The North Korean strongman couldn't have missed the irony in Bush's call for a "nuclear-free, Korean peninsula as the American president actively pursues new nuclear weapons for the U.S. arsenal, with new justifications for their use centering on the potential threat from North Korea. Kim Jong-il couldn't have missed the scrapping of a generation of nuclear disarmament without so much as a blink as the Bush regime turned their backs on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to facilitate their own rush to fiddle with our stockpile. As the Korean head of state complains that he considers Bush's actions and those of the security council threats to his regime, the administration's nuclear hypocrisy makes those threats credible, if only in North Korea's view.
Bush deliberately missed the point of North Korea's rattling of their nuclear war chest just so he could maintain whatever air of fear he could manage to transfer to Americans over the suspected nuclear tests. North Korea, like other nations who seek nuclear power, is trying to gain a level of attention and involvement from the world which is normally only afforded to nuclear states. Kim Jong-il must have been wondering what it would take to re-focus the attention of the U.S. and the world on his impoverished nation as Bush seemed more disinterested in every successive nuke the regime announced.
The Korean strongman must have been thinking that he couldn't have misunderstood the signals Bush was sending by virtually ignoring his nuclear build-up while digging our forces even further into Iraq. Kim Jong-il's bombs must have bored Bush. There's no oil in North Korea for Bush to exploit, so he'll make do with spreading around whatever fear he can siphon out of the festering holes that a bored Jong-il has apparently taken to carving out of the North Korean countryside with his nuclear toys.
Spreading fear is what Bush and his republican party have been banking on as they conduct their smear and fear campaigns, questioning patriotism, boasting about whatever scheme they imagine they're running behind the deaths and sacrifices of the soldiers they sent to fight and die on a whim. Kim Jong-il is more than welcome in their antagonists' club, along with the deposed Saddam and the elusive bin-Laden and associates.
If Jong-il keeps it up, any day now we could be hearing tantalizing excerpts from his revolutionary speeches dutifully repeated by Bush alongside of the fear snippets from al-Qaeda he's fond of throwing into the middle of his fundraising appeals. By doing nothing more than running his mouth with his hands in his pockets, Bush can help return North Korea to the top of his evil axis pyramid. Just like he did in invading Iraq when confronted with bin-Laden in Afghanistan, Bush is free-and-clear now to bomb Iran in order to give North Korea the attention they've earned.
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