Year of The Imposter

The Enemy of the World

Donald Trump John Miller Audio TAPE FULL Trump Pretending with Wall Street Journal Reporter 

" In her discussion of the impostor, Phyllis Greenacre also cites the case of Titus Oates (1649-1705), who was the great protagonist of the fictitious “Popish Plot” during the reign of Charles II Stuart of England. This plot was supposedly aiming at a Catholic takeover of England with the help of the Stuarts. Fictitious though this report turned out to be, its political effects were most welcome to the pro-Venetian Whig party of the English aristocracy.

Without intelligence networks interested in promoting Titus Oates’ story, he might have been relegated to total obscurity. Oates was a mythomaniac, recounting wild inventions he knew his listeners wanted to hear, all in a desperate bid to attract attention. But there were powerful political forces who found his hallucinations advantageous. 

This reminds us once again, as in the case of Joseph Smith, to always look for the interaction between the individual impostor and the organized networks which constitute and assemble the audience which the impostor so urgently desires. Some key excerpts from Greenacre:

“An impostor is not only a liar, but a very special type of liar who imposes on others fabrications of his attainments, position, or worldly possessions. This he may do through misrepresentations of his official (statistical) identity, by presenting himself with a fictitious name, history, and other items of personal identity, either borrowed from some other actual person or fabricated according to some imaginative conception of himself. 

There are similar falsifications on that part of his identity belonging to his accomplishments, a plagiarizing on a grand scale, or making claims which are grossly implausible. Imposture appears to contain the hope of getting something material, or some other worldly advantage. While the reverse certainly exists among the distinguished, wealthy, and competent persons who lose themselves in cloaks of obscurity and assumed mediocrity, these come less frequently into sharp focus in the public eye. One suspects, however, that some “hysterical” amnesia is, and dual or multiple personalities are conditions related to imposturous characters. The contrast between the original and the assumed identities may sometimes be not so great in the matter of worldly position, and consequently does not lend itself so readily to the superficial explanation that it has been achieved for direct and material gain. The investigation of even a few instances of imposture – if one has not become emotionally involved in the deception – is sufficient to show how crude though clever many impostors are, how very faulty any scheming is, and how often, in fact, the element of shrewdness is lacking. Rather a quality of showmanship is involved, with its reliance all on the response of an audience to illusions. 

“In some of the most celebrated instances of imposture, it indeed appears that the fraud was successful only because many others as well as the perpetrator had a hunger to believe in the fraud, and that any success of such fraudulence depended in fact on strong social as well as individual factors and especial receptivity to the trickery. To this extent those on whom the fraudulence is imposed are not only victims but unconscious conspirators. Its success too is partly a matter of timing. Such combinations of imposturous talent and a peculiar susceptibility of the times to believe in the swindler, who presents the deceptive means of salvation, may account for the great impostures of history. There are, however, instances of the repeated perpetration of frauds under circumstances which give evidence of aprecise content that may seem independent of social factors…. 

“It is the extraordinary and continued pressure in the impostor to live out his fantasy that demands explanation, a living out which has the force of a delusion, (and in the psychotic may actually appear in that form), but it is ordinarily associated with the ‘formal’ awareness that the claims are false. The sense of reality is characterized by a peculiarly sharp, quick perceptiveness, extraordinarily immediate keenness and responsiveness, especially in the area of the imposture. The over-all utility of the sense of reality is, however, impaired. What is striking in many impostors is that, although they are quick to pick up details and nuances in the lives and activities of those whom they simulate and can sometimes utilize these with great adroitness, they are frequently so utterly obtuse to many ordinary considerations of fact that they give the impression of mere brazenness or stupidity in many aspects of their life peripheral to their impostures…. 

“The impostor has, then, a specially sharpened sensitivity within the area of his fraud, and identity toward the assumption of which he has a powerful unconscious pressure, beside which his conscious wish, although recognizable, is relatively slight. The unconscious drive heightens his perceptions in a focused area and permits him to ignore or deny other elements of reality which would ordinarily be considered matters of common sense. It is this discrepancy in abilities which makes some impostors such puzzling individuals. Skill and persuasiveness are combined with utter foolishness and stupidity. 

“In well-structured impostures this may be described as a struggle between two dominant identities in the individual: the temporarily focused and strongly assertive imposturous one, and the frequently amazingly crude and poorly knit one from which the impostor has emerged. In some instances, however, it is also probable that the imposture cannot be sustained unless there is emotional support from someone who especially believes in and nourishes it. The need for self-betrayal may then he one part of the tendency to revert to a less demanding, more easily sustainable personality, particularly if support is withdrawn. 

“The impostor seems to flourish on the success of his exhibitionism. Enjoyment of the limelight and inner triumph of ‘putting something over’ seems inherent, and bespeak the closeness of imposture to voyeurism. Both aspects are represented: pleasure in watching while the voyeur himself is invisible; exultation in being admired and observed as a spectacle. It seems as if the impostor becomes temporarily convinced of the rightness of his assumed character in proportion to the amount of attention he is able to gain from it. 

“In the lives of impostors there are circumscribed areas of reaction which approach the delusional. These are clung to when the other elements of the imposture have been relinquished…. 

“Once an imposturous goal has been glimpsed, the individual seems to behave without need for consistency, but to strive rather for the supremacy of the gains from what can be acted out with sufficient immediate gratification to convince others. For the typical impostor, an audience is absolutely essential. It is from the confirming reaction of his audience that the impostor gets a ‘realistic’ sense of self, a value greater than anything he can otherwise achieve. It is the demand for an audience in which the (false) self is reflected that causes impostures often to become of social significance. Both reality and identity seem to the impostor to be strengthened rather than diminished by the success of the fraudulence of his claims…. 

“The impostor seems to be repeatedly seeking confirmation of his assumed identity to overcome his sense of helplessness or incompleteness. It is my impression that this is the secret of his appeal to others, and that often especially conscientious people are ‘taken in’ and other impostors as well attracted because of the longing to return to that happy state of omnipotence which adults have had to relinquish….

