A comment on Ballance
(Dan here…lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts.)
by Robert Waldmann
In a generally good article on how Trump got nothing out of Kim in Singapore, David Nakamura, Philip Rucker, Anna Fifield, and Anne Gearan make a false claims “Deals reached between Washington and Pyongyang under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama collapsed after North Korea conducted additional missile and nuclear tests.” This implies in particular that the deal reached between Washington and Pyongyang under President Bill Clinton collapsed after North Korea conducted additional missile and nuclear tests. which is a totally false claim. the deal reached under Clinton collapsed when Bush decided to abandon it, because North Korea had bought centrifuges from Pakistan. Bush said this meant that the fact that spent nuclear fuel contaning plutonium was under seal was irrelevant, since N Korea would just enrich uranium.
Later, after N Korea broke the seals and began extracting plutonium, he declared that N Korean exploration of possibly enriching uranium was no big deal & they were going back to the deal. Then N Korea tested a nuclear bomb.
The known facts are totally consistent with the possibility that the Clinton – Kim Jong Il agreement would have lasted and prevented N Korea from developing a bomb if Bush hadn’t treated Clinton as Trump treats Obama.
In any case, the assertion of historical fact made by Nakamura, Rucker, Fifield, and Gearan is undeniably false. It shows a determination to give a Ballanced assessment of Clinton and Bush even if the facts are different — N Korea detonated at least once nuclear device while Bush, Obama and Trump were president and did not detonate a nuclear device while Clinton was president. This is a relevant fact which is contradicted by their false claim which was clearly made to Ballance the very different cases of Clinton and Bush
If the first George Bush had followed Clinton he would have done everything he could to follow up on making a nuclear deal. He was intelligent and effective — he had been CIA chief and had organized the gulf war. End of story on the second Bush and North Korea.
Another clear sign of the decline of the American press.
Like this one(s).
“Here are four headlines in four newspapers today:
LA Times: Trump-Kim Jong Un summit fails to produce disarmament plan
New York Times: Trump Sees Shared Path After Meeting Kim
Washington Post: Trump says U.S., North Korea are ‘ready to write a new chapter’
Wall Street Journal: Trump and Kim Begin New Phase of Diplomacy
This reminds me: more people should be reading the LA Times. After years of management depredations it’s not what it used to be, and I feel a little sad when I pick it up from my driveway every morning. It looks a bit like a cancer patient who’s lost a hundred pounds and is barely hanging on.
But—their day-to-day news judgment is the best in the business, something I first noticed during the 2016 presidential campaign. Time after time, they gave stories appropriate play, while the Post and the Journal and the NYT would ignore important stuff and sensationalize trivia. Today we see the same dynamic at work. The LAT straightforwardly describes the most important outcome of the Singapore summit while the other three insist on stenography, repeating nonsensical Trump blather even though he plainly accomplished nothing.
That might change. Maybe yesterday’s summit really will begin a new phase of diplomacy. But it hasn’t yet. So far it’s produced nothing that we haven’t seen half a dozen times before from North Korea. Why act as cheerleaders for Donald Trump’s hype machine instead of soberly telling readers what actually happened and how important it’s actually likely to be? Are they really that afraid of an angry tweet?”
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/06/more-people-should-read-the-los-angeles-times/
EM:
Sitting in LA today and tomorrow, then back home to Ann Arbor.
“LA Times: Trump-Kim Jong Un summit fails to produce disarmament plan”
The LA Times headline is the least accurate/most misleading of the four, by far. The purpose of the summit was not to produce a disarmament plan, it was to get NK to commit to denuclearize, which happened. This was a necessary first step. The actual details of the disarmament plan are to be hashed out by Pompeo and the North Koreans.
So the other headlines,
New York Times: Trump Sees Shared Path After Meeting Kim
Washington Post: Trump says U.S., North Korea are ‘ready to write a new chapter’
Wall Street Journal: Trump and Kim Begin New Phase of Diplomacy
seem dead on, balls accurate.
Umm, there was no commitment by North Korea to anything.
WHere in the world do you come up with that?
Emichael,
Here is the full document:
https://abcnews.go.com/International/read-full-document-signed-donald-trump-kim-jong/story?id=55828930
“Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
“Reaffirmed” is nothing new. He stated that commitment following his meetings with South Korea. No definitions or clarifications of terms were made. What was new was the U.S. cancellation of joint military exercises with South Korea. It’s basically an agreement to continue talking. That’s not bad but it’s also not much.
Listening this morning on Stephanie Ruhle, worth watching the segment, though the part I’m going to mention is not in the clip! Her guest, Bobby Ghosh noted that the agreement Trump has gotten is the very proposal China and Russia made at the UN in September and we said no.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/us-splits-with-china-russia-on-north-korea-solution-at-un
“…will say, both China and Russia made it clear they were unlikely to support more sanctions, and instead played up their joint call for North Korea to stop its military aggression in return for both South Korea and the U.S. to stop their military exercises.”
So again, he’s been played thus we have been played and our allies are wondering what the F@#$ I’m sure.
