Powell’s Problem. And Ours.
Here’s the now-familiar scenario: An exile source from one of the Axis of Evil countries comes to U.S. officials and tells them that the government he opposes is developing weapons of mass destruction of the nuclear variety. Next the top leadership of our own government claims that our immediate security depends on taking out the regime in question.
You, of course, remember Ahmed Chalabi. Just as you remember Colin Powell’s slide show before the United Nations which paved the way for the invasion of Iraq. Powell’s embellished presentation turned out to be as bogus as Ahmed.
Now it’s déjà vu all over again. The lame duck Secretary of State was back at it again this week warning us that it is now Iran that is developing missiles that could carry nuclear warheads. And once again, his principal source is an activist from the exiled Iranian opposition. More perplexing, Powell’s warning came only two days after the Iranian government concluded a deal with the EU, vowing it would not develop nuclear weapons.
Colin Powell — at least compared to the likes of Rumsfeld and Bush himself””is a paragon of reliablity. But only by comparison. If only he had not gone in the tank for the administration when it staged the UN snow job. If only his word could be taken at face value. If only.
For all those who have underestimated the significance of the White House misleading the public during the run-up to the Iraq war (arguing in essence that the truth was stretched in favor of a noble cause) you can now palpably feel the fix we are in.
Put simply: who are we to believe now about Iran? What credibility does Powell and his exile source have? Friday’s Washington Post — for example””has got a front pager quoting other U.S. officials with a warning that Powell’s info is based only on an “unvetted single source” and that his info has yet to be verified. Here’s an excerpt:
U.S. intelligence officials have been combing the information carefully and with a wary eye, mindful of the mistakes made in trusting intelligence information alleging that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction…
If the information on Iran were confirmed, it would mean the Islamic republic is further along than previously known in developing a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it.
Translation: we would have the pretext for one more war — a war that would make Iraq look like a mere bar-room brawl.
Then there’s this little doozy of a report in the Friday Los Angeles Times:
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s statements that Iran is actively studying how to outfit a missile with a nuclear bomb caused surprise and confusion in Washington on Thursday, and members of Congress demanded he provide more details.
Powell’s remarks Wednesday “” apparently unscripted and based on classified information “” appeared to catch the Bush administration and its European allies off guard. The CIA refused to comment, and the White House and the State Department declined to offer details. Some sources raised questions about the credibility of the intelligence.
So who are we going to trust on this? Who can we rely upon? Is Powell being straight with us even though he was instrumental in the orchestrated lying about Iraq? Is this single Iranian source who has a vested political interest any more reliable than was Chalabi? Do the knock-down quotes in the Washington Post from anonymous officials merely reflect a factional dispute within the administration? Given the human and financial costs of the Iraqi war, what quality of information do we require as a citizenry to support expanded conflict?
If the Iranian mullahs are lying about their nuclear development program, we are, indeed, in peril. How comforting it would be to have an administration in place that could be trusted on such matters. How distressing and dangerous it is that we don’t.
November 19th, 2004 at 5:19 am
Iranian mullahs with nukes would be very nasty.
You’re asking the correct questions on this one, in the sense of who is to be believed. Everything will depend on how the administration decides that question.
Who’s it going to be; the mullahs, or the people who hate the mullahs?
November 19th, 2004 at 6:04 am
Iran is a nuclear threat to the US as Nicaragua was a military threat to the US in the 1980′s.
November 19th, 2004 at 9:05 am
It is unfortunate that we failed to detect that Saddan was bluffing.
Now we have the Ayatollahs, who haven’t the slightest need for their nuclear program ecept producing nukes. And the #2 Ayatollah, Rafsanjani, who threatened to nuke Israel, saying that there were so many Muslims that the casualties from the resulting nuclear response were acceptable. And nobody can say that Iran is not in league with Al Qaeda. Iran has expressed plans to orbit a satellite next year, which would indicate an ICBM capabiliy if the satellite wee heavy enough,
Furthermore, unlike Iraq, Iran has large in-country support for overthrowing the Ayatollahs. It is likely that even the CIA has sources there, as information flows more easily across Iran’s borders than it did acros Iraq’s.
If they get nukes, they certainly represent a threat to us – by giving one to terrorists.
Contemplate what would happen if they set one off in Moscow.
November 19th, 2004 at 9:30 am
“It is unfortunate that we failed to detect that Saddan was bluffing.”
