Peace in our time!

Flash: Chamberlin Meets Sum.

Okay, I thought we were going to war with North Korea and now I'm even more convinced. Colin Powell is over there to get things straight with them and you know how much he's respected and listened to at the White House so I'm sure this will be a big success.

The tough guy talk is back and the reasonableness from last week can be explained as "we showed flexibility in our position last week because we wanted our colleagues in the six-party talks to recognize that the United States was seeking a peaceful diplomatic solution." [But not really]

There's always hope though. Paek Num Sum, the North Korean foreign minister, might meet with Powell, which is supposed to be a big 'no no,' "no direct talks" and all, but Powell hints "the North Korean foreign minister will be here tomorrow and participating in discussions of the whole group and it remains to be seen what other discussions he and I may or may not be participating in tomorrow."

Whatever they do or don't do, it doesn't matter because it's "Mr. Credibility" himself in the talks and neither the Koreans nor the Bush administration cares what he does.

Wait for the next round when they send John Bolten back.

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Keep in mind the U.S. says they plan to pull 12,500 troops out out of South Korea by the end of 2005 and along with the 3,600 already on their way out to Iraq, troops have already been moved out of Seoul, supposedly because of the bad PR from the death of a young girl, but it's really to get them out of the way of the initial barrage of North Korean artillery and maybe even a nuclear strike.

See my musings on North Korea below for info on
naval deployments and such related to this subject.