Kim Jong Il Wants More Nuclear Tests

Posted on May 31, 2005

Unhappy that he hasn't been the center of attention lately, what with France voting down the EU Constiution and more suicide bombers in Iraq, Kim Jong Il is once again threatening to conduct more nuclear tests. And it looks like the White House putting more pressure on North Korea to get back to the ever-so-helpful six party talks.

Vice-president Dick Cheney stepped up America's war of words with North Korea yesterday by calling it a police state run by an irresponsible leader indifferent to the fate of his malnourished people.
His words came just 48 hours after the Pentagon announced that it was sending 15 F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter-bombers to South Korea, a US ally, for an undetermined period. The aircraft crews, trained to seek out targets with precision weapons, needed to familiarise themselves with the Korean terrain, the air force said.
Speaking to CNN in an interview broadcast last night, Mr. Cheney described North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, as "one of the world's more irresponsible leaders."
Mr. Cheney went on to accuse Kim of running "a police state" and of maintaining one of the most heavily militarised societies in the world. He said most North Koreans lived "in abject poverty and stages of malnutrition". The statement appeared to be a reference to the North Korean famine, widely blamed on the country's communist elite, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
The vice-president continued: "He doesn't take care of his people at all, and he obviously wants to throw his weight around and become a nuclear power."

Well, that's all certainly true enough. But the question is: what exactly are we going to about it? We are awash in a sea of red ink from the apparently endless Iraq War. You can only ignore the deficit for so long, as President Bush's father found out -- the hard way.