Bush policies triggered North Korean nuke

Re “N. Korea Declares Nuclear Test,” Oct. 9

It is clear that the Bush administration has no desire to find a diplomatic solution to North Korea’s nuclear testing. President Bush has ignored repeated offers by North Korea to hold talks about its nuclear policy. What hypocrisy! The U.S. demands that North Korea stop testing while we continue to expand our arsenal of thousands of nukes. North Korea is the world’s eighth declared nuclear power, not the first. The only way to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons is for the U.S. to initiate global nuclear disarmament. That means banning all nuclear weapons in all countries.

TANJA WINTER

La Jolla

*

Suppose you were North Korea and President Bush put you into his “axis of evil,” along with Iraq and Iran. You saw him invade Iraq, kill tens of thousands of its people and change its government. Then he began following the same pattern with Iran. Meanwhile, Bush refused to talk to you directly about your nuclear program. Wouldn’t you develop and test a nuke to defend yourself? Thanks to Bush’s dangerous policies, the chickens have come home to roost.

MARJORIE COHN

President-elect

National Lawyers Guild

San Diego

*

Since late 2002 -- when the United States was still ratcheting up its rhetoric and getting ready to wage war on Iraq, when U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was flashing blurred pictures before the U.N. Security Council and when French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and France were the sole hope for sanity -- it was widely predicted in international intelligence circles that a nuclear North Korea and a nuclear Iran would be the inevitable consequence of the Bush-led war on Iraq.

It was also inevitable that such a war on a largely secular state such as Iraq -- which has not violated human rights much more than nations such as Pakistan, China, Russia and India -- would set in motion a geographic expansion with a proportionate deepening of Islamic extremism and terrorism. Particularly as the epicenter of such terrorism and nuclear proliferation -- Pakistan -- was being entirely bypassed. As always, a hapless world must lie on a bed made by the United States and its staunch allies.

S. SUCHINDRANATH AIYER

Bangalore, India