Just Too WEIRD: Bishop Romney's Mormon Takeover of America:: Polygamy, Theocracy, Subversion

Tarpley Ph D, Webster Griffin

Sounding more like the potentate of some palm-dotted tropical island than a presidential candidate, Donald Trump twice declined to say during the final televised debate whether he would accept the results of the 2016 election.

The billionaire who has cast himself as the law and order candidate seemed ready to commit the democratic felony of refusing to accept defeat at the polls.

The property tycoon, who has regularly used legal action, and the threat of it, to build his business empire, appeared to cling to the hope that he could litigate his way to the White House - if, as seems increasingly likely, voters hand the keys to Hillary Clinton.

In a stab at damage limitation, he has since modified his position. Trump now says he will accept a "clear result," but reserves the right to mount a legal challenge in the event of a "questionable result".

But his original remarks, watched by millions of shell-shocked voters, are hard to walk back. He cannot evoke that old locker room maxim - what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

Unsubstantiated claims that this election is rigged has now become the core message of his stump speech, and it seems targeted at 9 November rather than 8 November - a pre-emptive attempt to rationalise defeat the morning after rather than to mobilise supporters on polling day.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump (L) speaks as Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton looks on during the third U.S. presidential debate at the Thomas Mack Center on October 19, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada

Not only does this approach seem irresponsible but also counter-productive, for it runs the risk of depressing Republican turnout. Why vote, his more conspiratorial-minded supporters might think, if the fix is already in?

Threats of legal challenges may well be Trumpian bluster. His promise to sue the New York Times for publishing accusations from women that he allegedly molested them have so far come to nought.

As for saying during the debate he would hold the electorate in "suspense", it sounded like a fading reality TV star clamorous for viewers, fearful his show was about to be cancelled because of sliding ratings.

Grace in defeat is not just a feature of the American system, but one of its more elegant pillars.

John McCain's concession speech in 2008 is widely regarded as the noblest of his career. John Kerry accepted the outcome in 2004, despite claims of voter irregularities in the decisive battleground state of Ohio.

In 1960, when only 113,000 votes out of the 68 million cast separated the candidates, Richard Nixon conceded, even though he would have been forgiven for mounting a more forceful legal challenge, given the allegations of voter fraud in Texas and Illinois.

Trump says will accept result 'if I win'

There, Chicago's mayor Richard Daley was alleged to have conjured up enough phantom votes to make sure Illinois remained in John F Kennedy's column.

GOP officials carried out investigations and mounted legal challenges in a number of battleground states, but Nixon was publicly acquiescent. The then vice-president told friends he did not want to come across as a sore loser, nor spark a constitutional crisis.

In the aftermath of the Las Vegas debate, Trump surrogates cited the more recent example of the contested 2000 election, when Al Gore dramatically withdrew his concession on election night while in his limousine on the way to deliver a speech accepting defeat.

But Gore wasn't challenging the results of the election. Rather, he was calling for a recount of the votes in Florida.

At the end of the interminable legal battle that followed, when five of the nine Supreme Court justices ruled in favour of George W Bush, Al Gore accepted the outcome, even though some aides wanted him to fight on.

"Tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession," Gore told the nation.

People in Times Square watch Vice President Al Gore concede the race for president to George W. Bush December 13, 2000

Al Gore concedes on December 13, 2000

Though clearly crest-fallen, he quoted Senator Stephen Douglas's reaction to his defeat in 1860 to Abraham Lincoln: "Partisan feeling must yield to patriotism." Trump may be temperamentally incapable of displaying that kind of magnanimity.

The billionaire's campaign staff is clearly worried that Trump has ruined any remaining chance he had of winning. Senior GOP figures, like John McCain, are enraged at the damage he has done to the Republican Party.

But the broader problem is that he has brought American democracy into disrepute by showing such contempt for its most basic tenet, that the will of the people should be respected and adhered to.

Those who still have faith in the US political system - a dwindling number judging by the historically high disapproval ratings for both candidates and Congress - might try to write off Donald Trump as an aberration.

The truth is, however, that his debate comments, which will echo down the years, mark the culmination of a trend in US politics decades in the making.

Politicians from both parties have sought to delegitimise the victories of their opponents, and to deny the incoming president a mandate.

Though individual candidates, like John McCain and John Kerry, have displayed high-mindedness in defeat, their respective parties have not been anywhere near as yielding. The opposite is true.

In modern times, this can be traced back to the 1992 election, when Republicans immediately questioned the legitimacy of Bill Clinton because he won the presidency with such a small share of the popular vote - just 43%, the second lowest share of any winning candidate in the 20th Century.

Republicans felt aggrieved that George Herbert Walker Bush had been cheated out of a second term by the third party candidate Ross Perot - although political scientists believe that the Texan billionaire attracted just as many Democratic votes as Republican.

Much of the impetus for the impeachment of President Clinton in 1998, following the Monica Lewinsky scandal, stemmed from the manner of his victory in 1992. Many Republicans, chief among them congressman trying to drive him from office, had never accepted his legitimacy as president.

Impeachment vote in Senate

The Senate votes on Bill Clinton's impeachment

Following the disputed 2000 election, Democrats took the same dim view of George W Bush.

When the senior Democratic congressman Dick Gephardt appeared on NBC's Meet the Press in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling, he acknowledged that George W Bush would be the next president of the United States, but pointedly turned down the invitation to describe him as "the legitimate president of the United States".

Other Democrats, condemning a partisan Supreme Court for voting along partisan lines, spoke at the time of an American coup d'etat.

The birther movement, of which Donald Trump became the figurehead, was founded on the false idea that Barack Obama's presidency was illegitimate because he was not born in America.

Republicans on Capitol Hill, who rejected the racism of birtherism, nonetheless showed little or no respect for Obama's mandate, even though he won with more than 50% of the vote both in 2008 and 2012.

Repeatedly, they have used the checks and balances offered by the constitution to thwart and block their nemesis. So much so that gridlock has become the paralysing norm in Washington.