That is really the lamest excuse for war, especially when the evidence that Iraq was a 4th world pummeled down to nothing tinpot dictatorship was so transparent. Can’t ya stick with the ‘we did it to liberate the Iraqis from a ruler who 16 years earlier did some not nice things that we didn’t mind him doing at the time?” That one is really more convincing.
November 19th, 2004 at 10:22 am
“Contemplate what would happen if they set one off in Moscow.”
Umm, Russia hits Iran really hard?
November 19th, 2004 at 10:39 am
Right you are, Steve. The world view that John Moore, unfortunately, and George Bush, most unfortunately, hold onto is “invade now, ask questions later”. We’re witnessing with this administration the beginning of a policy of perpetual war.
I depart, as do the EU leaders I believe, from the premise that nations are most interested in their own survival and that their actions are based on this need more than on the itch they might have of launching attacks on others more than ten times their size. I think there is a great deal of America-centric projection in the thinking that our enemies want to remake the world in their own image, and that, for instance, bombing Moscow might be a good place to start.
November 19th, 2004 at 11:43 am
I think it’s obvious that Iran is looking for some kind of deterence. After all, there are plenty of war noises coming from this side of the lake, and they know that having a few missiles might stave off an invasion or other kind of attack. Then again, the US may attack anyway, using the nuke issue as a justification for what might be already planned. It’s kinda like what happened with Nicaragua. Recall all the warnings that if the Sandinistas got ahold of Soviet MiGs, the US would be justified to invade immediately for “self defense.” Apart from the fact that the US controlled Nicaraguan airspace, and that a MiG or two wouldn’t have made much of a difference (not that the FSLN was in any shape to acquire them, nor would they offer such a plum to a superpower already terrorizing much of their countryside), the bottom line is that countries that we plan to attack do not have the right to defend themselves. To do so would be “terrorism,” and pretexts for further attacks already planned.
None of this bothers the Sunshine Gens. They like attacking smaller countries, smashing them up, letting the rest of the world know that we are violent and proud of it. Now why would a country like Iran want to deter people like that?
November 19th, 2004 at 12:02 pm
First, I have not called for an invasion of Iran. It represents a significantly different situation with Iraq – a more difficult problem. And I’m sure that if we need to attack them, you guys will all loyally obstruct however you can. As far as I can tell, we do not have the intelligence on nuclear systems that would justify an attack, and if we did, we would demand inspection, not a blind battle.
One critical reason for not attacking is the hope that the regime will be replaced by a democratic one. Most of the population had not been borne when the Ayatollah took over. These people are sick of the oppression and occasional Taliban style barbarities. I would hope that our evil CIA and special forces are in there now preparing them for revolution (my sources say the military would not put down a revolution, and even the Revolutionary Guard would stay out or defect).
Second, Iran would be foolish to attack us directly. And they aren’t fools. So the threat is to attack us indirectly by furnishing a nuke to one of the many terrorist groups they work with.
Any hostile power with nukes should be enough to worry even the crew on here.
The Iranian regime has been behind the deaths of hundreds of Americans. It controls the largest terrorist group, Hezbollah, which has a very large amount of force on Israel’s northern border – about 10,000 rockets and missiles which can range to Haifa. Some probably have chemical warheads. Iran is harboring Al Qaeda. Iran is sending fighters into Iraq to kill our people.
Bombing Moscow would be an attempt to start war between the US and Russia (we are both still on hairtrigger alert, just like we were at the height of the cold war, and a nuclear reaction might occur in the ensuing confusion). If the source of the nuke was unknown, it might work. If you want a worthwhile cause, figure out how to get us and the Russians away from launch on warning status or Marc, report on why we are still in that status (my guess: our own boomer submarines).
We have a strong reason to stop and roll back the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Iraq won’t be a threat any more. Iran is rapidly becoming a threat. North Korea is a threat – both directly via ICBM and indirectly through delivery of a smuggled weapon.
Some people like to keep their heads in the sand and imagine that we are the only danger to world peace, even as countries with dangerous ambitions or looney leaders acquire nuclear weapons.
Iran put a lot of effort and money into their nuclear program. If you believe they are going to just give it up for some agreement, I have a bridge to sell you.
Uranium enrichment is not hard to hide, compared to reactors. The Khan gang was selling the needed centrifuges, built in Malaysia. Who is to say we have found all the sources, or if the Iranians are manufacturing them.
