North Korea Deal Is A Miserable Failure For The U.S.

The other night, I was playing with my 14 month-old daughter while Fox News was on TV in the background. Yes, I alternate daily between Fox News, MSNBC and CNN – that’s what fair, balanced and intelligent people do. At one point during the Hannity & Combs broadcast, I thought I heard a very strange exchange, but I was too far from the TV to catch the details. I made a mental note to go back and research it. I did! And apparently many others did as well including Keith Olbermann who featured it on his Worst Person segment.

Here’s what happened. On the June 26 broadcast of Hannity & Combs, Sean Hannity introduced a segment on North Korea’s dismantlement of its nuclear program (based on destruction of the cooling tower at its main nuclear reactor) by saying “Although North Korea’s declaration is six months later than the deadline, the news today brings a clear foreign policy victory for the Bush administration. But will the press report it that way?”

Translation: The administration, with its decisive negotiation techniques and prudent foresight, was able to force North Korea to give up its Nukes. This is clearly a day to celebrate the administration’s victory.

Hannity then went on to introduce his guest, former Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, and asked him “What do you think this means?”

Interestingly and unexpectedly, John Bolton actually completely disagreed with Hannity by saying “Well, I think it’s actually a clear victory for North Korea . . . This is North Korea demonstrating again that they can out-negotiate the US without raising a sweat.”

Translation: We (the US) lost again! We negotiated a bad deal, and North Korea out-maneuvered us. No victory and no celebration.

Hannity, facing certain and imminent embarrassment, skillfully executed a tactical 180 by saying “Boy, I tell you. They’ve done it time and time again, and I’m sorta perplexed, Mr. Ambassador, to understand why we keep going back to the well knowing that they haven’t kept the agreements in the past. Whatever happened to Reagan’s trust but verify?”

Translation: Doh! Um, forget what I said earlier. I agree with you, Mr. Ambassador! My foot did not taste very good in my mouth.

Combs took over by asking “. . . does Bush not know what he’s doing?”

John Bolton responded by saying “I think he has focused his attention on Iraq and Afghanistan, and I think this is one of the consequences. It’s a very sad day for supporters of the President.”

Translation: Hannity is wrong. This is not a clear foreign policy victory for the Bush administration. It’s a sign of failure by the US. We have a narrow perspective of world events.

Aside from getting a whiplash from all this back and forth, I happen to agree with Bolton on this issue. Our negotiation plan with North Korea has been nothing short of a miserable failure from the beginning. President Bush suspended talks with North Korea in 2001, which prompted them to resume their nuclear program. They have gained valuable knowledge in the past 7 years, and they will certainly put it to practice the next time they re-start their nuclear program (trust me, it will happen again!)

Destruction of the cooling tower meant nothing. The reactor was nearly mothballed anyway. Further, the administration relented its demand for a full accounting of North Korea’s involvement in the Syrian reactor (which was bombed by Israel last year). And the little that North Korea did declare lacked meaningful detail. In return, we eased sanctions against them, took them off the “axis of evil” list, and managed to alienate Japan (our biggest ally in the area) in the process.

Wow, what negotiation skills the administration has!

Watch the full video if you wish (link below):
http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=videolandingpage&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject=1804966&referralPlaylistId=949437d0db05ed5f5b9954dc049d70b0c12f2749