Also noted in the Ruhle segment, the right to return our soldiers from NK? We have to pay them for each body. It was mentioned $1 million per. (5:30 in) The person noting such states he was involved in the last remains 2007. Money paid directly via the Pentagon.
http://www.msnbc.com/stephanie-ruhle
You are completely accurate, Robert. I have been quite unhappy for a long time about the degree of widespread ignorance even among supposedly knowledgeable media people regarding what went down with how the Clinton-Kim Jong Il agreement failed. In fact both sides had not followed through on parts of it prior to W. coming in, but people were still hanging on, including especially Kim Dae-Jung, the South Korean president. In particular on the US side we were supposed to supply DPRK with various energy supplies, and we were not doing so. The part left out is that the crucial failure by W. came two months after he took office. Kim Dae-Jung came for a visit, with Colin Powell supporting a continuation of the negotiations and the agreement. But Cheney, Rumsfeld, and John Bolton talked W. into canning the whole thing with the hope of getting regime change in DPRK. Kim Dae-Jung returned home humiliated and furious with W.’s gang. The agreement was doomed after that, although it remained nominally in force for a while longer.
Sammy,
Kim Jong-un indeed had already publicly stated a commitment to denuclearization, so that is nothing new. But if you think he will actually denuclearize, well, you probably also believe that Justin Trudeau will burn in hell for blocking US dairy imports. The only actual action in this document is trading POW/MIA remains and that Pompeo will talk further with somebody. There are claims from apparent verbal exchanges that US will stop war games and Kim will destroy a missile engine testing site, but neither of those are in the document.
The agreement Clinton made had much more substance and was largely working until W. blew it up on a stupid plan to get regime change in DPRK, just as some of the same people (see John Bolton) are claiming that is what we are going to get out of Trump blowing up the Iran deal when Iran was abiding by it. I guess we can look forward to some future president claiming some great breakthrough when goes to meet some future Iranian leader to negotiate a denuclearization by them that will be as unlikely to happen as this promised one by the North Koreans. What a farce, although better to have them talking rather than going to war right now.
Dan (Robert?)
I surmise that Ballanced is not “balanced.” But I am not sure I should have been expected to know that.
Is there a story here I missed?
An earlier story done by Robert.
Kim wants “complete and verifiable denuclearization”. That means the whole peninsula and the littoral where US Navy nukes will be verifiably eliminated and kept out.
LA Times headline is misleading. A framework for disarmament is on the table it just is not the neocon version the US media expected. It is not like the type Qaddafi agreed to.
The statement about US-Japan-ROK exercises being destabilizing is exactly what the world knows and hearing it from the US president is most refreshing since Carter discussed pulling out of the Korea occupation in 1979.
Run
I guessed as much.
Trouble is, a very long time ago I read in school “an essay should have everything in it that is needed to understand it.”
no doubt writers at AB and other places are writing to an audience that keeps up with everything they have already said, and knows all the references. so there is no reason for them to bother with making things clear to new readers. unless of course they want to have new readers. or old readers who don’t keep up.
Coberly:
If you google the title, Robert’s prior posts come right up.
Kim should demand MULTILATERAL disarmament–no nukes for either side. Being the only country to every use nuclear weapons on another country, the U.S. has ZERO moral authority to demand that other countries disarm. In fact, having nuke is sadly the only way they can keep from being subverted, bombed and invaded.
In five years, we’ll be looking back at Trump and how he enabled the Iranian atom bomb. Sometimes you can see history in the making. The Saudis are going to love this, and they even gave Trump a turn at that glowing orb thing.
The level of stupidity in this administration in mind boggling.
“Secretary of State Mike Pompeo thinks it’s “insulting and ridiculous and frankly ludicrous” that people are questioning the Singapore agreement just because it doesn’t really say anything at all:
He said he was confident that the North Koreans “understand what we’re prepared to do, [the] handful of things we’re not likely to do. . . . I am equally confident they understand that there will be in-depth verification.”
“Not all of that work appeared in the final document,” Pompeo said. “But lots of other places where there were understandings reached, we couldn’t reduce them to writing.” That work, he said, was “beyond what was seen in the final document that will be in the place that we will begin when we return to our conversations.”
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/06/mike-pompeo-is-insulting-our-intelligence/
EMichael
I am prepared to agree with you that the Trumpistas are stupid, and beyond that, evil.
Taking children from their mothers to “discourage” illegal immigration is evil to the level of the Nazis. Taking science out of the EPA is stupid and probably evil.
But we diminish our credibility if we shout “stupid” at everything they do. At least I don’t see where anything Pompeo says, quoted in your comment, rises to the level of “stupidity that is mind boggling.”
I’m probably wasting my breath here over a figure of speech, but I know I have watched good people turn away from good causes because the advocates of those causes overreached in their invective.
Run
I followed the link to Rober’s “Ballanced”. I can’t say I learned anything from it (one reason I do not usually follow links).
Robert appears clever, probably right, and does a needed job in pointing out the sleazy writing of political pundits.
But he also writes in a way not always easy to understand…as if he were writing only for himself and his close followers.
“Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
He might just as well have said that he reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to eternal life. Neither will happen and everyone knows it. Only a complete fool would take Kim Jong Un’s statement as anything other than propaganda.