US and the World

The North Korean truth

The one area I thought Kerry was weak last night was when he argued for bilateral talks with North Korea and the president made what I thought was s strong case for the six-nation negotiations. Bush argued that North Korea wanted bilateral talks and that if we did that, the other nations would pull out of the conversation and we need them - especially China - in it. made sense and in my ignorance I accepted this.

Well this is just BuSh.

The plain truth - which Kerry did not make clear at all - is that the other nations - including China - have been urging us to have bilateral talks at the same time that the multilateral talks are going on. They won't pull out. They want us to do this and have asked us to do this and Bush has turned them down. I suspect Kerry knows this, but he didn;t use it in the debate. I hope he uses it in the follow up.

Second truth.

Kerry said they developed nuclear weapons because Bush changed the rules. That prior to that things were well under control.

True but. . . North Korea probably developed two nukes before Bush took office. But we had brought the production to a hault under Clinton policies abandoned by Bush. Since Bush took office those two nukes have expanded to eight by our intelligence estimates.