With A Little Luck, Maybe This Time They'll Keep Him....

[Lord Jim]

(Also posted at the CSB)

Jimmy Carter expected to visit North Korea over U.S. prisoner

By Jack Kim and Jeremy Laurence Jack Kim And Jeremy Laurence – 1 hr 44 mins ago

SEOUL (Reuters) – Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is expected to travel to North Korea on a humanitarian mission to win the release of an American jailed for illegally entering the isolated country, a U.S. official said on Tuesday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was confirming a report by the U.S.-based Foreign Policy journal, which on Monday reported that Carter, 85, would go as a private citizen to secure the release of Aijalon Mahli Gomes.

The visit would take place amid heightened tensions on the peninsula after the torpedoing in March of a South Korean warship, which Seoul blames on the North and which prompted Washington to announce expanded sanctions against Pyongyang.

Last month, North Korean state media reported that Gomes, 30, had attempted to commit suicide, just a few months after being sentenced to eight years hard labor.

U.S. government spokesmen declined comment on the expected Carter visit, but a senior administration official said any such trip would be conducted as a private humanitarian effort.

Former President Bill Clinton made a similar visit last year, winning the release of two U.S. journalists also jailed for illegally entering the North.

South Korean media have reported the North wants Washington to send an envoy to discuss improving ties, including the resumption of stalled six-party nuclear disarmament talks.

Both Washington and Seoul have said Pyongyang must first admit responsibility for the sinking of the warship before they would consider returning to the talks.

SECOND ATTEMPT AT WINNING RELEASE

The U.S. State Department said last week that a four-person team had gone to Pyongyang earlier in August to secure the release of Gomes but was not successful.

Foreign Policy, quoting sources familiar with Carter, said Carter might take his wife and daughter and was slated to leave within days.

Carter has dealt directly with North Korea in the past, and analysts said the visit might improve the chilly diplomatic atmosphere. But experts say Washington is unlikely to shift from its current tough stance.

In a 1994 trip, Carter went to Pyongyang to meet with then North Korean leader Kim Il Sung and persuaded him to join talks about its nuclear weapons ambitions.

At that time, the North had threatened to reprocess its spent nuclear fuel, prompting the Clinton administration to call for U.N. sanctions.

"Carter and North Korea have a trust between them that grew out of his 1994 visit," said Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. [Yeah, that worked out real well....]


(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed in Washington, editing by Jonathan Thatcher and Jackie Frank)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100824/us_ ... NhcnRlcnQ-

[dales]

Yes, Jimmy......brush up on you Korean so you won't be out foxed this time.

The Korean psyche is not to be under estimated.

[Gob]

Hey, give the man a break Jim, at least he's trying to do something good.

Maybe they should send the arch diplomat and intellect;

[Lord Jim]

Hey, give the man a break Jim, at least he's trying to do something good.

So have others....














Actually, that comparison is unfair.....

To Chamberlain.....

He was a tough fisted cunning old fox compared to TIC.....

[Big RR]

Come on Jim, what does Carter have to bargain away. And even if the old DEar LEader scores one up on him, what possible difference would that make to the US?

[Gob]

Aijalon Mahli Gomes is an American teacher from Boston, Massachusetts, detained in North Korea on January 25, 2010 for illegally entering the country.

He was tried by North Korea, and on April 6, 2010, he was sentenced to eight years of hard labor and fined $700,000 (USD). He was allowed to speak to his mother by phone on April 30, 2010.[2]

In June 2010, North Korea threatened "harsher punishment" by "applying a wartime law to him" if the United States continued its "hostile approach" in the follow-up to the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan. Gomes was reported to have been hospitalized after attempting suicide in July.

The American government sent a consular envoy to Pyongyang to discuss his release but Gomes currently remains in North Korea. In August 2010, the country agreed to release Gomes, but only if former US president Jimmy Carter came to get him. Carter agreed to the trip and arrived to Pyongyang on August 25

As I say Jim, I think you need to put your dislike of Carter aside for once, and credit the man with trying to help this idiot out of a hole.

[Lord Jim]

I think you need to put your dislike of Carter aside for once,

No I don't....

credit the man with trying to help this idiot out of a hole.

Yeah okay, fine he get's credit for getting on a plane and going over there.

He doesn't get any credit for having negociated anything, since as the article you quote points out, it's already a done deal....

He just has to go over their and kiss a little tyrant butt....

And I admit, he does have a real talent for that....

He gave a real nice tongue treatment to Fidel Castro's hemorrhoids the last time he was in Cuba....

[Gob]

You're a hard man to please Jim.

If Carter had refused to go, and it is a big trip for a man of his age, what would you be saying then?

[Scooter]

How does one "illegally enter" North Korea without having the intent to do so? Does somebody decide to take a dip in the Yalu River or a stroll through the minefields of the DMZ, lose their bearings, and mistakenly cross the border, or what? The penalties that the PRK imposes in such cases are grotesquely harsh, granted, but should we be expending political and diplomatic capital on saving these idiots from their own stupidity?

[Long Run]

Good point, Scooter. This guy was apparently looking to make political points and gain media access by entering North Korea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el9tgCSbCpQ

In this case, we then have North Korea scoring political points by forcing a decision by the current administration to either send a former U.S. President to once again come and get an idiot American out of hock (Clinton was the last one), or let the citizen rot in N. Korea. It's not really a Carter issue as I see it (and I am no fan of his), but one for the current administration which is handed two bad choices because of the actions of one of our countrymen. Carter, and Clinton before him, are simply being diplomats in rescuing an American from their own stupidity; I guess they could pass on the task but that would be counter to what the current POTUS is requesting of them. It is probably worth the powers that be in D.C. to figure out what strategy we want to employ in this situation before it happens, and then follow that strategy, rather than having to react to Pyongyang's puppeteering efforts.

