{"id":5934,"date":"2010-06-28T19:49:47","date_gmt":"2010-06-28T23:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=5934"},"modified":"2010-06-28T19:49:47","modified_gmt":"2010-06-28T23:49:47","slug":"state-department-minces-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/5934\/state-department-minces-words\/","title":{"rendered":"State Department Minces Words"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before leaving office, then President George W. Bush allowed his State Department to take North Korea off the department’s list of \u201cState Sponsors of Terror.\u201d\u00a0 Earlier this year, an international panel concluded that North Korea was responsible for firing on and sinking a South Korean warship, killing 46 sailors.\u00a0 Today, President Barack Obama\u2019s State Department said this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said during a regular news conference that the sinking was the act of one state’s military against another’s and not an act of terrorism. Thus, it is not ground to put North Korea back on the U.S. terror blacklist.<\/p>\n

“It is our judgment that the sinking of the Cheonan is not an act of international terrorism and by itself would not trigger placing North Korea on the U.S. state (sponsors) of terrorism list,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But Crowley assured head-scratching journalists that if North Korea complies better with \u201csponsoring\u201d terrorism, the regime will be rewarded.<\/p>\n

“We will not hesitate to take action if we have information that North Korea has repeatedly provided support for acts of terrorism,” Crowley added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, it sounds like there are two reasons for no relisting North Korea on the \u201cSponsors of Terror\u201d list.\u00a0 Both require quibbling with definitions.\u00a0 First, when a sovereign nation\u2019s military kills members of another sovereign nation\u2019s military, it is not an act of terrorism.\u00a0 Okay, but it is most certainly an act of war.\u00a0 Is the Obama State Department implying that North Korea engaged in an act of war?\u00a0 If so, it seems like there should be consequences for such an act above and beyond concluding that it doesn\u2019t meet an overly technical definition of terrorism.\u00a0 (Anyone think the South Korean sailors weren\u2019t terrorized as they died?)<\/p>\n

The second reason is that \u201csponsoring\u201d terrorism apparently requires a sovereign nation to have \u201crepeatedly provided support\u201d for acts of terrorism.\u00a0 But when did sponsoring something require \u201crepeated\u201d support?\u00a0 Is the local car dealership not a sponsor of a Little League team unless it \u201crepeatedly\u201d sponsors them?\u00a0 At this point, does \u201crepeated\u201d mean twice, or more than twice?\u00a0 And is North Korea staying off the list because they did an act directly instead of just “sponsoring” it?\u00a0 Just tell the North Korean government what it has to do to get back on that list, Mr. Crowley!<\/p>\n

People are dying to know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before leaving office, then President George W. Bush allowed his State Department to take North Korea off the department’s list of \u201cState Sponsors of Terror.\u201d\u00a0 Earlier this year, an international panel concluded that North Korea was responsible for firing on and sinking a South Korean warship, killing 46 sailors.\u00a0 Today, President Barack Obama\u2019s State Department […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,491,134,1299,1497,536],"class_list":["post-5934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-barack-obama","tag-george-w-bush","tag-north-korea","tag-south-korea","tag-state-department","tag-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5934"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5942,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5934\/revisions\/5942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}