the outcome of the election

[kandrathe]

For me, the question is at what point do you decide that N.K. really is threatening the US, or any other country for that matter?

Do they have to pursue nuclear weapons development? 
Do they need to fire a couple of test weapons?
Do they need to point them at major cities?

The information that we, the American public, have has changed since the months leading up to the Iraq war. 

Could it not be argued that North Korea was farther along in their WMD development than Iraq was at the start of this conflict?  If my memory servers me, the media coverage in the US was saturated with Iraq-centered stories leading up to the beginning of the war while N.K. was just kinda swept under the carpet.

So, if WMDs were not in Iraq, were not even being actively pursued (sp?), telling me that, "Hey, even though there never were any WMD we still got Sadam,  no foul right?" isn't enough .

The case for war was essentially this guy has weapons already or the ability to develop/acquire weapons and he can pass those weapons to any number of these guys (terrorists) and he's going to come and use them against your home towns. 

I just feel that based on those qualifications, our money, effort, and blood would have been better spent elsewhere.  That's why I couldn't vote for Bush (among numerous other things).

Dubya did get at least one thing right?  For good or bad, we as a country got ourselves into the mess that is Iraq, and we owe it to ourselves, the world, and especiially the Iraqi people to get out of this mess ASAP.  If Bush can successfully (sp?) withdraw US forces from Iraq in the next 4 years then I will be satisfied with his performance provided he doesn't screw up everything else.

Guess the will of the people has been done.

Smithy

P.S. Sorry if that went off on a little tangent.  Post just seemed to keep on growing.  :)
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Not to get into this too far. I think personally, for the Bush administration there was a conjunction of factors that spelled trouble. The fact that Iraq had developed sophisticated WMD and had used them (and possibly even Sarin in the Gulf War ala GWS), they had relationships with and had sheltered terrorists and terrorist organizations, the sanctions regime was crumbling, and that they had ignored numerous UN resolutions since 1991. The fear post 9/11 was that a nation would use a terrorist organization as a delivery vehicle for WMD. North Korea does not fit that model, although they only have one saleable commodity, weapons.

But, if North Korea is known to have nuclear missles in launch readiness pointed at Okinawa, I think there would be some people in the US Defense Department with ichy trigger fingers. You are esentially returning the US to a cold war stance with a much smaller foe, and there are some who are crazy enough to think we could win a theatre nuclear war. I don't think anyone wants that to happen, including North Korea.