The left fell for the “deal with North Korea”. Worked great, eh?
The US National Security Apparatus believes that terrorist delivered nuclear weapons are the number one security threat to the United States. Are they wrong?
November 19th, 2004 at 3:13 pm
“It represents a significantly different situation with Iraq – a more difficult problem. And I’m sure that if we need to attack them, you guys will all loyally obstruct however you can.”
We won’t attack Iran, they’re not sufficiently weak enough. And since we’re bogged down in Iraqmire, it’s even more out of the question. Ditto Syria.
I seem to recall when Mussolini attacked Ethiopia he believed Ethiopia was a major threat to Italy also and that those who opposed such notions were ‘obstructing’…Long live the tradition of obstruction?
November 19th, 2004 at 9:22 pm
Steve, we have the combat power to take Iran and Syria simultaneously. What we lack is garrison troops to deal with the cocuntry after regime change. There are other reasons not to attack Iran, but that may change.
Somebody mentioned Nicaragua. The issue there was a based to subvert Mexico.
November 19th, 2004 at 9:24 pm
“bogged down in Iraq” — maybe. I, personally, see the Falluja battle as likely to be last big battle before Iraq gets elections, with the Iraqi Police / Iraqi Army getting stronger, more confident, and far, far, more ruthless, every week.
They will have elections, that the 20% Sunnis will NOT win, and the insurgents will be obviously fighting against IRAQ, not America. Plus they’ll be losing.
And, certainly, the new democratic Iraq will be full of corruption, and more crime, yada yada. Really, it will not be perfect. Just better, AND, most important, with that democratic feedback loop to get better.
And 120 000 US troops on Iran’s border.
Israel won’t allow current mullah controlled Iran to get nukes.
Will the US be able to push the EU to get some verifiable anti-nuke weapon program in Iran?
It looks like there will be an agreement, which Iran will cheat a little on, so it seems likely to me that they’ll formally stop their weapon program while continue all around it.
Instead of invasion, there would be first an act of war blockade. Stopping the Iranian oil exports. This could cause a coup/ regime change.
Or, Iran may succeed in getting a nuke, and give one to Hezbollah, and Tel Aviv gets mushroomed. I’d guess many folk here would find some reason to blame the US for such actions, but Marc C would likely say the US has been terrible but the killers even worse. (Perhaps quite true.)
November 20th, 2004 at 12:05 am
Actually, Tom.. Fallujah may be the battle that winds up stopping the elections. More than one analyst believes that the Sunni reaction to the battle will be so virulent that the entire Sunni population will boycott the voting… something like 5 million people. Now you can shrug that off if you like..fine. But it would mean ungoing war and certain instability.
Also, in your scenario Tom you seem to be jumping rather quickly to the stage of Iraqi Democracy (imperfect or otherwise). My unfortunate experience has been that the US has pretty much failed at democratic nation building. Indeed, I cant think of a single success in the last 50 years. It’s enough to look at poor Nicaragua… a tiny country of barely 4 million. We went to extraordinary lengths in the 1980′s to squeeze out the Sandinistas and supposedly to bring democracy and prosperity. But as soon as the Sandis lost the 1990 election, the US lost all interest in Nicaragua.. didnt even invest the miserly $1 billion it was promised. Today, Nicaragua suffers one of the most corrupt governments in the hemisphere, a quite laughable “democracy” based primarily on the equal access to grinding poverty. When’s the last time u heard a US govt official talking about our democratic efforts there?
Mark my predicition… as soon as possible the Bush admin will cut and run in Iraq. They dont give two whits about democracy there. And they ahrdly capable of bringing it in a hail of howitzers.
November 20th, 2004 at 7:59 am
“Steve, we have the combat power to take Iran and Syria simultaneously. What we lack is garrison troops to deal with the cocuntry after regime change”
Precisely, Syria and Iran are not weak enough to be defeated. It turns out that even puny weakling that Iraq was has turned out to be too much for the current US occupiers.
November 20th, 2004 at 8:45 am
120,000 US troops on Irans border….
Nice target for a couple of well-placed nukes, assuming the mullahs are as crazy – or suicidal – as some of Marc’s crazier commenters assume. For any “worst case” scenarist, it’s hard to see how the Islamists don’t have half the U.S. military right where they want them.
