US eyes second-tier threats in terror war

[zimv20]

link (http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1014/p02s01-usfp.htm)


The "axis of evil" is back - and in expanded form. Anticipated congressional action against Syria this week is just one sign that the US plans to keep up the pressure on countries it places on the wrong side in the war on terror.

The triad of WMD-seeking states that President Bush first targeted in his January 2002 State of the Union address no longer includes Iraq. But the club otherwise made up of North Korea and Iran has grown to include Syria, Libya, and Cuba, in the administration's eyes, as it seeks to keep the nation and the world focused on the dual threats of weapons proliferation and state-sponsored terrorism.


• With the administration dropping its opposition, stiff new sanctions against Iraq's neighbor Syria are likely to win House approval this week and a Senate nod after that. Called the Syria Accountability Act, the legislation would impose new sanctions against a country that has long been on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism - but which has also aided the US in efforts against Al Qaeda.

• John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control, has linked several states - including Syria - with the charter members of the axis of evil. In remarks last week at the American Embassy in London, Mr. Bolton said, "We're now turning our attention to Iran, Syria, Libya, and Cuba."

• The White House on Friday announced new travel restrictions and other measures against Cuba, which it accuses of pursuing biological and chemical weapons programs.

[mactastic]

What about Iran and North Korea? We haven't taken care of those problems yet, and already we are looking for more people to put on our enemies list? This administration seems to have a collective case of ADD. Short attention span on things that will provide short-term political gain, with no long term solutions. I guess that makes it easier to blame whoever gets stuck cleaning up the mess.

Lovely article here (http://msnbc.com/news/975847.asp?0cl=cR) about the joys of living in North Korea. If we really cared about the welfare of the common Iraqi, shouldn't we also care as much about the welfare of the common North Korean? This stuff sounds pretty bad.
Their accounts have gained credibility by their number and their consistency, and by corroboration from the few outsiders who have worked in North Korea. In dozens of interviews in Seoul over two years, defectors painted a picture of cruelty, hardship and repression that made escape seem their only option, no matter the cost.
_ _ _ _They often escape with the cruel knowledge that they have doomed their loved ones still inside. Leaving North Korea illegally is a high crime; going to South Korea is considered treason. Families — even distant relatives — of those who do so might be blacklisted, stripped of their jobs, imprisoned or killed. Many find freedom more complicated than they imagined, and their present haunted by the past.
_ _ _ _“Family members of traitors don’t even get food rations. They are starved to death,” said the wife of Soon Yong Bum, a fishing boat captain. The couple sailed into the Yellow Sea and down to the South Korean port city of Inchon last August. They had to leave her family behind, including her brother, a government official certain to be harshly punished.
_ _ _ _“She cries about it every night,” Soon said. “And I feel guilty.”

_ _ _ _Tens of thousands starved in the latest famine, from 1995 to 1997. Lee, who asked that her given name not be used, was a clerk in a government office who notarized the deaths in her town. She is a pretty young woman, 29, with tumbling hair curling to her shoulders and smooth, flawless skin that belies the hardships she has faced and struggles to explain. “We started seeing cannibalism,” she recalled, pausing. “You probably won’t understand.”
_ _ _ _She went on: “When one is very hungry, one can go crazy. One woman in my town killed her 7-month-old baby, and ate the baby with another woman. That woman’s son reported them both to the authorities.
_ _ _ _“I can’t condemn cannibalism. Not that I wanted to eat human meat, but we were so hungry. It was common that people went to a fresh grave and dug up a body to eat meat. I witnessed a woman being questioned for cannibalism. She said it tasted good.”
_ _ _ _Massive international food aid gradually stemmed the famine after a death toll estimated at anywhere from 300,000 to 2 million.

_ _ _ _Lee Soon Ok, 56, told congressional committees last year in Washington that she was a high-ranking party member in a northern province who was sent to prison in 1987 as a scapegoat for dwindling government food rations. She was seized unexpectedly at work one day, beaten and thrown into a frigid, 5-foot-by-5-foot underground cell for 14 months. She said she was regularly tortured, denied sleep, doused with water and made to kneel naked on ice. She expected to die.
_ _ _ _Her captivity “was not a human existence,” she said in an interview in Seoul. “Finally, I was given a death sentence and sent to death row. That was the hardest part. You stay on death row for one month, and everybody knows the day they will die. Then — I still don’t know the reason why — they decided to send me to a political prison camp.”
_ _ _ _At the camp, she said, she was given clerical tasks in an office where she overheard researchers discussing chemical and biological weapons experiments on prisoners. Groups of prisoners were taken behind a hill, she said, and she was told to mark their names off the prison rations list.


