Just in case you were worried that the Bush administration would get off message regarding the looming danger posed by that madman Ahmadinejhad now that North Korea and its bouffant-loving leader, Kim Il Jung, actually has tested a nuclear device (as opposed to enriching a an insignificant amount of Uranium to levels insufficient for bomb making purposes), don’t be alarmed. As far as BushCo is concerned Iran is still Numero Uno in the Axis of Evil:
Although President Bush has named both countries as part of an “axis of evil”, a U.S. official who declined to be named said: “North Korea is a different case … I don’t expect our strategy on Iran will change. Iran certainly won’t get put on the back burner.”
Indeed, President Bush wasted no time today in employing a synergistic approach to recent developments, when he claimed that North Korea may be trying to give Iran nukes:
North Korea’s atomic test presented the Bush administration with a new challenge as it already seeks to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions and prevent all-out civil war in Iraq.*
The crisis revives security concerns in the debate over America’s November 7 congressional elections, turf better suited to Bush as he seeks to help Republicans retain control of the U.S. Congress** amid a scandal involving a gay Republican congressman’s sexual messages to teenage aides.
Sounding an ominous note, Bush said North Korea has been a leading proliferator of missile technology, including transfers to Iran and Syria, and warned Pyongyang against a transfer of nuclear weapons.
“The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States and we would hold North Korea fully accountable (for) the consequences of such action,” he said.
(cont.)
That’s what I love about Republicans, and the Bush administration in particular. They never get distracted from their own bullshit by reality. If reality, in the form of North Korea, gives them lemons for their monumental foreign policy failure in allowing a two bit, tinhorn dictator with delusions of grandeur to build a bomb, they immediately take those lemons and try to fashion lemonade out of them. North Korea has the bomb? Why that’s all the more reason to go after Iran!!!
Genius or creative insanity? I don’t know which. Or I should say, genius if it works, but insanity in either case.
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* Don’t you just love how Steve Holland of Reuters (mis)characterized Bush’s failed policy with regard to North Korea in the article I quoted from above:
North Korea’s atomic test presented the Bush administration with a new challenge as it already seeks to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions and prevent all-out civil war in Iraq.
Yes, that’s right: a new challenge. The same one Bush has had since he took office, and the same challenge he has failed miserably at for the last six years, is now brand new and shiny, just in time for the election. And Mr. Holland somehow manages to tie the North Korean “crisis” to both Iran and Iraq. All the members of the Axis of Evil in one single sentence. Funny how that works.
** Please note Mr. Holland’s blind acceptance (and I’m being generous to him) of the canard that national security is “turf better suited” for the Republicans in an election season. Is it Mr. Holland? Is it really? Or is that just what you want us to believe? This is your so-called liberal media in action, folks. Mark it well.