(Cue explanations as to why this isn’t a “rational” scenario or response…explanations that are dismissed as softheaded when put forward by “liberals” or “pragmatists”. Of course, we’re not dealing with deep thinkers here, so make of it all what you will…which is mostly just amateur bullshit, much like the stuff that comes out of Michael Ledeen or Doug Feith’s or Richard Perle’s fevered brains.)
November 20th, 2004 at 11:27 am
Comment, I find your insulting of amateurs to be downright insulting. We’re comparable to Doug Feith or Perle? I think not!!!
November 20th, 2004 at 11:59 am
Yeah, I guess I was raising the bar on those guys.
November 20th, 2004 at 12:10 pm
Isn’t it a bit hubristic of the U.S. to assume that countries like Irag and Iran would be building whatever weapons systems they attempt to deploy to use on us. The Israelis and Pakistanis built nuckear arsenals for specific reasons having nothing to do with the U.S. The Iranians nuclear program, such as it is, was undoubtedly started as a hedge against the Israeilis and Saddam when he was in power. Saddam undoubtedly attempted a nuclear program at various times because of the Iranians and the Israelis. His chemical “WMDs” that actually existed back in the ’80s and early ’90s were for use against the Iranians and domestic insurgents.
Nuclear proliferation is a horrible problem, but our tolerance of Pakistan, India and Israel – not to mention South Africa back in the day – signals that the genie is out of the bottle and we’d better find ways to negotiate all of this stuff down. The seriousness of this administration, given what little they’ve done regarding the problem of the old USSR’s nuclear materials and know-how, is not impressive. Not a good time to have the most incompetent, failure-prone foreign policy team in recent memory running the show…
November 20th, 2004 at 1:25 pm
wrong, wrong, wrong
Not all countries are equivalent – for example North Korea vs. India. Some countries are more or less likely to provide nukes to terrorists. With South Africa, the odds are zero since they gave up their weapons with a truely cooperative UN inspection. India, highly unlikely. Pakistan, less unlikely although supposedly the US installed PAL’s on those weapons (under a very strong threat). Iran, much more likely. Same with Korea.
There are several reasons to build nukes, ranging from deterrent (Israel), to wiping out an enemy (Iran vs. Israel per Rafsanjani, Dec 2002), to covertly damaging an enemy via terrorist smuggling of weapons (Iran, North Korea, China).
There is a reason that the threat of a nuke smuggled into a US city and detonated is considered the highest national security threat we now face.
November 20th, 2004 at 2:14 pm
“Not all countries are equivalent – for example North Korea vs. India. Some countries are more or less likely to provide nukes to terrorists.”
It’s interesting you don’t cite India vs. Pakistan, which is the more relevant example? Santo’s right in any event, a nation state sending a bomb our way, even though they lack the wherewithal to accomplish such a task given their low techonlogicial capacities is about as likely as Lockheed Martin deciding they’d rather turn their productive energies to civilian needs instead of destructive ‘needs’. Moore’s visions of puny states attacking the US is paranoia in its rawest fashion.
November 20th, 2004 at 2:53 pm
**There is a reason that the threat of a nuke smuggled into a US city and detonated is considered the highest national security threat we now face.**
What is the evidence that the Iranian leadership has any desire to do such a thing?
Seriously.
November 20th, 2004 at 3:23 pm
“What is the evidence that the Iranian leadership has any desire to do such a thing?”
Uhm, you forget their role in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and in helping the Iraqis throw incubator babies on the floor of hospitals in Kuwait…?
November 20th, 2004 at 4:21 pm
For John Moore’s edification – assuming such a concept isn’t oxymoronic – any suggestion that “all countries are equivalent” is his own strawman which he then sets out to pummel with predictably mixed results. Funny that amidst all the sound and fury he manages to include China (!) in the countries likely to give a nuke to terrorists, but doesn’t respond to the fact that the Bushniks have done a miserable job of securing with the frayed edges of the former USSR’s nuclear programs which do in fact pose a threat of feeding into the black market.
November 20th, 2004 at 5:01 pm
To those who think it is a paranoid fantasy that a country would, through terrorists, send a nuke to one of our cities, I would suggest you think it through. Also, given the extreme consequence, I would suggest you consider relatively low probability events.
If one is evaluating risk, the approach roughy is to multiply the odds of an event by some sort of cost metric. Because the cost metric of a single nuke is so high, it makes it a danger unless you are certain that it won’t happen.
