So? Nobody has a perfect record. If you want to make a big deal of this,
let's list all the major policy blunders committed by President Clinton
due to bad intel (or wilfully ignoring intel that didn't agree with his
preconceptions); and stack them up next to President Bush's.

My advice to you is to be a little more quiet on this subject.


NOYB wrote:
What's really interesting is how easily you dismiss poor policy decisions by
Clinton when the the decisions were the result of poor intel, but are so
quick to chastise Bush for acting on intel failures.


Well, look at the results: did Clinton launch a major war, and throw
away the goodwill & cooperation of almost the entire rest of the world,
based on bad intel? Did Clinton run up a record deficit? Did Clinton
spend tens of millions of dollars, and tens of thousands of valuable
man-hours, hunting for a boogey-man that doesn't exist? Did Clinton turn
his back on the perpetrator of the most deadly attack on the U.S. in
history?




No, the spy-eye is good at spotting the rasioactive plume emitted as fuel
is enriched.


Hogwash. We don't have near the ability you think (and hope) we have
regarding the ability to spot nuclear fuel enrichment.

And we should all take your word for it, you who are not sure what
enriching nuclear fuel involves or how it's done.


... Why do you think we
have been pushing so hard for boots-on-the-ground inspections in Iran.

Because they already have a supply of enriched fuel and some very large,
very fancy facilities for carrying on sophisticated procedures which
would be harder to spot.



One or two produced in the early 1990's! And we're supposed to believe
that Kim agreed to quit building them because Clinton handed him $4
billion and asked "please"?

Umm, not exactly.


"Not exactly" what?

Pay attention.

... N. Korea did "not exactly" develop nukes in the early
90's?

You're the one who said they did, in other words accusing Bush Sr of
letting it happen while blaming Clinton, and simultaneously accusing me
of being a hypocrit.




Or Hillary did "not exactly" write an article talking about those
nukes.


Perhaps if you gave up on lies & distortion, you might realize how sensible
the program was... if the Clinton Administration believed that the North
Koreans had already built nukes on Reagan and Bush Sr's watches, then the
options were either 1- a premptive strike to take them away or 2- give
solid incentive to get back on the Non-Proliferation bandwagon.



Option 1 would have stopped the continuation of the program. Option 2 ended
up funding the very program that it was trying to abate! Talk about irony.
Kim probably gets hyterical with laughter every time he thinks about it.


The money was to be handed over in smaller sums, over a period of years,
subject to verification that the N. Koreans were abiding by the
Non-Proliferation rules.


The N. Koreans never abided by the rules yet still collected the money.
Some program!



Whoa. Wait a minute. If N. Korea developed a nuke in the early 90's
during Clinton's watch, and that was Reagan and Bush Sr.'s fault, then
why aren't nukes built in 2003 (Bush's first term) the fault of the
administration that preceded Bush? You're being quite the hypocrite
here, Doug.

Not at all. First of all, N. Korea only announced that they were
re-activating their nuke program after Bush Jr had been in office for some
time,


Yeah, yeah...sure, whatever. N. Korea realized that Bush cut them off from
Clinton's gravy train. With nothing more to gain by concealing the nuke
program, they felt they had nothing to lose by revealing it.




and given them a ration of ****. Bush Jr has been in office now going on
five years


Whoah. Wait a minute. The N. Koreans talked about restarting their nuke
program only a year or two into Bush's first term.


But that was definitely during Bush's term... if they had nukes in the
"early 1990s" then clearly they were working hard on them before Clinton
took office in 1993.



... He allowed the N. Koreans to keep what
they already had, and then gave them funding which helped expand the program
even further.

Any proof of that statement? Other than your wild fantasy, that is?


I guess there's no difference between less than one year and more than 4
1/2 years, is there?


How about 8 years?

That wouldn't be "the early 1990s" then, would it?


The N. Koreans announced the same exact thing early on in Clinton's
presidency.

Really? When?


The only difference is that Clinton acquiesced...and Bush did not.

No, the difference is that Clinton put into place a workable prgram to
deter the North Koreans from building nukes. Obviously they didn't or
they'd already have them by now.

Another key difference is that Clinton kept open channels with them, and
worked actively at diplomacy, while studying ways to destroy the N.
Korean program. The JCS recommended against it as too uncertain and too
risky. President Bush antagonized and insulted the North Koreans, and
gave them no incentive... and they are building (possibly have already
built) nuclear warheads.

And you call this a Bush success... please explain further.



No, those two things are pretty much the same, arent't they?


They *were* the same.

No, obviously they *weren't* the same. Water flows down hill, NOBBY.

... The only difference was the response from each
administration...and the ensuing response from Kim to each of those
responses.

Yep, the North Koreans response: building nukes while President Bush
went on vacation, *not* building nukes while Clinton was President.

QED


Does this mean that you support the 'body count' concept of going after
'terrorists' and feel that as long as we're killing them faster than
they're killing us, we're winning?


Absolutely. As long as the numbers are in the neighborhood of 1000 to 1 or
more.

And if they can recruit new terrorists & insugrants faster than that?

... I'd like to see closer to 10,000 to 1, but that would require the use
of nukes...which is something that I favor in *some* circumstances.

In other words, you want to fight Viet Nam all over again? Great idea.

DSK