| NK Controlling The Bush Administration?
I may be the only one who finds the Bush Administration's response to the rabid war chanting by the North Korean Crazy HMFIC to resemble a sympathic resonant response, but how in the hell can we have someone in the same time zone take the opportunity to goad this whacko in the international press and media by making declarations of how we intend to honor our treaty with Japan and defend the Japanese against any and all North Korean acts of aggression. One bonehead is off trying to establish us as the world's greatest evil with only thinly disguised intentions to attack the North Korean people, citing the UN sanctions as evidence, and the other bonehead is telling the world in similarly shrill tones how we will defend Japan against any threats from NK, which is only serving to bolster the bizarre claims of Kim Jong Il of the intent of America to attack him, inside his country.
Read the quote below and tell me this is not on a par with "Bring 'em on" and "if you're not with us you're against us" in its absolute uselessness to our national interests:
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The top U.S. diplomat said she reaffirmed President Bush's pledge, made hours after North Korea's Oct. 9 underground test blast, "that the United States has the will and the capability to meet the full range — and I underscore the full range — of its deterrent and security commitments to Japan."
Rice spoke following discussions with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso, the first stop on her crisis mission to respond to the threat posed by the North.
Back home, President Bush told ABC News that if the U.S. learned North Korea was about to transfer nuclear technology to others, the communist nation would face "a grave consequence." He did not elaborate.
"I want the leader to understand — the leader of North Korea to understand that he'll be held to account," Bush said, referring to the country's ruler, Kim Jong Il."
This is another case of a "no-diplomatic-talent" core in charge of the United States' foreign policy. We cannot afford this stuff anymore. That sentence was appropriate for a closed meeting with the Japanese, but it cannot be taken as anything but confrontational and challenging to a desperate despot from a culture that cannot back down without some avenue to "save face" from an equally emotionally and strategically bankrupt administration when it is blurted out in an international press conference by Bush's chief "diplomat" who will later say "no one could have known that little taunt would precipitate a nuclear confrontation in Asia" a year from now. Unbelievable.
Jim | 