If we assume that all that is available is a boosted fission nuke, set off in LA, hundreds of thousands would be killed by the immediate blast and radiation. But since a terrorist would probably set it off on the ground, millions more would die from lethal fallout – hot enough that people trying to flee would get lethal doses before they could get out of the very large fallout footprint. Furthermore, the area of fallout fall would be economically unusable for decades. Most likely, all structures would have to be destroyed and buried.
It would be much more lethal than Hiroshima or Nagasaki, neither of which had any significant fallout. You could walk across ground zero the day of each blast and not be injured.
Those who scoff, post 9-11, at such suggestion are typical – people have a hard time with low probability, high cost events. They either freak out unnecessarily (like those around US nuclear power plants) or they go into denial and imagine that there is no danger.
Why would a smaller country do it?
1) Because they don’t like us and they know it can’t be traced.
2) Because they are somewhat loony Islamist who are willing to accept retaliation. The #2 man in Iran, Rafsanjani, has stated that if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, it would be appropriate to use it on Israel and simply absorb the retaliation. Think about that.
3) We are beating them in a war and they do it out of desperation.
Keep in mind that we do not have the ability to know who provided the nuke, which removes deterrence. The fact that the government has started a high priority project to developways to know who nuked us should give those in denial a pause.
As to the USSR’s nukes, I have read concerns about them, and agree that they should be secured.
As an aside, Russia just today showed off a new missile system designed to get through our anti-missile systeme, which they take quite seriously.
If it weren’t for Islamofascists, their intensive quest for nuclear weapons, and nations which might sell weapons to them, I would be far less concerned. What are the odds that Al Qaeda has bought a nuke from North Korea? Al Qaeda has money, and North Korea wants money. Do you think those odds are zero? Do you live in a city?
November 20th, 2004 at 5:53 pm
“It would be much more lethal than Hiroshima or Nagasaki, neither of which had any significant fallout. You could walk across ground zero the day of each blast and not be injured.”
Though you might trip over a bunch of dead bodies, assuming they weren’t instantly vaporized.
And I bet that you could’ve stolled through some gas chambers after a murder session and not be affected by lingering poison in the air.
I’ve resisted answering this twisted clown till now, and this will be my only response. Morally deaf and politically dumb. And people rant about Steve?
November 20th, 2004 at 7:01 pm
its too bad you are incapable of rational discussion of terrible things without being insulting. It would appear that you have a cognitive defect that attaches moral meaning where none is appropriate.
November 20th, 2004 at 8:01 pm
“Bushniks have done a miserable job of securing with the frayed edges of the former USSR’s nuclear programs which do in fact pose a threat of feeding into the black market.”
why let facts get in the way of paranoia?
“What are the odds that Al Qaeda has bought a nuke from North Korea? ”
I’d venture about twenty times lower than their having bought it from Pakistan? Only the paranoid think that Stalinist regimes have an interest in funding loose fundamentalist terrorists who regard their governance as the ultimate in evil. The Pakistani government on the other hand, just thinking about this logically, has many elements within it that are very ideologically and culturally friendly to AQ. Heightened states of anxiety however prevent one from rationally seeing this.
November 20th, 2004 at 10:26 pm
Steve, at least you recognize the threat. It is my understanding that the US secured, in some fashion, Paki nukes immediately after 9-11 (specifically, starting on 9-13). That lowers the odds, but there might have been adequate fissile material for a bomb that might have entered the black market.
As for North Korea, they have in fact threatened to sell nukes to terrorists. Do you want to ignore that fact?
They have no interest in funding terrorists. They have a significant interest in selling things for hard ccrrencies, and have done so in the arms market for a long time, especially to Iran, which has the same attitude as the terrorists about non-Islamic government. They are not truly Stalinist in the sense that they are even more a cult of personality than a communist state. Furthermore, their official ideology is Juche, not communism. In any case, they need money because their economy is pathetic, and they get it primarily by selling drugs and armaments – specifically ballistic missiles. They have threatened to sell all sorts of nuclear equipment, materials and weapons.
When you add the fact that they are run by a guy who is, ahem, a bit eccentric, the odds increase.
There are two countries believed to possess smallpox in violation of international law: France and North Korea.
I think the reasons we didn’t use military force to stop North Korea’s nuclear program are:
North Korea holds the population of Seoul hostage. It is within artillery range, and the Norks have the capacity to hit Seoul with many tens of thousands of shells per hour, some chemical. I have seen the Nork flag flying in Nork territory from the Seoul vicinity.