Portrait of the 19th U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes. (1822-1893)

"His Fraudulency" Rutherford B Hayes

Historians of the 19th Century will tell you that the notion of "imposter presidents" is nothing new.

Rutherford B Hayes, the winner of a disputed election in 1876, was known as "His Fraudulency".

Now though we have reached the point where the last three presidents, Clinton, Bush and Obama, have been cast by opponents as imposter presidents.

America's broken politics, even more so than its malfunctioning economy, provided the seedbed for Donald Trump's rise, but in refusing to graciously accept defeat he is threatening to break the system still further.

His critics will see this as further proof that his campaign is in meltdown. But the broader fear is of a post-election political Chernobyl that will further contaminate an already poisonous system for decades to come.

“More than a medical scientific problem, AIDS is a sociopolitical IMPOSITION.” "

http://www.originofaids.com/articles/early.htm

Ashton Carter - Warmonger

Just sketch for me what the situation was in June 1994.

In June 1994, North Korea was preparing to remove some fuel rods from a research reactor which they'd been operating at Yongbyon. [The] fuel rods contained five or six bombs' worth of weapons-grade plutonium. They were going to take those fuel rods and extract the plutonium from them.

That's reprocessing?

So-called "reprocessing." We felt that that would bring a potentially hostile nation to the United States across the nuclear finish line, and that that wasn't acceptable to us. We were not, by any means, confident that we could talk them out of taking that step. Therefore we looked into the possibility of compelling them by force to set back their nuclear program. We designed a strike of conventional precision munitions on Yongbyon, which we were very confident would destroy the reactor, entomb the plutonium and that we could mount such a strike and carry it out without causing the reactor to create a Chernobyl-like radiological plume downwind, which was an obviously important concern.

It is a Chernobyl model plant. Correct?

It is graphite-moderated like the Chernobyl plant. It's a smaller scale, but it does have flammable graphite in it. So you need to worry that a fire could start that would sweep all this radioactive junk up from the core and cause a radiological problem downwind. We were very confident we could avoid that.

So this was bombers going in and hitting it with missiles?

You could do it with tactical aircraft, you could do it with strategic aircraft, and you could do it with cruise missiles. Depending on the circumstances, we could have used any one of those or a combination of the three. We analyzed each building at Yongbyon, particularly the reactor, as I've said, but also the fuel fabrication plant, the reprocessing plant, the reactors under construction. We figured out where, if a precision munition is delivered on that structure, you will destroy the structure -- the objective being to set back their program many years. As I said, we were absolutely confident that we could have carried out a strike which would have been surgical within its own frame.

So why not do it?

The larger consequences would be far from surgical. North Korea maintains a million men on the DMZ. Thousands of artillery tubes are trained on Seoul, and Scud missiles are trained on South Korea. That's a large and antiquated army. We've had a war plan jointly devised with the forces of South Korea, called Op Plan 5027, which has been in existence for many years -- constantly updated for the defense of South Korea against North Korea, in the event that those million men and the artillery all spill over the DMZ.

We were also confident in 1994 -- and I'm sure we're very confident today -- that we would, within just a few weeks, destroy North Korea's armed forces if they started that war, and we would destroy then their regime.

We reckoned there would be many, many tens of thousands of deaths: American, South Korean, North Korean, combatant, non-combatant. So the outcome wasn't in doubt. But the loss of life in that war -- God forbid that kind of war ever starts on the Korean Peninsula. The loss of life is horrific.

Everyone could appreciate the magnitude of the damage that North Korea could do, if it chose to respond to a strike on Yongbyon [by attacking South Korea]. Now, if we did it properly, if it came to this option, one would say to the North Koreans in advance, "Yes, you can lash out at South Korea after we mount this attack. That will be the end of your regime." So after the strike on Yongbyon, the ball's in their court.

Now what we couldn't do was assure anyone, and I'm sure the secretary of defense couldn't assure the president, that North Korea would not, irrationally lash out and begin that war. They say they would. So we would be calling their bluff. Therefore, there were substantial risks associated with carrying that out that attack, although it would surely set back their nuclear program. That was a risk that I certainly felt at the time, and feel now, was worth running in light of the enormous risks to our security associated with letting North Korea go nuclear.

So you thought it was feasible to go to war?

It is such a disaster for our security in many ways to allow North Korea to go nuclear that we needed to run then -- and I think we need to run now -- substantial risks to avoid the greater danger of a nuclear North Korea.

But you're not saying, are you, that we should consider striking them now?

No. I think President Bush has said we're seeking a diplomatic resolution to the situation now, which means trying to talk the North Koreans out of going down the nuclear path. Now, to be successful at doing that, one needs to make it persuasive to them that they're better off without nuclear weapons than they are with nuclear weapons.

Was the Agreed Framework a good deal?

The Agreed Framework did one thing which was very important to us, which was to freeze North Korea's plutonium program at Yongbyon right up until just a few months ago. Had that not been frozen, by now North Korea would have several tens of nuclear weapons. So by that standard, it certainly did our security a service. It didn't do everything. It did not address ballistic missiles, which we have a serious problem with respect to North Korea. It did not address adequately, clearly, a uranium-based nuclear weapons program, because we now know that North Korea embarked on a uranium-based program at the same time.

Is it fair to say that what the Agreed Framework accomplished was getting them off of a fast-track at Yongbyon to a slow track towards getting nuclear weapons?

At Yongbyon, they were stopped in their tracks. That is, they never took those fuel rods and reprocessed them to get the plutonium.

But that was a potential fast track.

That was. They remained a few months away from reprocessing those rods, but they didn't reprocess those rods for eight long years. During that time, we could all rest more easily. At the same time the plutonium program was frozen, we now know that they began experimenting with, and then embarking upon a program involving the other metal that you can make nuclear weapons out of -- namely, uranium. Now they're not very far along in that. So it doesn't present a clear and present danger in the way that the plutonium program still does.

