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Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, saying three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys.
So welcoming Tim Shorrock back to the show.
Of course, he's a regular writer at The Nation.
His latest there is called Trump Meets Kim, Averting Threat of Nuclear War, and U.S. pundits are furious.
Well, not me.
I'm beside myself with glee.
Welcome back to the show, Tim.
How are you?
I'm good.
Thank you.
Listen, great job covering this thing.
You went all the way to the other side of planet Earth to cover the Singapore summit.
And well, did you get what you expected out of it?
More or less.
Yeah.
You know, it was, it couldn't really, I mean, there was those pool reporters were allowed to cover, you know, the actual, you know, meeting between Kim and Trump on the island there.
And so most of us had to watch it from, you know, one of the two press rooms that was set up, the White House press room and the International Press Center.
But, you know, it was definitely worth it, you know, to be there and to just see the whole, you know, to experience it from being in the city.
And I was able to go to my first Trump press conference, which was interesting to see him in action.
You know, I've only seen him on TV.
And it was also very interesting to observe the White House press corps from sort of the inside.
Pretty depressing, but interesting.
Well, and so did you get to see Kim at all?
Not with my own eyes.
I mean, very few people did.
I was there with a videographer from the Korea Center for Investigative Journalism.
And so the day of the summit, you know, I was, I decided to cover the early hours when they were there on the island, then watching it on the screens.
And then I went to the press conference that was held on the island.
And then my videographer went over to the hotel where Kim Jong-un was staying.
So he got this, like, brief, you know, brief look at him when his motorcade pulled in.
But, you know, the whole thing was extremely, you know, very, obviously very controlled.
Lots of security.
All right.
Well, so, I mean, we'll get to all the naysayers and whatever criticism of them later, if you want, but I want to.
But as far as their naysaying, the biggest point they made was that, man, nothing really happened.
America didn't really get anything out of it.
Trump went and gave the imprimatur of America's flag and handshake and got so little in return.
So I know overall, you think that it was quite a bit better than that.
So what was the best thing to come out of the summit?
Well, to me, the best thing was, you know, like what happened with Kim and Moon Jae-in in April, the two leaders, you know, actually put their names on a document, pledging to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and, you know, other steps.
But the fact is, they both put their names on it, which is very different than other agreements.
And, you know, frankly, I think, you know, it's a pretty good deal, the fact that, especially when you consider how far we've come from, you know, last year being, you know, loggerheads and, you know, close to war and close to nuclear war.
You know, here you had the two leaders sitting down and talking for a period of hours between themselves and then with their aides and the top officials and, you know, coming up with an agreement that could end the Korean War, if it's done right, and could lead to, you know, the peace between the U.S. and North Korea, and eventually them, you know, denuclearizing and disarming in return for the security guarantees that the U.S. promised them.
And so that itself was very good.
The thing that really, you know, surprised me was when I, you know, went to hear Trump and he gave this press conference, when he himself announced that he wanted to end these U.S.-South Korean military exercises.
So that had not been offered before.
And the day before, Secretary of State, ex-CIA head Pompeo had given this press conference where he had talked a little bit about, he said, you know, we're going to give them guarantees, you know, that have never been made before.
We called them, he called them unique.
And I think, you know, that this was part of it, this, you know, this cancellation of the U.S.-South Korean military exercises.
And Trump actually called them, you know, provocative, which is what they call them.
So that really surprised me.
And I think that probably is going to go a long way toward, you know, them matching with, you know, other things.
I think it's going to be a step-by-step process.
But, you know, I think that's, you know, that's all for the good, because, you know, these exercises, especially in the last few years, you know, had been very alarming for the North Korean side, because of the role that, you know, there was nuclear bombers taking part, and there was nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines, and SEAL Team 6, you know.
Yeah, emphasis on decapitation squads, right?
Exactly.
You know, and so those are going to be suspended.
Now it's, you know, the South Korean government and U.S. are going to formally announce something in the next couple of days about these exercises.
But, you know, that's a huge step.
I mean, you know, look, for years North Korea has said they will negotiate on their nuclear weapons and their nuclear program if the United States drops what they call its hostile policy.
And these exercises, you know, basically planning for war and invasion and decapitation, were a big part of this hostile policy.
So, you know, I think, I think this is proceeding step by step.
And, and, you know, that's, that's, that's, you know, ending the war in Korea and moving to a peace regime is just a great thing.
And I don't quite get why so many pundits and media think it's a bad thing.
Yeah.
Well, you know, that was accused us of having Bush derangement syndrome for opposing his wars.
But if we had really opposed Bush trying to make peace with Saddam Hussein, I think you could call that derangement.
That seems to be what's going on here, where people are just so obsessed with Trump, they just can't see straight anymore.
I mean, it's partisanship too, but partisanship alone doesn't explain it.
Because I think as we've seen, especially on Twitter, leftists are good on this because leftists hate Democrats.
Leftists aren't really partisan for the Democrats.
They're to the left of the Democrats.
And so as much as they hate Trump, they're perfectly for a peace deal.
Why wouldn't they be?
It's really the liberals who are too caught up in personality and politics here.
It's the liberals and, you know, Cold War liberals who, you know, and it's basically, you know, people that want to keep, you know, the U.S. empire structure intact with all its military bases and, you know, military might.
And so they see, you know, any step away from that is, you know, giving away the store, basically.
But, you know, I mean, what I observed with the press is that, you know, they're just trying to pick apart anything because they're, you know, the White House media really seems bent on, you know, anything Trump does is bad.
Therefore, you know, you're going to pick everything apart.
And I mean, you know, I have no Trump fan.
I mean, I don't know.
It's like, you know, this is one thing he's doing that's positive.
So, you know, I applaud it.
But I mean, I just think it's ridiculous to oppose this because, you know, the driving force here is the Korean people, the two Koreas and, you know, their leaders, at least in South Korea, with the massive support of South Koreans.
People really want this.
It really gets lost, right?
Trump went to Singapore and then everybody forgot that it was President Moon who invited Kim, who came and walked across the DMZ and had this big parade and all this a few weeks back.
And this is a huge breakthrough, a series of huge breakthroughs here.
It is.
It is.
And they're overlooking, you're always emphasizing the South Korean role that the rest of the press corps is always overlooking because they would rather make it about Trump so that they can dismiss it.
Right.
And in fact, they don't even recognize South Korea at all.
It's like South Korea doesn't even exist almost, you know.
And so that's the big missing piece in the reporting, is that, you know, this is important for Korea.
This is something, you know, there's been division there, you know, and war and near war for 70 years.
And, you know, there's very strong feelings to end this war and end the conflict and to move toward, you know, some kind of peace with unity, whether unification formally is way off, but at least, you know, set the stage for, you know, peaceful coexistence and then moving forward in all kinds of ways, you know, economically, culturally and so on.
And this is something that Koreans feel very, very strongly about.
And that's why, you know, the polls show, you know, 80 to 85 percent support Moon on this.
And also there was elections the other day, local elections, where his party, you know, won overwhelmingly over the over the right wing opposition, which has the same position as the liberals here, you know.
Right.
And which is a huge story.
Right.
I mean, he's Korean.
These local elections, they came just the day after, two days after, right, and were a huge reaffirmation of Moon's efforts.
Right.
Nationwide.
They were.
And now, so here's the thing of it, too, is without the whole Trump angle, and I know there would be a partisan angle anyway, as far as, you know, kind of the wingers.
But it seems to me like if Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton did this, then, you know, the personality would not be quite as high in the coverage.
And it would be more like Nixon goes to China, especially, I guess, if Jeb did it, right, a Republican, but an acceptable one.
Right.
It would be like, hey, look.
And so, in other words, if you take the capital T out of Trump for a minute and just look at it as, hey, the president of the United States went and shook hands with the dictator of North Korea and promised that, hey, let's, you know, warm up this relationship and all that.
Like, how absolutely great on the face of it.
How could anybody be opposed to that?
In fact, I saw, I think it was you retweeted where the lady from the think tank was saying, oh, no, because if there's no conflict here, we might have to pull our troops out.
Where the troops are the end, the American dominance over South Korea is the end in itself, not a means of protecting them.
Right.
And actually, the troop issue is sort of a side issue because, I mean, just because you end military exercises doesn't mean you pull out troops.
You know, the role of U.S. troops there is going to be discussed in negotiation over time.
But I mean, you know, North Korea has said on occasion, and it even said recently in talks with the South Koreans, that it might accept a U.S. presence in the South, a military presence in the South, even after a peace treaty.
So, I mean, there's a certain amount of flexibility they have on this, you know, that U.S. pundits don't seem to understand or share.
But I mean, the way Trump, what Trump did that I think also ticked a lot of people off was, you know, start saying, you know, like the other day he said, you know, Kim is listened to by his people, and I wish my people would listen to Neil the same way.
I mean, that's kind of a ridiculous thing to say, you know, about somebody who has dictatorial power over this country.
But even then, it was just a wisecrack about the White House staff.
I mean, if you look at it, he gestures toward the White House itself with his head while he says it, and he's talking about his own little lackeys there, which- That's his people.
I mean, yeah, look who we're talking about here.
It's Donald Trump.
He's just making a, I mean- Right.
And what these so-called pundits and liberals, you know, really objected to was the two flags, you know, together, right?
You know, as if, oh my God, we're equal, we're equal.
Yes, they're a country.
They're a sovereign nation.
We're a sovereign nation.
Yes, when you have negotiations, you're equal.
You know, they just freaked out about these flags.
I mean, I saw so many commentators, how could we do this?
This is denigrating the American flag.
And just the fact that he shook the hand of a dictator really just spins these people out of, you know, nuts.
But they don't say anything about, they don't say that when he meets with Saudi Arabia or in the past when, you know, South Korea was ruled by successive military dictators that were very close to the United States.
And of course, presidents, you know, hung out with them and met with them.
Or even enemy dictatorship countries or adversary type, you know, supposedly beyond the pale ones, not like our friendly dictatorships like South Korea before, but in Cuba, when Obama met with Raul Castro down there, they put the flags together.
When Nixon met with Mao Zedong, the single worst person who ever lived by skull count, there's the American flag and the Chinese flag next to each other.
And that's good that Nixon met with Mao, the worst person ever.
That helped change communist China from, you know, where they had reduced mankind to the level of cavemen and cannibals.
And it helped to end true communism in China and lead to the highest increase in the standard of living of the most people in all the world history in just a few short decades.
Thank God he did it.
And it helped avert nuclear war between us and China as well.
But oh no, Nixon should have been strung up for putting our flag near theirs, you know?
Right.
Well, I don't know if I'd agree with your characterization of Chairman Mao and the Chinese communists at that time.
I mean, they start 40 million people to death.
I mean, that's worse than Hitler or Stalin or Tamer Lane near Genghis Khan even.
40 million.
Okay.
But it's like, okay, what are you going to do?
You know what, that these same reporters had been around when President Roosevelt met with Stalin, what would they, I mean, this was like the same thing.
Yeah, you meet with the leader of the country to make the peace.
That's what you do.
Yeah, Reagan and Gorbachev, he got our flags together there.
And Nixon himself was a mass murderer for bombing, all the bombing he did, you know, in Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam.
And so it's like, that's what you do.
You meet, you know, like nations meet and the nation states work, you know, make the peace if they can.
And in this case, they're going pretty far.
And also, you know, I think that making the peace and making the Korean Peninsula nuclear-free as well as, you know, a place of peace instead of war and confrontation, that will really help the situation in terms of human rights.
You know, peace is good for human rights.
And so overall, I think, you know, this is something Americans, you know, should support.
And in fact, the polls have shown in just the last couple days that a majority of Americans, you know, support this, despite the horrendous media antagonism toward it.
So, you know, I think people are smart enough to realize, you know, yeah, you know, okay, he's a dictator, but you know, so we meet with him.
You know, look what's happened.
Look, they're not firing missiles anymore.
They're not testing.
They've blown up a test site where they were the one place where they tested their nuclear weapons.
And, you know, they're agreeing to all kinds of things with South Korea.
So, yeah, this is a good thing, not a bad thing.
All right.
Hang on just one second.
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Well, and you know what?
I've got to say, I'm pleasantly surprised by those poll numbers that you cite.
Because, as you've been saying, the media consensus has just been uniformly against this, and just characterizing it as the most irresponsible thing that Trump could ever do.
And he's got a pretty low approval rating.
He didn't get that honeymoon period that most presidents get.
He's kind of been under scandal all along, and he inherited a lot of wars, and that he's continued and escalated, in fact.
So he's made himself very unpopular in a lot of ways.
And yet, despite all of that, and despite the uniform media coverage against this, people still support it.
And I think that's really great.
And it's funny, you know, usually the Americans, they disappoint me, but this time they're really coming through for us, Tim, I think.
Yeah, I mean, I think they can see through the crap, you know.
And besides, I think a lot of people that voted for Trump, he was talking about when he ran against the war in Iraq, and how much money was wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I think a lot of, whether he meant it or not is one thing, but a lot of people that vote for him, those kind of, those people, you know, feel the same thing.
Like, we don't want to waste, you know, our sons and daughters, you know, plus all this money on these kind of useless wars.
He even ran specifically on Korea.
People don't want to have a war.
I mean, he even ran specifically on Korea, said, I want to have a cheeseburger with him, and sit down at a table and work things out.
I know.
In fact, I saw someone this morning on Twitter.
He's going to have a cheeseburger in Singapore.
Yeah, yeah.
Someone on Twitter this morning put out an old screenshot of Hillary Clinton saying Donald Trump is too soft on North Korea from 2016.
There you go.
Not much question about where we'd be if it was her right now, you know?
It'd be confrontational because they never would have, she never would have met with Kim Jong-un.
She never would have taken that leap, I don't think.
But who knows?
You know, I mean, I think getting back to what we were talking about earlier, I think the key person here has been Moon Jae-in and the South Korean government.
And they might have been able to persuade the Democrats, but that's neither here nor there because they're not in power.
But they're sounding, I mean, you know, Democrats are like leading the charge against this agreement.
You know, like two Democratic senators, very liberal senators, have introduced legislation to stop Trump from withdrawing any troops from Korea because of his cancellation of these military exercises.
So, you know, as I've been pointing out, you know, these liberals and Democrats are more to the right of South Korea's very, very far right, you know?
I mean, that's, you know, you really got to be nuts to be that far right.
And seriously, the commander in chief of the American armed forces can move them wherever the hell he wants.
If he can start a war in Libya, he can pull the troops out of Korea, you know?
And what a disappointment that Tammy Duckworth, the wounded Democratic senator from Iraq War II who lost her legs there, instead of using that to protect her right flank to argue for peace, is instead just lining up with Schumer and all the rest of the Democrat hawks up there.
Disgraceful.
I'm afraid that, you know, if this agreement, or like, say, if they get a peace treaty and it's signed and they bring it before the Senate, like treaties do get, you know, considered by the Senate, that the Democrats will be the opposition.
And that would be insane.
But, you know, it's likely, like, you know, it was a week or two ago, Schumer and other Democrats put out this letter basically saying, if you don't get, you know, a 100 percent guarantee of denuclearization, we're going to oppose this.
And they didn't get that.
They got a commitment towards denuclearization.
But what they got was, you know, it's always been clear that the U.S. could never go into these kind of talks and demand, you know, basically surrender without having any kind of talks about any other aspect of the relationship.
I mean, the line has been for years, first they denuclearize, then you talk, you know, and that's ridiculous because that's basically saying you surrender, then we'll talk.
And they would never do that.
They made it very clear they would not do that, even leading up to this, you know, meeting where they, you know, Trump canceled it at one point, like, what, three weeks ago after some North Korean high-level, you know, diplomats first, you know, condemned the military exercises, which included B-52s, which carry nuclear weapons.
And then the Pentagon quickly, you know, withdrew the B-52s from those exercises.
And then when Bolton came out, you know, talking about a Libya solution, which is basically regime change on steroids to the North Koreans, and they criticized him for that.
And then Pence backed up Bolton and said, you know, if the North Koreans don't go along, they're going to see a Libya kind of solution.
And they said, you know, they really criticized him heavily and personally in, you know, their state media.
And that's what, you know, ticked Trump off and he canceled it.
But then within 24 hours, another North Korean official wrote something to Trump and said, you know, we appreciate you, you know, joining these negotiations and we're ready to talk.
And that brought him back.
Right.
You know, so there's been this kind of give and take over a few weeks.
And well, and they had that second meeting at the DMZ too.
I think Kim raced over there to say to Moon, hey, let's move forward and drag Trump with us here.
Right.
Like the next day, the day after that, like he went right down to like, and then, you know, Moon made sure that talks got back on track.
But, you know, meanwhile, there's been negotiation, you know, in Panmunjom between, you know, senior U.S. officials and senior North Korean officials.
And then, of course, there was some negotiations going on even before the summit in Singapore.
Right.
So there was like three pronged, you know, discussions going on.
And all those people were in Singapore.
The people that were in Panmunjom were in Singapore as part of the North Korean delegation.
And we got trial balloons on all that stuff.
Right.
Pompeo and them had been working on this for a few weeks and they were already leaking that they're going to drop their demand.
We have to pull our troops out.
They're going to, you know, be willing to even tolerate troops for the long term, but they are willing to denuclearize, etc.
But so, yeah, do you think they really will denuclearize?
I mean, it seems to me like I don't give a damn as long as they don't take back the handshake and go back to, you know, Cold War posture.
It seems like a lot to ask for them to really give up all their nukes that have won them this much respect.
What if we just got to freeze?
And they said, OK, we've got a dozen or two dozen and we're going to stop there.
But we'll show you all the ones we have and let you go.
It's hard.
It's hard to know.
It's got to see what how to put the processes, you know, because I mean, like every other country in recent, you know, recent times has gone nuclear, has kept their weapons like, you know, except for Libya.
Right.
But they didn't have their they had a program.
They didn't have weapons.
Yeah.
And they had barely anything.
They only bought enough centrifuges to give up, basically, in South Africa, gave up their nukes when they gave up apartheid rule.
Right.
That's the only thing that has them.
Yeah, I guess.
OK, that's the only one.
So, you know, but, you know, yes, I do think I do think it's possible.
And I think and they want, you know, when they say, they sign, Trump and Kim sign, you know, complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Now, a lot of pundits jumped on that here saying, oh, it doesn't say complete denuclearization of North Korea.
Well, that's because complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula also means removing South Korea from the so-called U.S. nuclear umbrella and, you know, stop having weapons, nuclear weapons aimed at North Korea.
So, you know, that's that's part of this process.
I mean, the North Koreans are saying, OK, we will, you know, we can denuke, we can get rid of our nuclear program, but we have to not be under nuclear threat from you.
Of course, they can be anyone can be under nuclear threat from them.
This is we have stored in the silos in the Midwest.
Sure.
But as far as like being surrounded by them in Japan and the waters around the Korean Peninsula, I mean, we have this massive fleet in Japan and then, you know, many bases primarily in Okinawa.
And all these, you know, all these planes, the advanced planes and ships are all capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
Yeah.
And there's got to be a way for, you know, let's.
There's got to be a way to make to make the promise that, look, we're not doing the Libya model, we're doing the Cuba model.
When we say security guarantee, we really mean it.
Never mind what John Bolton said.
And never mind even if we're talking about President Chelsea Clinton 10 years from now or whatever it is.
No president can ever take this back.
We swear to God we won't invade.
Because after all, Kennedy's promise to Cuba has held for whatever series of reasons.
It is.
You know, that's right.
That's right.
And it is very similar to that.
You know, although I used to say when people used to compare the Korean nuclear crisis, the Cuban nuclear crisis, I'd say it's not really any comparison because, you know, North Korea, for one thing, is not the Soviet Union.
It was the Soviet missiles that were in Cuba that were the problem for.
Yeah, they were within range of the USA.
Yeah, this is totally different.
Yeah, they were right down there in Cuba, easy to hit the US.
Right.
And they had and there was they had many missiles that could hit the US.
I mean, North Korea now does not even have a nuclear missile, a nuclear weapon that can hit the US because they stopped their test game short of putting a warhead on a missile and having it go through the atmosphere successfully and hitting a target.
They have not done that yet.
And a lot of people think that they're still like, you know, two to three years away.
So in some ways, you know, the threat was way overhyped by by the US, by the Trump administration in previous administrations.
Well, so, I mean, there's a lot of, you know, like the like the like the like, you know, the South and North Korea are continuing talks.
And yesterday, or the day, you know, the last two days, they had military to military talks, you know, and they're actually, you know, the South Korea requested that they north side remove some of the artillery they have on the border and moving it back, you know, back up north.
Right.
Oh, yeah.
So it's not so close to Seoul.
And all these things are being discussed.
You know, like this is what's this is what peace negotiations are about.
And that itself is huge.
That artillery is a huge deal itself.
Absolutely.
Right.
That artillery is what can demolish Seoul if there's any kind of if there's any kind of war or any kind of US attack on North Korea.
That's you know, that's their defense.
And so, you know, moving away from that confrontation is just it's just a huge, huge deal.
And so, you know, I think I think step by step, you know, this can this can really be done.
And, you know, so I think the key guy here in the US is Pompeo.
And so it's important to read and, you know, look at what he says, as opposed to, you know, Trump's spouting off or tweeting, because what Pompeo says in his press conferences, you know, is actually quite interesting.
And he, you know, like, that's where you really see what the real what the real US policy is.
Well, and so, I mean, that's such a great point, because he's a real hawk anyway, right?
He comes from, yes, he's a right wing Christian from Kansas, but very close to even sort of the lower fringier precincts of the neoconservative movement, like the Center for Security Policy.
And, you know, Gaffney and his merry band of kooks there.
And so what he's willing to go along with, or even, you know, really run, run with here and do for the president, seems like that it's got to be a real indicator of, you know, kind of the patience of the right wing of the elite in a way that he's only going to go so far.
I mean, he's serving the president here.
Clearly, this is not the right wing think tanks came up with this policy or anything like that.
But he's still within, you know, their social group or whatever, they haven't ostracized him yet.
He's probably not willing to completely break with them.
But then we see the rest of the whole center, everybody kind of to the left of the far right wing here on foreign policy are completely going nuts here.
So it seems like, you know, maybe they'll be willing to tolerate some kind of agreement here, but they really don't want to see a real end to the war.
They don't want to see a real peace treaty, God forbid reunification, but no one's even talking about that.
But they really want something closer to the status quo than not, it seems like here, right?
I think so.
You know, and, you know, the one thing, you know, Pompeo is, you know, extreme right, and he has all these, you know, relationships, as you mentioned.
But I think that his experience as director of CIA gave him, you know, a lot of insight into the situation with North Korea that allowed them to move ahead.
Because, you know, one of the aspects of this, of course, you know, any kind of agreement that's going to be forthcoming in terms of their nuclear weapons is, you know, the verification side, right?
And, you know, one of the kind of interesting things that Trump said in his press conference, he was talking about, he said the North Koreans offered to shut down a missile engine facility.
And Trump said, we know that when that operates because we can pick up the heat.
He said this twice, we can pick up the heat.
And what he's talking about there is a very highly classified kind of intelligence called MASINT, which is called Measures and Signature Intelligence, which a lot of people don't know about.
But like, you know, from satellites and from overhead surveillance, you know, they don't only pick up, you know, NSA signals and all that stuff, but they can pick up signs of plants changing near a facility.
They can feel, they can sense, the sensors can pick up changes in temperature and, as he called it, heat and that kind of thing.
And so, you know, if they, you know, say they're going to close a machine, you know, a facility like that, that has engines, the U.S. can tell if they close it, if those engines are not being fired anymore.
So I think, you know, Pompeo's experience with the CIA, and the CIA is really in the center of this policy.
I think they can rely to a great extent on that kind of intelligence and surveillance, reconnaissance, as well as, of course, you know, people on the ground.
There's got to be, you know, inspectors on the ground, IAEA, and all of that.
I mean, that's just like the Iran deal, right?
That was a big part of the Iran deal, was the CIA and the military assuring Obama that if anything changes, we'll let you know.
And never even mind the IAEA inspectors, basically.
Yeah.
I mean, we, you know, U.S. intelligence has this kind of technology, and it's, it's, you know, it's classified, so we don't know about it.
You know, they don't tell you what they can do, but they do, they can pick up a whole lot.
Yeah.
Well, this is a very poorly developed, very poor and poorly developed nation where any major industrial project is going to be surveilled 24 hours a day.
It's not like they don't have enough satellites for watching with.
And the kind of funny thing about North Korea, this has been true for years, is that, you know, they know how closely U.S. intelligence watches them, right?
But a lot of times they do all these things in the open.
I mean, they don't, they don't try to hide the, you know, last year they weren't trying to hide the fact that they were moving mobile missile launchers around, or they didn't hide any of this stuff.
I mean, it's all in clear sight of U.S. intelligence.
I mean, so they weren't, it was not a secret program.
I mean, after all, in the beginning of 2017, Kim Jong-un made this speech, his January speech, and said, you know, this year we're going to completely develop our nuclear capability.
And lo and behold, they did.
And to the extent that he thought they did, and then the next New Year's speech, he said, well, we've completed our nuclear force, and now we want to turn toward the economy.
And now we want to talk to, you know, South Korea, you know, to have some negotiations with the government there.
And, you know, we want to participate in the Olympics.
That was all in his January speech.
And ever since then, things have moved forward.
So, you know, in a way, they were far more predictable than the U.S. was.
You know, and always the line here is, oh, this government is so unpredictable, you know.
Actually, they're not.
They're quite predictable.
Yeah.
And they have a very limited set of interests, pretty easy to define, it seems like.
And speaking of which, and I'll let you go after this, but I like the way Adam Johnson from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and a mutual Twitter friend of ours, I know, puts this, about all this concern trolling about human rights in North Korea, where no one denies that this is a totalitarian country, you know, unlimited government power there over the people there.
And yet, think of all the question begging going on there, as though this strangulation policy of sanctions and isolation and threats has done anything to improve human rights in Korea, when we all know exactly what would improve human rights in Korea, the same thing that did when we opened up relations with China, trade and exposure to outside influences and capital to invest in doing things like growing food and building factories, you know.
Right.
And you know, one of the things, when Kim Jong Un was in Singapore, one of the nights I was there, you know, the Singapore foreign minister gave him this tour of their kind of waterfront by the river there.
And it's just, you know, a beautiful site.
There's these incredible buildings there.
And this is like Water Park, which is like three, you know, huge buildings on top of this thing that looks like a boat.
And there's a garden up there, you know, it's very spectacular.
You know, you can just see the economic of Singapore, like, pulsating there, right.
So he went there, and they were telling him about all these things.
And then they showed this on North Korean, you know, media, you know, within hours of when he was there.
So I think, yeah, that's what he sees the model of China and Vietnam as well, right, where, you know, it's sort of opening up to capital with some, with controls, right, their own control.
So I think that's the model he's looking at.
And that he's trying to persuade, doesn't necessarily have to persuade, but he's trying to, you know, explain to the people of North Korea that this is the path that we're on.
Right.
So, you know, I think, I think if the negotiations, you know, can continue, and they can, and they, you know, they start, you know, reaching milestones in the road towards, you know, peace treaty and denuclearization, it's going to, it's going to work out well, and all these people that are criticizing it are going to look like fools.
Right.
Yeah.
And, you know, I appreciate the way you're always emphasizing the South Korean perspective here, which gets so washed away by the American media.
But also, you know, especially for all those harping on human rights in Korea, for really in North Korea, for really looking at this as individualists, and as the people of North Korea, who are stuck behind this legal fiction of their state, but really, they're just a bunch of people on some land trying to get by in the world, that what we want is for humanity to have access to them, and for them to have access to humanity, you know, Western capitals and corporations and whatever, notwithstanding, we want as much openness as possible for those people, and under whatever excuse, right?
In my last article, I quoted someone from the American Friends Service Committee, which just sent a delegation there, and they've had a relationship with North Korea for a long time, and they have missions there, humanitarian missions, and, you know, they help in the agricultural area.
There's been other US NGOs that have gone there as well.
But, I mean, they're, you know, there's a lot of parts of their economy that, you know, badly need assistance.
Like, for example, their medical system.
They have very good doctors, very well-trained surgeons, but they don't have the technology, they don't have the equipment, you know, they can't afford it.
It's all been going into military.
So, you change that equation, and you have, you know, engagement, you know, there's a lot of ways it can open up.
And I actually think, you know, a unity over the time, South and North Korea together could make, you know, quite a force, and, you know, might be able to outpace Japan.
Well, we've already seen with sports and with music and all these things, I mean, after all, it is a peninsula.
It's a civilization that goes back for however many thousand years, right?
5,000 years.
One people.
A lot of these people, you know, have families on the other side, you know, and they want to see their families before they die.
You know, there's all this concern now about breaking up families here, what ISIS is doing, which is, you know, horrific, terrible human rights violations on the part of our government, you know.
But we need to think about the divided families of Korea, and how peace can bring about unity of those families, and people can see their families again, and be united with families again, and the country itself can be united.
You know, division is a terrible thing.
And that can only be applauded.
So, you know, I'm optimistic.
Cool.
Well, me too.
And, you know, in great measure, because of your great work on this, and what all I've read and what all I've learned from you about this subject, I think it's going to work out too.
I don't know if they'll get rid of all their nukes, but I agree with you that there's a possibility that they even will give up their nukes, if they can get a good enough security guarantee from the US.
I think absolutely the possibility is there.
And certainly, I mean, I think it's already, David Stockman said, it's already over.
The fact that they shook hands, that's it, the Cold War is finally over.
The old one, we already have a new one with Russia, but this is the end of the old one.
So.
That had never happened before.
The two leaders meeting.
That in itself is so important.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your great work on this, Tim.
Thank you, Scott.
Really appreciate your support and keep tapping me for interviews.
I'm happy to do it.
Great.
Great.
Talk to you again soon.
All right, you guys, that is Tim Shorrock.
And I'm sorry, I didn't say at the beginning, but the book is Spies for Hire, which I haven't read, but I guarantee you is awesome about the privatization of the CIA in the Cheney Obama era there.
And then all this great stuff on Korea.
This one is called Trump Meets Kim, Averting the Threat of Nuclear War.
And U.S. pundits are furious.
That's at The Nation.
All right, you guys, and that's the show.
You know me, scotthorton.org, youtube.com slash scotthortonshow, libertarianinstitute.org.
And buy my book, and it's now available in audiobook as well, Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
Hey, it's endorsed by Ron Paul and Daniel Ellsberg and Stephen Walt and Peter Van Buren and Matthew Ho and Daniel Davis and Anand Gopal and Patrick Coburn and Eric Margulies.
You'll like it.
Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
And follow me on Twitter at scotthortonshow.
Thanks, guys.
