Sweet Jesus, please, no.
The crazy thing about that, of course, is that Gaddafi suffered the “fate of Gaddafi” at least in part because he did make that deal.
I would pay money to see Kim have a knife stuck up his ass.
Aye; but how many lives would you pay for the same? :dubious:
I just saw this pop up on the AP: Ahead of Trump summit, Kim Jong Un crafts a careful message.
It echoes what a lot of people are saying here and provides info I personally hadn’t seen before, but suspected was the case.
I expect that in a year or so, the “nuclear talks” charade will be seen as an elaborate ruse to cover the collapse, demolition, and re-establishment of NK nuclear test infrastructure. “See, we blew up our totally not-collapsed nuclear test site in good faith, but since America screwed up the talks, we’ll just have to build a new test site now. Maybe on more stable ground this time. Not that the previous one collapsed or anything.”
Are you a public relations guy for North Korea? Tell Kim he needs a better haircut.
If you read between the lines, Kim Jung Un is already essentially getting ahead of Trump in setting the terms of any agreement. As has probably already been mentioned here or on other NK threads, Kim wants an end to sanctions for one thing, but no less important, he views the continued indefinite US military presence in South Korea and East Asia as a threat, and he intends to do something about it. He may not get the US and South Korea to end their mutual security agreement, but he does absolutely intend to make it a less potent and less real threat against his regime. Threatening to pull out over the joint exercises is not just Kim being fussy and capricious; it’s his equivalent of the brush back pitch. There’s no meeting yet, but this is one of his first stipulations. He’s setting up what negotiations will look like.
And I suspect Mr. Art of the Deal may not have any fucking clue that this is in fact what’s happening right now. Trump’s not setting the tempo of the meeting; he’s reacting to it, because he doesn’t have a coherent policy of any kind. Bolton, on the other hand, does have one. Pompeo might have one as well, and they might not be the same. It’ll be interesting to see who wins within the administration in terms of influence. Jim Mattis might still have a role to play yet.
When you step back and look at the very basic macro view of the whole thing, I think it’s clear that now that NK has a minimally credible nuclear capability, they are now pursuing the best way to capitalize on it. It’s not a coincidence that semi-serious reunification talk pops up as soon as NK nuke-triculated, as if the two things were somehow complimentary. Reunification and denuclearization will be the dangling carrots on infinitely long sticks that NK uses to extort untold concessions from SK. NK doesn’t actually need any concessions or sanctions relief from the US if the SK tap is flowing and they have all sorts of cooperative projects to very, very, very slowly “refamiliarize” the Korean people.
They need food. My Arkansas has a lot of chickens, rice and soybeans. Perhaps they should speak with Governor Hutcheson rather than President Trump. 
Cool! We can start airlifting them in, maybe couple of days, a week or so…
Asa first step at least, not a bad idea. 
Saw this tweet from Anna Fifield, the WaPo Tokyo bureau chief:
ETA: Remember when people used to say “the grownups are back in charge” when a GOP Administration began?
How quaint.
Trump put out a coin for the summit. It calls Kim the “Supreme Leader” which is a title he never uses and is not used in N. Korea. He is chairman of the workers party and chairman of state affairs commission. Guess those won’t fit on a coin
Trump suggests summit with NKorea’s Kim could be ‘delayed’
Ever the statesman:
:dubious::rolleyes:
Check out this loaded gun, er, statement (helpfully bolded):
Sure, he’ll give up the only thing protecting him from the US and instead rely on the US to protect him; that’s gonna happen. It’s a no-brainer, right? :dubious::rolleyes:
Meanwhile, behind the facade of this innocent looking bookstore:
Turns out it’s a coin made by the White House Communications Agency, a DoD unit that supports presidential travel, not Trump. WHCA makes a coin for all international travel they support. No taxpayer funds are used for these coins.
And let’s get real, the personnel who have time to make a coin are often those whose skills are not in high demand for, say, operating sensitive electronics. The fac that “President Trump” is spelled correctly means that they took their time with this design effort.
As has been said already in this thread, “Nobody knew that disarming North Korea could be so complicated.”
And as is obvious, even Trump supporters who use the words “Trump” and “statesman” in the same sentence end the sentence with a question mark.
The state of Ignorance, maybe.