The plutonium program can lead to five or six bombs within a few weeks. The uranium program won't lead to bombs for many, many months. But the uranium program proves any undertaking you make with North Korea you better verify.

The Agreed Framework muddles along. Opposition sets in from Congress, and by 1998, it's in trouble. There's a missile firing over Japan. The Perry Review process comes in, and you jump into this.

Yes. President Clinton -- I think, to his credit -- recognized in 1998 that the United States had fallen asleep on the North Korea issue. So great had the relief been in 1994 that we'd managed to freeze the plutonium program at Yongbyon, everybody went off and worked on other things.

Why'd they fall asleep?

Bosnia, Kosovo, other [pressing] events, Haiti, Somalia -- I mean, go down the list of issues of the 1990s that seemed so important at the time. So in 1998, when the North Koreans fired this ballistic missile, everybody in the region and the United States woke up and said, "Boy, we haven't been paying attention to them. But they've been sure been paying attention."

So President Clinton asked then-former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry to lead an effort to review our policy and put a whole package together about this odd little place. Bill Perry asked me to be his senior advisor, sort of deputy, in this effort. We looked very hard at the possibility of, was there some way that we could undermine the North Korean regime or get rid of it? We looked very hard at that. That didn't look very promising, and ultimately we set that aside. But it's worth asking why.

History, human nature, would tell you that the North Korean regime, can't go on like this forever -- this very odd Stalinist throwback government, unable to feed itself. While that's true, there was no evidence that we could deduce that you could go into a president of the United States and say, "I don't think they're going to make it much longer." They have amazing staying power. Nor were we able to identify any cracks in the facade into which we could put a crowbar. Most defectors from North Korea, when asked, "Did you ever discuss your feelings about the regime with anyone else?" will tell you no, and so we didn't have a situation like Afghanistan.

In other words, they never discussed dissatisfaction with the leadership.

Right. There was never a conspiracy, never a tremendous fear. This is a society which is now in its third generation of severe political repression, so that children in North Korea have several hours of political education a day. Their parents did, and their grandparents did.

If you take the other extreme, which is Afghanistan, where you go in and you stir the pot a little bit and everybody rises up against the Taliban -- there [is] no evidence that we could deduce that we had any such prospect in North Korea. Additionally, an undermining strategy was, at best, a long-term proposition, and we needed a short-term way of addressing the weapons of mass destruction.

That remains true today. I don't know how long the North Korean regime can last. But we can't just wait for them to collapse, because in the meantime, they can do lasting damage to our security.

Another possibility was to encourage reform in North Korea, and to suggest that Kim Jong Il take the path of China's Deng Xiaoping -- open up the country, open up the economy. That, too, one could hope for, but we didn't feel that we could recommend it as a strategy, because, for starters, Kim Jong Il doesn't seem to want to open up.

If Kim Jong Il embarks on the path of reform and he is looking out on the spectrum of post-communist leaders, and he's saying, "Where am I going to end up? Am I going to end up like Deng Xiaoping, a hero? Am I going to end up like Gorbachev, reviled by my people, but alive? Or is the end of the road of a reform path for me more like what happened to Nicolai Ceausescu being shot in a revolution?"

He doesn't show any signs of confidence that he can end up like Deng Xiaoping. So we can hope that he'll take that path. But hope and strategy are two different things. You can't go into a president of the United States and say, "Well, let's sit back and let him do whatever he wants with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and hope that he's going to reform," when he doesn't show any evidence of wanting to reform.

So both undermining and hoping for reform, didn't, to us, address the urgent problem we had, which is nuclear and ballistic missiles in the hands of this government. That's why we wrote in the report -- an unclassified version of which has been released -- that we have to deal with the North Korean regime as it is, not as we might wish it to be. That remains true today as well. Unless somebody knows how to hasten this regime on in history, it can do a lot of damage to our security while it exists.

After the Perry report came out, we began to talk to them.

Yes. Coming out of the North Korea policy review, President Clinton sent Secretary Perry to Pyongyang. I went with him, and we laid out the results of our review. We described for them two paths. We said, "Here is a path in which you knock it off with weapons of mass destruction, nuclear and ballistic missiles. On that path, we can see a situation where we keep on keeping on in the current way. We don't like you. From listening to your radio broadcasts, you don't like us either. But we have a stable situation here on the Korean Peninsula, where if you attack southward, you know that the certain result of that will be your destruction. But you know that we know that's a very violent war and therefore, we're not going to provoke it either. That's a stable situation, in which you can keep running this odd little country, and we're prepared to live with that. We're not prepared to live with you upsetting that situation, and the whole world, with weapons of mass destruction."

These talks are pretty serious. This is tense, I imagine.

Very tense, and particularly when we met with the military leaders, they are very tense. Now, we're expecting that, and that was not a problem for us. We delivered those messages. Secretary Perry and I then left office, and the Clinton administration then went on. I was then not part of the sequel to that. But what happened was, some small steps were taken on that path -- reversible steps. I don't know whether North Korea would have continued up that path and taken progressively larger steps. Maybe, maybe not. We don't know. Now we're in a rather different situation.

A lot of work that you and Dr. Perry had undertaken went sort of by the by, with the change of administrations.

I hope that the North Koreans understand that the conclusions that we came to are conclusions that are embedded in America's security situation.

They're permanent?

They're permanent.

But our policy changes all the time.

If our policy is really going to protect American interests, it's going to have to draw the line at a nuclear North Korea. No American government can tolerate a nuclear North Korea. That's a major disaster for our security, and a setback for us.

To be successful, any American strategy in that part of the world has to have some degree of consensus with at least our allies, the South Koreans and the Japanese. We have to have that. Any American strategy has to come to grips with the fact that, much as they seem odd to us, to put it mildly, the North Koreans don't seem to be going anywhere. They seem to be able to get by, year in and year out.

