year, a Moon employee will have influence on what politicians and candidates are selected for televised luncheon speeches carried by C-SPAN and other cable news networks. Democrats and Greens should be very wary. Some former Washington Times officials claim The Washington Times and its affiliates are so tied in with Moon's agenda, its reporters and staff should register with the Justice Department as foreign lobbyists under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.