agree

There has been no greater example that has debunked the Muscular Amero-centric Bush policy of “my way or the highway” than North Korea. The Bush Administration threw out the Agreement Framework of the Clinton administration. They began the inflammatory finger pointing. They refused to talk with North Korea. North Korea escalated their nuclear program and threw out the IAEA. North Korean exploded something. John Bolton was removed from the negotiation process. Christopher Hill began to actually talk with North Korea. The hard neocons – Rumsfeld and Cheney – got fired or marginalized and magically North Korea began to come around. Yesterday an agreement of economic cooperation was signed. As important, is an agreement to end the Korean War. South Korean never signed that treaty.

I think that this is a significant development.  Kind of like where we were at the end of the Clinton administration before Bush screwed it up.

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From USAToday:

The South Korean president signed a commitment with North Korea Thursday to seek a formal end to the Korean War, ending a historic three-day summit during which he was snubbed by his host and upstaged by a nuclear agreement 600 miles away in Beijing.

South Korea never signed the cease fire that ended hostilities in the 1950-53 Korean War; so the two Koreas have remained technically at war ever since. In their declaration Thursday in the northern capital Pyongyang, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il agreed to pursue a permanent peace. South Korea has said it will need to work with the other combatants in the Korean war — China and the United States — to reach a formal peace deal. President Bush has said there can be no permanent peace on the Korean peninsula until North Korea gives up nuclear arms. (more…)