Therefore, if we're going to protect our security in the face of that reality, and we don't have any realistic strategy for changing that reality, or way to get rid of them short of war, then the only thing we can do is to try to deal with them as they are. That means compelling them and persuading them that the path of going nuclear is a path that will inevitably bring us to confrontation, and that there's another path for them.

We can try to talk North Korea out of taking the path to nuclear weapons. I'm not confident, at this point, that we'll succeed. A year ago, I may have had more confidence. But the North Koreans have moved now forward quite a ways, unresisted by us. They've moved the fuel rods. They're restarting the reactor at Yongbyon. I'm concerned now that they think that, if they just dash across the finish line to nuclear status while we're busy, understandably, with other things -- Al Qaeda, Iraq -- that they can create a fait accompli, an irreversible situation before we get our strategy together.

Nevertheless, I think that a diplomatic try is worth trying. I think we have to look at it as an experiment.

You're saying that the Bush administration has done nothing on North Korea, and that this situation, perhaps, is beyond repair?

Well, the situation has been getting progressively worse. It's been unraveling now for well over a year. ... The North Koreans take progressive steps towards a nuclear status, and we have not articulated, at least, an overall strategy for dealing with this situation. What is our approach? Are we going to let it happen? Sit back and watch? Are we going to try to talk them out of it? If we're going to try to talk them out of it, when are we going to start talking?

Are we going to go to a military option, which one can talk about at this stage, but doesn't really become realistic in terms of our relations with the others in the region -- our South Korean allies, who would bear the brunt of an assault from North Korea? That option isn't really realistic unless and until we can show that we gave a diplomatic approach a try, and that try failed. Then we can turn to the military option, and we would have the support and assistance we needed to carry that out.

So while I can't be confident that a diplomatic approach will succeed now, it seems to be clear that that's a step we need to take. It's an experiment we need to run, and we need to embark upon it soon, because the North Koreans are creating facts on the ground that my children and my children's children will have to live with. The half-life of plutonium 239, which is what they're going to get out of those fuel rods, is 24,400 years. I don't know how long the North Korean regime is going to last. But it's not going to last 24,400 years. So while this rather odd regime is in power, perhaps just for a few fleeting years, they can create a lasting danger to us and to humanity.

The problem isn't only nuclear weapons in the hands of the North Korean regime as it is. It's what happens after the North Korean regime. Where do those nuclear weapons end up?

You've seen the intelligence. Is there any information that leads you to believe that the North Koreans are assisting Middle Eastern countries such as Iran or others in getting nuclear weapons?

What information I have on that subject I can't share. But what I can say is that North Korea has clearly, in the past, assisted Iran in its ballistic missile program. The Iranian Shahab-3 ballistic missile, which they call the Shahab-3, is a North Korean missile. The North Koreans call it a Nodong. Same thing.

They've helped the Pakistanis with missiles?

That's right.

They've helped the Iranians with missiles, the Libyans with missiles?

Yes.

The Syrians with missiles? Egypt?

Many countries in the Middle East. Almost anybody who will buy them, and they're out hawking them all the time.

Are there North Koreans helping the Iranians with nuclear programs?

Wouldn't surprise me to find the technical underbellies of these weapons of mass destruction programs in constant communication with one another and working with one another.

It wouldn't surprise you to find out that the North Koreans were helping the Iranians develop a nuclear bomb?

No, it wouldn't surprise me.

Syrians or Libya?

Would not surprise me, no, and it's fine as long as they're only trading blueprints. But when they've got the metal, the plutonium that can make those blueprints real, then you really have to be worried.

This is important, because this is, as I understand it, a major piece of their gross national product -- missile sales.

In the past, it has been a substantial source of hard currency earnings to them. I think the market has tapered off a little bit for them.

All the more reason to sell something bigger and better?

That's much more valuable.

Ed. Note: More about North Korea's missile trade

How much do you sell a nuclear warhead for, or five pounds of plutonium? Enough to make a big warhead?

There is mercifully no market in that. No test has been done. I believe it's the case that there were rumors 25 years ago, that Gadhafi offered India to relieve its entire foreign debt in return for one nuclear weapon.

How much was that?

I don't know, but it must have been billions and billions and billions of dollars. And remember that countries that choose the proliferation path spend an enormous amount reprocessing plutonium or enriching uranium. It's expensive to make nuclear weapons. It's a hassle. There are large facilities involved, and you get caught building them. They're facilities that can be bombed, like Yongbyon. So if you're intent upon getting nuclear weapons, by far the easier path is to buy the material -- even more so if you're a terrorist who doesn't have a country in which he can build a reprocessing facility or build a uranium enrichment facility.

Our nightmare, any of us, which would change the way we lived our lives, was if we thought that any moment Al Qaeda might detonate a nuclear weapon in a city anywhere in the world, because we learned that they had gotten hold of some plutonium from the North Koreans by sale, or when the North Korean regime collapsed, somebody smuggled it out.

People talk about "containment" of North Korea. Well, you can contain North Korea in many ways, but it's not believable to me that we can put a hermetic seal around North Korea that will guarantee us that a little piece of metal this big of plutonium can't get out of North Korea. That's completely incredible.

How worried are you about the way that this is being handled now?

I'm very worried about the fact that the situation just gets progressively worse, and North Korea will not check itself. It will keep plunging forward. So unless we show it the limits of the conduct that we're willing to accept, the North Koreans will just keep going. They won't sit on the back burner. It's not in their nature. The one thing this place is expert at is getting off the back burner. They're the masters of provocations, of ratcheting up pressure, of playing these kind of games. If you don't want them driving the train, them pacing events -- that's what they've been doing; they've been making them worse and they've been calling the shots -- you have to get out in front of them and begin to drive the train yourself.

That requires a strategy. It requires that we come, as a government, to some view, and there can be disagreements about what that view ought to be. But you have to come to some strategy for dealing with North Korea. You need to share that with your allies, Japan and South Korea, and then you need to go to the North Koreans and say, "Listen. This is the way it's going to be."

That's what they say they're doing. They're talking to South Korea. They're talking to China and Japan. Everybody's trying to get on the same page.

