The worst moment in the debate was during the discussion about North Korea and its nuclear weapons program, which has advanced significantly, and has become considerably more dangerous, in the four years of the Bush administration.
Bush ridiculed the idea that Kerry put forward that the US should actually engage North Korea in negotiations. Bush's reason was that this would somehow play into the hands of North Koreas and would exclude the other four countries currently involved in the multilateral process. That China in particular would then "be happy" to leave these crucial negotiations, as if they didn't really care about the outcome.
Kerry said that in contrast to the Bush administration, he would "immediately set out to have bilateral talks with North Korea." Jim Lehrer then asked President Bush, "Your response to that."
Bush said:
"Yeah, I -- I -- again, I can't you how big a mistake I think that is -- (laughs) -- to have bilateral talks with North Korea. It's precisely what Kim Jong Il wants. It'll cause the six-party talks to evaporate, it means that China no longer is involved in convincing the -- along with us that -- for Kim Jong Il to get rid of his weapons. It's a big mistake to do that. We must have China's leverage on Kim Jong Il, besides ourselves. And the -- if you enter bilateral talks, they'll be happy to walk away from the table."
It later turned out that all the other four members of this group, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea have all specifically asked this administration to negotiate directly with North Korea as part of the overall negotiations.
Either Bush was lying, or to use the fashionable Washington euphemism, “misspeaking,” or is simply uninformed about critical details of perhaps the world's most dangerous nuclear stand-off.
While the Bush faithful dutifully chant their "Four More Years," they better wake up or there may not be four more years!
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