North Korea holds Japan hostage to chemical or biological weapons attacks via IRBM’s.
We didn’t know where the uranium enrichment plants were located. The Norks have 16,000 underground installations.
Can you agree with me that preventing new nations from acquiring nuclear weapons is a desirable goal, without getting hung up in the means?
November 21st, 2004 at 2:51 am
As long as you have a country, controlled by religious radical dictators, with some evidence of nuclear weapons program/activity, that refuses international inspection, it is prudent to assume the worst.
The US and Israel will not let this situation go on too much longer without military activity of some sort. Common sense, and 9/11, tells us we cannot afford to be mistaken.
November 21st, 2004 at 5:41 am
“Steve, at least you recognize the threat. It is my understanding that the US secured, in some fashion, Paki nukes immediately after 9-11 (specifically, starting on 9-13). That lowers the odds, but there might have been adequate fissile material for a bomb that might have entered the black market.”
I recognise no bigger threat than the US as the leading nuclear power, which outpaces any country in making unnecessary nukes, profitting from it, etc.. The rest is distraction from that reality.
November 21st, 2004 at 9:31 pm
steve,
Okay, I was wrong. You don’t understand.
So what is the threat?
The US is more of a threat to civiilized countries than North Korea?
I think you have a screw loose, but then, I’ve thought that for a long time.
November 22nd, 2004 at 12:24 am
“The US is more of a threat to civiilized countries than North Korea?”
Sure, that’s obvious. Compare and contrast. 1 possible puny missile that couldn’t reach the US in our wildest dream from a Stalinist country that is so unthreatening that South Korea’s gov’t, one of the most virulently anti-communist on the face of the earth desparately wants to engage in as much investment and trade as possible with NK. If NK were even one tenth the threat that the paranoid among us fancy it to be, SK would never be openly disagreeing with US policy vis a vis NK.
The US on the other hand. Well, just take a look at the massive disaster delivered to the Iraqis in no too short a period of time by the world’s leading nuclear power.
It’s not even close.
November 22nd, 2004 at 11:07 am
I guess you don’t look at possibilities. And if you pay attention to SK politics, you would know that the government secretly paid a huge bribe to the North to make it appear that they had progress.
The SK want to reunite with the NK, but certainly not with their current government. SK is rather pathetic in that China will not allow a reunification to happen.
SK is not virulently anti-communist. They are virulently capitalist, and virulently desperate for reunification. But they trust the North so much that they got very upset when we removed our troops from the DMZ. They engage in trade with them in the hope of softening the world’s most oppressive regime. After all, any war involving the North would probably be a catastrophe to the South (and Japan, btw).
You need to remove your communist / other blinders. Nobody gives a damn that NK is communist, because communism is essentially dead. What counts is that it is desperate for cash, even after intentionally starving to death a few million peasants whom they didn’t need. They may thus sell nasty things to those with cash. They have sold ballistic missile technology and drugs, and stated they will sell nuclear weapons to terrorists. They have engaged in terrorism, such as blowing up an airplane carrying a major part of the South Korean government, and kidnapping innocent Japanese from beaches in Japan, including a film star grabbed to provide pleasure to Kim Jong Il, who is an amateur playwright and director.
I don’t know where you get “1 possible puny missile that couldn’t reach the US in our wildest dream from a Stalinist country,” but that is a secondary threat (and it involves plenty of missiles, once they shake a bug or two out of the system). And of course it is a primary threat to Japan which is why they are rapidly working on a missile defense system.
As far as the US as a danger, that’s certainly true with certain dangerous non-democratic countries, and that’s a good thing. I’m sure you would much rather that Saddam and his hideous children were still rapingIraq, and the Taliban shooting women. But then, true doctrinaire leftists have never cared about the individual, only the big picture.
The idea that the US is the most dangerous nation in the world is a fine perspective, if you are a terrorist or a nuclear weapons proliferator. Otherwise, it is idiotic.
November 22nd, 2004 at 2:14 pm
“SK is not virulently anti-communist.”
Not true I”m afraid, the SK government, this one included, is virulently anti-communist. Thus if it felt that it needed the isoloation of NK to accomplish its goal of replacing the NK regime with a more international financial institution friendly one, SK would surely support the US’s interest in a paranoic vision of the NK threat level. That they don’t support such paranoia, and that the Japanese gov’t doesn’t support such paranoia to boot, tells it all.
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