N. Korea claims it never admitted to developing nuclear weapons.
Well, now the thing I want to know is, did they or didn’t they?
Yesterday North Korea insisted that it never admitted having a secret nuclear programme.
The claim that we admitted developing nuclear weapons is an invention fabricated by the US with sinister intentions,Rodong Sinmun said.
Learning who is telling the truth here is very important to me. Not from the standpoint of how to proceed with N. Korea and their nuclear weapons program but from the standpoint of whether or not the US government is lying about how this problem began in the first place. If someone in my government lied and that lie put us in the prediciment we are now then that person and anyone who directed that person in the lie needs to be removed from government and placed in a prison. If that person acted alone then whoever hired that person needs to be removed from their position and never allowed to hire government employees again.
I suspect, however, that this may be a way for N. Korea to open the way to put things back as they were prior to the world being told that N. Korea stated, of course we are developing nuclear weapons. Do you think we are stupid?
It is a point that could turn around the whole manner in which we are addressing N. Korea and their nuclear program, regardless of whether they actually ever admitted to a nuclear weapons program or not.
All we need to do is just think of this as their asking for a "do over" and let them believe we are asking for a "do over", them let the inspectors back in, rejoin the nuclear proliferation treaty and put their reactor back in mothballs and then we deliver immediately on the oil we promised them and put their clean reactor program back in place.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it. That’s because it is. I know a dozen people are going to be able to tell me a dozen different reasons why this can’t work and won’t work and probably every one of them is going to be right on the money with their assessment because no one involved ever wants things to be this simple.
The biggest reason that would be given is that Kim Jong-il can not be trusted. I have no doubt that this is true. Trust can only come through verification and I doubt we will ever feel that safe guards put in place can ever fully be verified or that we would ever be allowed the access in that country to fully verify anything.
I’m not sure how all of this is going to play out. I really don’t believe that N. Korea, as a nation, would launch a nuclear attack against its neighbors but I’m not so sure that someone in N. Korea might not just push a button just because that person thinks the button ought to be pushed.
General | Larry Burton | 13 January 2003 |