I think, so far, we have been saying to South Korea, China and Japan, Russia, "You go talk to the North Koreans." That's a good thing to do. They need to recognize that their interests are at stake, and it's not entirely up to us to save their bacon by stopping North Korea. So they're an important part of the choreography. But I don't think we can outsource our security to them. I don't think we can say, "We're not going to do anything about the North Koreans. But if you guys want to do something about the North Koreans, go ahead." That's not safe, either.

But I hear the administration saying they're going to talk to them, but they want to engage everyone in the region, all the players in those talks.

I think that's the right approach, and we need to get that going now, because what is occurring, as we speak, and as the weeks go by, is a situation that is unraveling. Our options for that diplomacy are narrowing, and North Korea is progressively creating, on the ground, irreversibly, a fait accompli that will be harder for us to deal with in the future.

So there's some urgency to getting around to pulling our strategy together; coordinating it with all of our partners; getting them to join in a common diplomatic onslaught against North Korea; and test the proposition that North Korea can be talked out of its nuclear ambitions. As I said before, I'm not sure it can be.

And if it's not able to be talked out of it, what does the United States have to do?

On that, I think you have to then go back to where we were in 1994, where you're looking at the use of force to achieve your objectives.

If they cross the line and decide to become a nuclear power, we can only face war with them, is what you're saying?

The alternative of letting North Korea go nuclear -- just sitting back, and allowing that to happen -- causes us to run such grave risks, in the near term and in the far term once they've made that plutonium that lasts a long time, that in order to avert that risk, we do have to be prepared to run substantial risks in the near term. They will have presented us with that situation. But we're not there yet. We might get there, if a diplomatic approach fails -- which it may well.

In 1999, you met with Vice Foreign Minister Kang and other North Korean officials. What sense did you have of these men, and what they stood for, and what their goals were?

In the North Korean system, the person who really counts, of course, is Kim Jong Il. So when you're talking to other officials of the government, you know that you're talking to someone who is unable to make commitments that they don't refer first to Kim Jong Il. The general belief -- everyone says this, and I think it's absolutely true -- is that the paramount objective of the North Korean regime is survival of itself.

The North Koreans see themselves as a miniature Soviet Union. They believe in socialism. But they believe even more in being proud Koreans, and "proud Koreans" means, in their view of history, that they've always been kicked around, by the Chinese, the Japanese, the Russians, the Americans.

It's true.

That causes their ideology to be one of absolute and total and iron self-reliance, as they call it. Autarchy. They want to sit there all by themselves, and not have to count on anybody.

The Juche philosophy.

Exactly, and if you say to the North Koreans, "Come on in. Join the wider world," which is an argument we've used in other countries and other situations to break down repressive regimes, to cause a change of political strategy in other governments -- that's not attractive to them. It's a very tough nut to crack when the definition of their state is one that is arrayed against a hostile world.

That was the Lim Don Won and Kim Dae Jung policy, though, "Sunshine."

Yes. The South Korean government under Kim Dae Jung was trying to suggest to North Korea that it could have survival in a less truculent mode than it was accustomed to, and that if they wanted to keep on keeping on, that was OK with South Korea. If you were South Korean, this would be a very reasonable point of view. Remember, if unification ever occurs on the Korean Peninsula, for South Korea, that means that 22 million poor people move into their house.

That's a much bigger deal than it was in Germany. The East German population was smaller in relation to the West German population than is the North Korean population to the South Korean. And the income differential between North and South Korea is much greater than it was between East and West Germany. So for South Korea, reunification has a mixed complexion. On one hand, "We're one people, and it would be nice to be reunified." On the other hand, the economic penalties would be huge.

So the South Koreans, like, in many ways, the United States, were trying to show North Korea a path where it could survive without taking actions that would necessarily provoke us into coming after it. Nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles are the kind of action -- we can't leave them alone if they do that.

The case to make to them is, "We can leave you alone if you don't. But we can't leave you alone if you do. So you think that nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles are your protection, but they're not."

But they have felt threatened ever since Truman and Eisenhower threatened the use of nuclear weapons against them at times, correct? And now, we have a president who repeatedly insults the leader, Kim Jong Il. It seems to be part of the policy. Axis of evil. He's called Kim Jong Il a pygmy. He's said he detests him, or loathes him. This feeds, it seems to me, a paranoia, or a sense of needing security, therefore driving sort of a self-fulfilling policy.

Unless you have a plan -- and I'm not aware of any realistic plan -- to change the government of North Korea, which looks pretty entrenched to me, then it's counterproductive to suggest to the North Koreans that you're out to get them -- if you don't really have any way of being out to get them.

Well, perhaps regime change is actually in fact the policy.

I looked at the possibility of regime change in some detail, and short of conquest -- which, of course, we can do because we have the military power, without question, to do that -- there is little evidence indeed of a situation or a crack in the armor of the North Korean regime into which we could stick a crowbar and bring them down. There's no evidence that I'm aware of that a strategy of unhorsing the regime is a realistic strategy. It's a hope. The president can hope that, if he wants. But hope and a strategy are two different things. You have to have a plan for how you're going to achieve this, and it can't be a long-term plan, because the North Koreans are capable of doing damage to our security in the short term.

When you were working with the North Koreans with Dr. Perry, was there a particular moment that jumps out, where the lights went on and you realized what the options had to be, or who you were dealing with here? You've been on the ground. So I'm talking to you as someone who might be able to give us some insight into who these guys are, what they're like.

Remember, the North Koreans have a very heated rhetoric, and a very heated way of talking to foreigners, including Americans. They talk about how they're going to turn Seoul into a sea of fire. They're going to turn Tokyo into a sea of fire. They'll ask you, "Where are you from?" And when you tell them where you're from, they'll say, "Well, we're going to turn that into a sea of fire."

They asked you where you were from?

They asked Bill Perry where he was from. He's from San Francisco, and they [said], "Well, we can turn San Francisco into a sea of fire." They have a level of rhetoric that takes your breath away.

