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02/04/2005: As I said yesterday...
I don't mind if a president gets a blow-job on the side. I hate it when a president lies to us. Fred Kaplan points out a couple Bush falsehoods from the SOTU:
Some of the president's statements on national security were simply puzzling. Again on Iran, he said, "We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium-enrichment program and any plutonium reprocessing." This is just false. The three major powers of the European Union—Britain, France, and Germany—are negotiating with Iran over these issues. It's uncertain whether these talks will succeed. It's absolutely certain that they won't succeed without U.S. participation. Yet, despite the EU's urgings, the Bush administration is resolutely staying away from the discussions. It wants to change the regime (see above), not deal with it, even if that means Iran ends up a nuclear power.
That brings us to North Korea. "We are working closely with governments in Asia to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions," he said. Again, this is false. The six-party talks involving South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, North Korea, and the United States are in suspension. Our allies in the region have tried to persuade the Bush administration to engage in bilateral as well as multilateral talks with Pyongyang. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell favored such diplomacy. Bush rejected it, saying it would "reward bad behavior." And so, North Korea has probably built a couple A-bombs since it resumed reprocessing two years ago. The Bush stance is particularly dispiriting given the news earlier today that North Korea supplied enriched uranium to Libya—a discovery made by Department of Energy lab scientists, not by our intelligence agencies. At one point in his speech, the president said, "There are still regimes seeking weapons of mass destruction—but no longer without attention and without consequence." Kim and a few other bad guys must have had a good laugh out of that one.
Len on 02.04.05 @ 06:32 AM CST
Replies: 1 comment
on Friday, February 4th, 2005 at 8:21 PM CST, Bryan said
Condi made it plain that the Busheviks have no intention of talking to Iran, plenty of threats, but no talking.
The same with North Korea.
These people want public assurances that they are not going to be invaded, but the Busheviks are refusing.