nankerphelge wrote on Jun 24
th, 2009 at 1:21pm:
"Cmon now, we just had 8 years of your alternative policies, with no success."
No success?
Bush went to the UN, got sanctions against Iraq and no one dared enforce them.
So we did go at it without full UN support and look -- Iraq is far better off today than it was under Saddam.
Once Iraq was invaded, NoKo was pretty quick to get to the bargaining table - wonder why!
Once Iraq was invaded, Libya walked away from its nuke program and gave us all their intel on the Kahn network in Pakistan which has since been shut down.
It is not a question of alternative policies.
It is a question of other nations understanding that you mean business when you say you intend to enforce sanctions.
Ah, but those that W called his coalition were all paid to participate, except for maybe the UK. A coalition of the billing.
(not relevant to this discussion but necessary to say, is that all of the UN evidence was wrong)
Libya came forward to announce it was going to stop it's nuclear program true. Then our inspectors found Libya's program consisted of broken and worthless 1960's and 1970's technology, and stated that Libya had no program after all. I don't recall that it was Libya that disclosed the Khan connection, but good for them.
North Korea came to the bargaining table for the expensive party gifts that we give away (but we can't afford to get US citizens health care, too expensive). They never had any intention of stopping the program. They surely continued all through the Clinton years, even though we had monitors on their nuke power stations.
Hey, I don't have an answer and I haven't heard anything that convinces me NK will concede. Just don't agree with stronger language as a way forward.