I remember in 1994, when we were dealing with North Korea, the intelligence experts would come in, and they would say, "That's a very interesting statement by the North Koreans. It's rather conciliatory." I'd say, "How can you tell that's conciliatory?" And they would say, in effect, "Well, you know, it doesn't say anything about your mother." In North Korean terms, that's conciliatory.

So it's a whole level of paranoia, overheated rhetoric, which is the results of three generations of Stalinist indoctrination. There's no question that it's a very strange place. The situation of children and old people is heartbreaking in North Korea, and therefore, one has to realize that you're dealing with about the most dangerous situation you can imagine -- of isolated, repressive government and a people that has suffered in unimaginable ways.

You've seen the suffering firsthand?

No. Of course, when you visit there as an American, you're in Pyongyang. Pyongyang is a model city, so they're not showing you the places where there's truly suffering. But I've talked to humanitarian aid workers who have seen the real North Korea, which I never saw. There's a generation of children there, who are not just physically stunted, but in all likelihood, we understand, neurologically stunted because they didn't get enough food when they were young.

So it really is a heartbreaking situation, and when President Bush says he finds that very upsetting, it's very, very easy to share his view. I think he's absolutely right. Now on top of that situation, you have a headlong run to nuclear weapons. You've got about the strangest and most dangerous situation you can imagine.

Chernobyl AIDS

According to EuroNews today, 5% of teenage prostitutes in Western Ukraine generally test anti-body positive to HIV and a quarter of 14-15 year old girls in Odessa today are selling themselves on the streets (in part, often as the only means by which they may gain access to medical services).

This first part is not true.

In 1990, the Belorussians, Ukrainians and Russian Doctors developed the term or diagnosis of "Chernobyl AIDS" - the children growing up in the zone of fall-out or in proximity to the Dead Zone, their immune systems would suddenly spontaneously collapse, and many would develop AIDS Complex infections and many would die.

It's not the virus, it's the radiation.

They were also saying, in 1990, "Multivitamins are VERY important - to rebuild the immune system".

The Russians know what time it is.

The Suicidal Nationalism of Ukraine

Full text of President George H.W. Bush's speech, later dubbed the "Chicken Kiev speech" by commentator William Safire, to a session of the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine, 1 August 1991.

This speech was authored by Condileeza Rice.

Well, first, thank all of you for that warm welcome. And may I take this opportunity to thank all people of Ukraine that gave us such a warm welcome, such a heartfelt greeting. Every American in that long motorcade -- and believe me, it was long -- was moved and touched by the warmth of the welcome of Ukraine. We'll never forget it.

Chairman Kravchuk, thank you, sir. And to the Deputies of the Soviet, Supreme Soviet, may I salute you. Members of the clergy that are here, members of the diplomatic corps, representatives of American pharmaceutical and health care corporations who I understand are with us today, and distinguished guests all. Barbara and I are delighted to be here -- very, very happy. We have only one regret, and that is that I've got to get home on Thursday night -- I can still make it. And the reason is, our Congress goes out tomorrow, finishes their session they're in now, and I felt it was important to be there on that last day of the final session.

This beautiful city brings to mind the words of the poet Alexander Dovzhenko: "The city of Kiev is an orchard. Kiev is a poet. Kiev is an epic. Kiev is history. Kiev is art."

Centuries ago, your forebears named this country Ukraine, or "frontier," because your steppes link Europe and Asia. But Ukrainians have become frontiersmen of another sort. Today you explore the frontiers and contours of liberty.

Though my stay here is, as I said, far too short, I have come here to talk with you and to learn. For those who love freedom, every experiment in building an open society offers new lessons and insights. You face an especially daunting task. For years, people in this nation felt powerless, overshadowed by a vast government apparatus, cramped by forces that attempted to control every aspect of their lives.

Today, your people probe the promises of freedom. In cities and Republics, on farms, in business, around university campuses, you debate the fundamental questions of liberty, self-rule, and free enterprise. Americans, you see, have a deep commitment to these values. We follow your progress with a sense of fascination, excitement, and hope. This alone is historic. In the past, our nations engaged in duels of eloquent bluff and bravado. Now, the fireworks of superpower confrontation are giving way to the quieter and far more hopeful art of cooperation.

I come here to tell you: We support the struggle in this great country for democracy and economic reform. And I would like to talk to you today about how the United States views this complex and exciting period in your history, how we intend to relate to the Soviet central Government and the Republican governments.

In Moscow, I outlined our approach: We will support those in the center and the Republics who pursue freedom, democracy, and economic liberty. We will determine our support not on the basis of personalities but on the basis of principles. We cannot tell you how to reform your society. We will not try to pick winners and losers in political competitions between Republics or between Republics and the center. That is your business; that's not the business of the United States of America.

Do not doubt our real commitment, however, to reform. But do not think we can presume to solve your problems for you. Theodore Roosevelt, one of our great Presidents, once wrote: To be patronized is as offensive as to be insulted. No one of us cares permanently to have someone else conscientiously striving to do him good; what we want is to work with that someone else for the good of both of us. That's what our former President said. We will work for the good of both of us, which means that we will not meddle in your internal affairs.

Some people have urged the United States to choose between supporting President Gorbachev and supporting independence-minded leaders throughout the U.S.S.R. I consider this a false choice. In fairness, President Gorbachev has achieved astonishing things, and his policies of glasnost, perestroika, and democratization point toward the goals of freedom, democracy, and economic liberty.

We will maintain the strongest possible relationship with the Soviet Government of President Gorbachev. But we also appreciate the new realities of life in the U.S.S.R. And therefore, as a federation ourselves, we want good relations -- improved relations -- with the Republics. So, let me build upon my comments in Moscow by describing in more detail what Americans mean when we talk about freedom, democracy, and economic liberty.

No terms have been abused more regularly, nor more cynically than these. Throughout this century despots have masqueraded as democrats, jailers have posed as liberators. We can restore faith to government only by restoring meaning to these concepts.

