There is little left in the way of John McCain from getting the GOP presidential nomination. Today, I ran into an interesting article (Chosun Ilbo) and interview on Pajamas Media. On that page, you can watch the video. Unfortunately, I did not find a way to embed it here, so you will have to do an extra few clicks to see it. My apologies.
From the interview:
ROSETT: On a somewhat related topic, North Korea, would you remove North Korea from the terrorism list?
MCCAIN: I would not. I didn’t believe in the KEDO agreement that President Clinton made, and I don’t believe in this one. I’d like to. I wish that I could, but it’s the old Reagan thing about “Trust, but verify.” The North Koreans have a very clear record.
Emphasis mine. And that has been the problem all along in this entire ordeal. North Korea makes promises but backs out. We try showing the carrot hoping Kim would get out of his cave, only for him to grab the carrot, run back in the cave and yell “That is not enough carrots…”
And, look, I’m not on the intelligence committee. I’m not revealing any secret information or anything. But I think we know that that facility that was bombed in Syria by the Israelis, which provoked surprisingly no reaction from Syrians or anybody else, that there are allegations ― and I have no proof of it ― but there are allegations of North Korean involvement in that. Well, come on, let’s understand.
Yes, he is right about no proof for public consumption at this point, but the suspicion is definitely there. I heard quite a bit about it for a while, but it kind of faded from view. How the Syrian-DPRK connection (if any and more importantly how) is unclear.
The other thing that continuously offends me, Claudia, is I’m a big ― I’m an idealist. I will admit to being an idealist, okay, whether it be Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia, you know, I’m an idealist. But I also hope it’s tempered by a practical view of things too. But this is the most horrible regime probably on earth - that has got hundreds of thousands of people in the gulag. They’re terrible. So the regime offends me, just in their terrible mistreatment and abuse of their own people.
That is one of the major things left out of the negotiating table throughout the six-party talks and Roh’s disastrous engagement policy. Yes, there are people starving and dying inside Kim’s Utopia, but very little is said for a host of reasons from ‘it is not time to discuss that yet’ to ‘I do not want to make Kim mad and make him run back in his cave’. How will John McCain handle it? He goes on:
ROSETT: What would you do to turn around their expectations that they can continue this?
MCCAIN: Well, I would say we want to negotiate, we want a verifiable, you know, all of the things we need to do. But, one, China holds really the key to North Korea, as you know. They’re the only real nation with any real influence. And I would try to bring about more pressure on China, not only, by the way, North Korea, but also on Darfur. So I think we ought to understand that the only pressure point is China.
But will China do it? That is a hard sell because too much pressure can lead to problems for China. How that will be done is way beyond what I can fathom.
The second thing is that I would be an advocate for human rights. And I’m not telling the North Korean people to rise up and overflow their government. But I think it’s important. We’ve had people who’ve escaped from these gulags. Horrible stories. I think that that might get a little more publicity, just because we’re a nation that believes all of us are endowed with certain inalienable rights. Would I go to war with North Korea? No. Would I threaten war with them? No. Please don’t get me wrong. But I think there’s pressures that we can apply.
What kind? These and other questions are unclear, so time will tell how McCain will handle the situation.
