McCain on North Korea, Iraq and Immigration
July 10, 2006 — -- Between low poll ratings, the boiling insurgency in Iraq, and the continuing immigration debate, it's been a tough year for President Bush.
As North Korea continues to rattle the administration with its missile tests and its continued defiance toward the international community, however, the president seems to have abandoned his no-tolerance policy toward the country dubbed part of the "Axis of Evil" along with Iraq and Iran.
Bush's former rival in the 2000 Republican primaries, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said that North Korea had been a problem long before Bush took office in 2001.
"I see the North Korean situation going back a long, long way," McCain said on "Good Morning America."
"Back in 1994, we made an agreement, which was not enforceable and violated repeatedly by the North Koreans as short a time ago as last September. They said they would not pursue this issue of nuclear weapons. So I think this particular crisis has been with us for a long time."
Experts point to the dramatic difference between the bellicose way the Bush administration treated Iraq to they way it is treating North Korea.
In this case, the president is stressing diplomacy and the need for a U.N. resolution.
In the current issue of Time magazine, which is featuring an article called "The End of Cowboy Diplomacy," President Clinton's former Defense Secretary William Perry argues President Bush has been too soft on North Korea.
"For the U.S., the risk of inaction will prove far greater," he told the magazine.
McCain said that he didn't think that the United States had a lot of leverage with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il.
China, North Korea's closest ally, needs to put pressure on the nation, he said. McCain said that the North Korea problem was a defining issue in U.S.-China relations.
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