I don't want to sound like I'm lecturing, but let's begin with the broad term "freedom." When Americans talk of freedom, we refer to people's abilities to live without fear of government intrusion, without fear of harassment by their fellow citizens, without restricting other's freedoms. We do not consider freedom a privilege, to be doled out only to those who hold proper political views or belong to certain groups. We consider it an inalienable individual right, bestowed upon all men and women. Lord Acton once observed: The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.

Freedom requires tolerance, a concept embedded in openness, in glasnost, and in our first amendment protections for the freedoms of speech, association, and religion -- all religions.

Tolerance nourishes hope. A priest wrote of glasnost: Today, more than ever the words of Paul the Apostle, spoken, 2,000 years ago, ring out: They counted as among the dead, but look, we are alive. In Ukraine, in Russia, in Armenia, and the Baltics, the spirit of liberty thrives.

But freedom cannot survive if we let despots flourish or permit seemingly minor restrictions to multiply until they form chains, until they form shackles. Later today, I'll visit the monument at Babi Yar -- a somber reminder, a solemn reminder, of what happens when people fail to hold back the horrible tide of intolerance and tyranny.

Yet freedom is not the same as independence. Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local depotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.

We will support those who want to build democracy. By democracy, we mean a system of government in which people may vie openly for the hearts -- and yes, the votes -- of the public. We mean a system of government that derives its just power from the consent of the governed, that retains its legitimacy by controlling its appetite for power. For years, you had elections with ballots, but you did not enjoy democracy. And now, democracy has begun to set firm roots in Soviet soil.

The key to its success lies in understanding government's proper role and its limits. Democracy is not a technical process driven by dry statistics. It is the very human enterprise of preserving freedom, so that we can do the important things, the really important things: raise families, explore our own creativity, build good and fruitful lives.

In modern societies, freedom and democracy rely on economic liberty. A free economy is nothing more than a system of communication. It simply cannot function without individual rights or a profit motive, which give people an incentive to go to work, an incentive to produce.

And it certainly cannot function without the rule of law, without fair and enforceable contracts, without laws that protect property rights and punish fraud.

Free economies depend upon the freedom of expression, the ability of people to exchange ideas and test out new theories. The Soviet Union weakened itself for years by restricting the flow of information, by outlawing devices crucial to modern communications, such as computers and copying machines. And when you restricted free movement -- even tourist travel -- you prevented your own people from making the most of their talent. You cannot innovate if you cannot communicate.

And finally, a free economy demands engagement in the economic mainstream. Adam Smith noted two centuries ago, trade enriches all who engage in it. Isolation and protectionism doom its practitioners to degradation and want.

I note this today because some Soviet cities, regions, and even Republics have engaged in ruinous trade wars. The Republics of this nation have extensive bonds of trade, which no one can repeal with the stroke of a pen or the passage of a law. The vast majority of trade conducted by Soviet companies -- imports and exports -- involves, as you know better than I, trade between Republics. The nine-plus-one agreement holds forth the hope that Republics will combine greater autonomy with greater voluntary interaction -- political, social, cultural, economic -- rather than pursuing the hopeless course of isolation.

And so, American investors and businessmen look forward to doing business in the Soviet Union, including the Ukraine. We've signed agreements this week that will encourage further interaction between the U.S. and all levels of the Soviet Union. But ultimately, our trade relations will depend upon our ability to develop a common language, a common language of commerce -- currencies that communicate with one another, laws that protect innovators and entrepreneurs, bonds of understanding and trust.

It should be obvious that the ties between our nations grow stronger every single day. I set forth a Presidential initiative that is providing badly needed medical aid to the Soviet Union. And this aid expresses Americans' solidarity with the Soviet peoples during a time of hardship and suffering. And it has supplied facilities in Kiev that are treating victims of Chernobyl. You should know that America's heart -- the hearts of all -- went out to the people here at the time of Chernobyl.

We have sent teams to help you improve upon the safety of Ukrainian nuclear plants and coal mines. We've also increased the number of cultural exchanges with the Republics, including more extensive legal, academic, and cultural exchanges between America and Ukraine.

We understand that you cannot reform your system overnight. America's first system of government -- the Continental Congress -- failed because the States were too suspicious of one another and the central government too weak to protect commerce and individual rights. In 200 years, we have learned that freedom, democracy, and economic liberty are more than terms of inspiration. They're more than words. They are challenges.

Your great poet Shevchenko noted: Only in your own house can you have your truth, your strength, and freedom. No society ever achieves perfect democracy, liberty, or enterprise; it if makes full use of its people's virtues and abilities, it can use these goals as guides to a better life.

And now, as Soviet citizens try to forge a new social compact, you have the obligation to restore power to citizens demoralized by decades of totalitarian rule. You have to give them hope, inspiration, determination -- by showing your faith in their abilities. Societies that don't trust themselves or their people cannot provide freedom. They can guarantee only the bleak tyranny of suspicion, avarice, and poverty.

An old Ukrainian proverb says: When you enter a great enterprise, free your soul from weakness. The peoples of the U.S.S.R. have entered a great enterprise, full of courage and vigor. I have come here today to say: We support those who explore the frontiers of freedom. We will join these reformers on the path to what we call -- appropriately call a new world order.

You're the leaders. You are the participants in the political process. And I go home to an active political process. So, if you saw me waving like mad from my limousine, it was in the thought that maybe some of those people along the line were people from Philadelphia or Pittsburgh or Detroit where so many Ukrainian-Americans live, where so many Ukrainian-Americans are with me in the remarks I've made here today.

This has been a great experience for Barbara and me to be here. We salute you. We salute the changes that we see. I remember the French expression, vive la difference, and I see different churnings around this Chamber, and that is exactly the way it ought to be. One guy wants this and another one that. That's the way the process works when you're open and free -- competing with ideas to see who is going to emerge correct and who can do the most for the people in Ukraine.

And so, for us this has been a wonderful trip, albeit far too short. And may I simply say, may God bless the people of Ukraine. Thank you very, very much.