December 14, 2002
Ari Needs a History Lesson
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
BuzzFlash Note: Oh Ari's nose grows longer everyday. It's almost as long as George W's! In fact, you might mistake either of their noses for the Washington Monument, if you are in a in Pinnochio sort of mood.
But we digress!
An alert BuzzFlash reader alerted us to the fact that Ari, who graduated from the elite Middlebury College in Vermont, must not have been a history major.
When a reporter challenged him on why the Bush Cartel was insisting on invading Iraq immediately, but was in favor of a peaceful solution to the North Korean nuclear weapons/WMD threat (not to mention the scuds the administration let be shipped to Yemen), Ari responded: "Because the situation in Iraq involves somebody who has used force in the past to attack and invade his neighbors. That is not the history of North Korea for the last 50 years."
Oh Ari, your honeymoon must have gotten the best of you.
Remember a little dust-up called the Korean War, Ari! Didn't North Korea, with its ally China, invade the allied protected area of South Korea? Wasn't that war still in progress in 1952 (50 years ago)? Don't we still have troops stationed there to prevent another invasion? Haven't we had tens of thousands troops stationed there over the past 50 years to PREVENT an invasion because North Korea chronically threatens to invade South Korea? Doesn't North Korea regularly send spies to infiltrate South Korea? Weren't South Korean citizens kidnapped and used for "cultural research" purposes in North Korea. Aren't North and South Korea periodically on the brink of war? Isn't North Korea testing missiles that could strike Japan? Weren't U.S. soldiers butchered to death by North Korean soldiers in the demilitarized zone, well within the past 25 years? Weren't we told in the last few years that the North Koreans were caught building a massive tunnel system under the demilitarized zone to invade South Korea? Wasn't a North Korean submarine sunk recently on an espionage mission to South Korea?
Well, we could go on and on, but you get the point. The bottom line is that if North Korea wasn't planning on invading South Korea, why did thousands upon thousands of American soldiers guard the area just south of the demilitarized zone, which we were told was the only way to prevent the North from invading the South?
Isn't Ari just parsing language? Hmm, didn't the Bush Cartel lackeys call that being "Clintonian"?
Ari, it's time to take a few more courses at Middlebury. Try the history department this time.
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Note from a BuzzFlash reader:
If you use the guide at the top of the page and go down to the section titled "Iraq", click on "Reference B" and it will take you directly to this quote (from December 13th):
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/12/20021213-6.html#4B
Q But is the administration's only view -- I mean, you have not only that, but you have them wanting to restart nuclear power plants, the announcement that they were pursuing a nuclear program not that long ago. And all the administration is saying is this is a serious problem. How does it not compare to what's going on in Iraq?
MR. FLEISCHER: Because the situation in Iraq involves somebody who has used force in the past to attack and invade his neighbors. That is not the history of North Korea for the last 50 years. And so it's not -- it is exactly analogous. The world is not -- can not just be treated as a photocopy machine where policies in one part of the world need to be identically copied for another. It's a much more complicated endeavor than that.
FINAL BUZZFLASH NOTE: As for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, which was deplorable, it was, according to documentation, an emissary of George Bush the Older who told Saddam that America would not object if he invaded Kuwait. Of course, Ari, we are sure, would claim it was just a translation problem.
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
