North Korea admits it has nuclear weapons
We … have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration’s ever more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the (North)…. We have wanted the six-party talks but we are compelled to suspend our participation in the talks for an indefinite period till we have recognized that there is justification for us to attend the talks and there are ample conditions and atmosphere to expect positive results from the talks….
- North Korean Foreign Ministry
Wow, this one was a shock, eh? Whodathunkit? North Korea? With nukes? And they seemed like such a benign, peaceful dictatorship….
Part of me wants to give in and present a DUMB@$$ AWARD to the entire North Korean government, because this is truly some high-quality stuff. Here’s a country for whom the term “Third World” would be a serious upgrade. They cannot feed their own people, and yet they have a million troops under arms AND nuclear weapons to boot. Is anyone else thinking “misplaced priorities”??
The world’s last Stalinist dictatorship is so completely out of touch that North Korean television won’t even carry The Apprentice or Fear Factor. You’d think that North Koreans would rebel under this sort of barbaric mistreatment, but North Koreans are so focused on finding enough twigs and berries to sustain themselves that they simply do not have the energy to rebel.
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea announced for the first time today that it has nuclear arms and rejected moves to restart disarmament talks anytime soon, saying it needs the weapons as protection against an increasingly hostile United States.
The communist state’s pronouncement dramatically raised the stakes in the two-year-old nuclear confrontation and posed a grave challenge to President Bush, who started his second term with a vow to end North Korea’s nuclear program through six-nation talks….
The claim could not be independently verified. North Korea expelled the last U.N. nuclear monitors in late 2002 and has never tested a nuclear bomb, although international officials have long suspected it has one or two nuclear bombs and enough fuel for several more.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said North Korea should return to disarmament talks and avoid a path toward further international isolation. She said the world “has given them a way out and we hope they will take that way out.”
Yes, kids; that’s neo-Conservative code for “When we’re finishing paving Iran, we’ll turn North Korea into a Chinese parking lot.”
Amazing, isn’t it? A country that cannot see it’s way clear to feed it’s own people apparently has the wherewithal to build nuclear weapons and threaten the entire Korean Peninsula, as well as China and Japan.
To call Kim Jong-il’s government “unstable” would qualify as something of an understatement. No one can predict with any degree of certainty what the North Koreans are up to, because they have made a career out of being unpredictable, irascible, and impossible to deal with. As a rule, agreements are kept by North Korea only as long as they serve their purposes. When this ceases to be the case, the government has no problem with turning their backs on their commitments.
You know, this just might be a case screaming for an invasion of some sort. A government this irrational and unstable with nukes? The prospect of things getting out of hand on the Korean Peninsula is almost too horrific to contemplate. It’s a barbecue just looking for a place to happen.