[Lord Jim]

You're a hard man to please Jim.

Yes, well, that's part of my charm...

If Carter had refused to go, and it is a big trip for a man of his age, what would you be saying then?

That would have depended entirely on the reason he gave for not going....

If he had said, "I would have gone, but I'm too weak and frail to make the trip"....

I would have been relieved, but not impressed....

If, on the other hand, he had said, "Though I consider the actions of the North Korean Government in holding this person captive to be unjustified, I must look at the larger picture and I refuse to allow this regime to use me and the office I once held for propaganda purposes as I mistakenly did in 1994"

My respect for him would have risen exponentially...

[Lord Jim]

How does one "illegally enter" North Korea without having the intent to do so? Does somebody decide to take a dip in the Yalu River or a stroll through the minefields of the DMZ, lose their bearings, and mistakenly cross the border, or what? The penalties that the PRK imposes in such cases are grotesquely harsh, granted, but should we be expending political and diplomatic capital on saving these idiots from their own stupidity?

Those are very legitimate questions Scooter...

It's not like the North Koreans are keeping their reaction towards Westerners entering their country without official approval a big secret...

We shouldn't be in the business of sending a former United States President to rescue every drunken frat boy who decides to swim across the Yalu and back...

[@meric@nwom@n]

Mission accomplished.

I really question the motives of someone who is so down on an ex-President who has done as much good as Carter has.

[Lord Jim]

I really question the motives of someone who is so down on an ex-President who has done as much good as Carter has.

I really question the knowledge of someone who seems to know so little of the history of this waste of space B list President as you do...

Once you've done a little reading and got yourself up to speed on the history of this man's Presidency, perhaps we can have a meaningful discussion ...

Until then I have you at disadvantage...


Unless of course we're discussing "Jaws"...

[Big RR]

Jim--I'm no fan of Carter's presidency either, and didn't vote for him in 1980, but name one ex-president who has done more or is better respected worldwide than Carter. He was an ineffective president (although I respected him on his human rights stance), but he's a highly effective ex-president who has done more for the peace and security of those in the world, and human rights, than any ex-president I can think of. Perhaps you can name one who has done more?

[@meric@nwom@n]

I really question the motives of someone who is so down on an ex-President who has done as much good as Carter has.

I really question the knowledge of someone who seems to know so little of the history of this waste of space B list President as you do...

Once you've done a little reading and got yourself up to speed on the history of this man's Presidency, perhaps we can have a meaningful discussion ...

Until then I have you at disadvantage...


Unless of course we're discussing "Jaws"...

I said nothing about him as President, I said ex-President. Reading comprehension issue? You really have no clue what I know or don't know about him. Fortunately his record as an ex-President speaks for itself. That you cannot process that says more about you than him.

[Lord Jim]

I respected him on his human rights stance

Yes, his "human rights" stance gave the world a new word....

"Ayatollah"...

We've been paying for it ever since...

Mr. Reagan's human right stance on the other hand, freed a couple of hundred million people from the yoke of Soviet slavery, and lifted the specter of global nuclear annihilation from mankind...

But TIC get's the nobel peace prize....

Go figure...

[Lord Jim]

an ex-President who has done as much good as Carter has.

(reposted from the CSB)

In the first place, it would take an enormous amount of "good works" (like maybe discovering a cure for cancer, or solving the problems of cold fusion) to balance out the bad done by what he did in North Korea in 1994. Playing a pivotal role in North Korea's development of a nuclear bomb weighs very heavy on the scale. By all rights, his post-Presidential years should be remembered most for that....

Allowing himself to be used as a willing propaganda tool by foreign governments (like the Castro Regime) and groups hostile to the US has been another notable hallmark of his post -Presidential years....

The primary function of the Carter Center has been to give a stamp of legitimacy to sham elections run by left-wing thugs...

I used to give him credit for "Habitat For Humanity", until none other than Andy H, (generally a Carter apologist of the first order) said he had had very little to do with that....

All in all, the country and the world would have been much better served if Jimmy Carter had spent the past 30 years playing golf.....

[@meric@nwom@n]

Lord Jim, smugly bi-postal.

[Big RR]

The primary function of the Carter Center has been to give a stamp of legitimacy to sham elections run by left-wing thugs...

Sham? Not from what I, or the multitide of other observers (and they were in a far better position to assess the legitimacy of the elections than you or I), have seen. Granted, they did oust some rather brutal right wing regimes and replace them with elected officials, but this hardly makes them left wing or sham.

to balance out the bad done by what he did in North Korea in 1994. Playing a pivotal role in North Korea's development of a nuclear bomb weighs very heavy on the scale. By all rights, his post-Presidential years should be remembered most for that....

once again i'll remind you that they were developing it before he travelled there, and they continued doing so. Nothing was deterring them before or after, and it was a pretty open secret what they were doing. All the tough talk rhetoric didn't deter them, so why you blame Carter and assign him a "pivotal role" in the nuclear weapon development is beyond me.

Allowing himself to be used as a willing propaganda tool by foreign governments (like the Castro Regime) and groups hostile to the US has been another notable hallmark of his post -Presidential years....

Even if this is true (and i don't think it is), how has it hurt the US? And what objectives were achieved by his (in your opinion) playing the fool. People released from prison, e.g.? Isn't that worth a little embarassment; it's not like the US was harmed at all.

give him credit for "Habitat For Humanity", until none other than Andy H, (generally a Carter apologist of the first order) said he had had very little to do with that....

While I respect andy a great deal (and admit I never read the posts you are apparently referring to), this runs counter to most of the accounts I have read. Indeed, by all I read Carter was instrumental behind its founding, and he has been an exceptional spokeman for the orgaization.