Sounds like the human rights violations there are just as bad as those of Hussein. And the justification for the Iraqi war was human rights... right?

[yamabushi]

No the justification for Iraq was WMD, but it should have been human rights. Either way, there is at least as much justification to attack the DPRK(North Korea) as there was to attack Iraq. That is what made the DPRK so nervous when the war started in Iraq, and why they demanded gaurantees from the US. I don't blame them. President Clinton came very close to attacking the DPRK, so I believe President bush would attack them if provoked. What exactly constitutes provocation is a matter of debate. Now it seems that President Bush has given up on restraining the DPRK so that he can focus on these other countries.

Personally I am more concerned about the DPRK since they likely have a nuclear missile that can reach Los Angeles or Seattle and have made threats to use such a device.

[zimv20]

Originally posted by yamabushi
President Clinton came very close to attacking the DPRK,

when was that?

[yamabushi]

Originally posted by zimv20
when was that?

When he first learned that they were developing nuclear weapons. He was discussing a plan for a military strike when former President Carter called President Clinton and told him that he had made progress towards a diplomatic solution. This was a great relief to President Clinton who was not eager to start a war. It was then that agreements were made to expand foreign aid to the DPRK in return for abandoning their nuclear weapons program. There was some eveidence to show that they did not completely stop the program. They also threatened Japan by launching a ballistic missile over them. Then President Bush named them as part of the famous axis of evil soon after he was elected which soured relations further. The DPRK accelerated their nuclear weapon program at that time.

[Frohickey]

Instead, we gave them fuel and food, and the North Koreans still went ahead with their nuclear program... only in secret this time. (http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2002_11/nkoreanov02.asp)

You know, the situation between the Koreas is a cease-fire, and not a peace treaty.

Although, ever since this Korea cease-fire there has been an unending series of pictures of past Presidents staring through binoculars with the lens caps on. ;)

Korean binoculars (http://www.snopes.com/photos/binoculars.asp)

[Sayhey]

Now if we just add Libya to the list we come up with the seven countries that the neocons wanted to overthrow. How many wars can we get into before the 2004 elections? Or do Wolfowitz and friends think they have the election well enough in hand that they believe they have another five years to accomplish their goals? In this unipolar world of the Bush doctrine how does anyone stop the imperial ambitions of the only superpower?

[Frohickey]

Actually, its pretty easy to stop these ambitions.

Lower taxes. :D

Lower taxes, less money.
Less money, less money for military adventures.

But liberals have never met a tax cut they liked. Gotta soak it to the rich! (The really rich can protect their money from high income tax rates, its the ones that want to get really rich that end up paying for these tax-the-rich schemes.)

And, no, just owning your own home does not make you really rich, but these are the people that are penalized. :mad:

[zimv20]

Originally posted by Frohickey

Lower taxes, less money.
Less money, less money for military adventures.


errrr....

bush cut taxes and then blew the pentagon's budget. now he's asking congress (i.e. taxpayers) for more $$.


But liberals have never met a tax cut they liked.


bush never met a war he didn't like

[Frohickey]

Yep.
<p>
Maybe we should cut more taxes. Don't give Bush any more money. Don't give Congress any more money for their pork barrel projects either.

[mactastic]

Originally posted by Frohickey
Actually, its pretty easy to stop these ambitions.

Lower taxes. :D

Lower taxes, less money.
Less money, less money for military adventures.

But liberals have never met a tax cut they liked. Gotta soak it to the rich! (The really rich can protect their money from high income tax rates, its the ones that want to get really rich that end up paying for these tax-the-rich schemes.)

And, no, just owning your own home does not make you really rich, but these are the people that are penalized. :mad:

Ha! If thats true then conservatives never met a spending cut they didn't like, or a tax that they thought was fair.:mad: