Rep. criticizes Bush’s move to take North Korea off terrorism list

U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is decrying President Bush’s decision to take North Korea off a list of state-sponsors of terrorism. Rohrabacher called the move, which also would loosen certain sanctions against the country in response to its release of information about its nuclear program, highly irresponsible.

“The history of our relationship with North Korea is replete with examples of wishful thinking and unwarranted optimism,” Rohrabacher said in a statement released to the media. “In order to avoid a confrontation, the President seems to be following that pattern of being irrationally optimistic by letting the North Koreans off easy. It seems we’ve been down this road before in the late ’90s and that turned out to be a catastrophic failure.”

Rohrabacher said loosening any sanctions would give the totalitarian regime ruling the country more funding to prop itself up. Instead, he wanted the rulers of the country taken out of power.

“We should not be seeking ways to give the North Korean regime the means for borrowing money from international financial institutions with minimum demands for correcting their behavior,” he said. “These policies will fail because they are designed to keep the North Korean regime in power and count on the regime reforming its ways rather than eliminating it from power so it cannot pose a threat to the rest of the world.”

— Michael Alexander