This just in - from North Korea

[RICHARD]

Hey!

I just saw our intrepid reporter doing a story about Haitian gangs!

She's got on the obligatory baby blue U.N. helmet and flak jacket on, riding with some of the peacekeepers on patrol in Port Au Prince, Haiti!

SHe states that UNPKs get shot at frequently, so to get to the gang areas, she hires a private driver and that will take her into the area and show her around.

Hmmm, smart thinking!

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Reporters and journalists?

Reporters usually get to hang around because they are there, often in between the two sides of the story. Most of them get permission from the people who control the ground the operate on.

Journalists, more often than not, run around the area and 'journal'-What was the Iranian gal, the one that was championing women's right in the country, doing that got her tossed in the clink?

Look, It's not really proper form to go to someone's house, look into their medicine chests, then broadcast the contents. Look at the paraonia from Iran, NK, China-So, do we really blame some backwards country, with even more backwards rules, when they get nervous because a camera/journalist are in the area?

I am all for equal rights for everyone. But, I get a little uneasy when people, especially U.S. citizens, start running around and publically shake their fingers at some government because they (Fill in the Blank) to their people.

Many of us want to get out of the Mid East, yet they want the U.S. and the world to know and to do something about the little things going on other spots.

Yep we could invade Indonesia and liberate all the slaves making tennis shoes for us, or better yet, whoever makes those cheap circuit boards in our TV sets that go south in the middle of the Super Bowl!

I wonder where the two will make a triumphant return to the job they love so well?

[Grace]

Richard - do you remember your thoughts back in 1983, when Jesse Jackson, then a potential candidate for President, went to to Syria to secure the release of a captured American flier, Navy Lt. Robert O. Goodman, Jr?

I know the situations were different - Goodman was shot down over Lebanon while on a mission to bomb Syrian positions in that country.

Many people thought Jesse was grandstanding; Reagan had misgivings. But he got the job done - and then didn't even get nominated.

Were you as cynical back then as you seem to be now?

Susan Estrich, in her column today, talks about this event. She finishes it up with these thoughts -

I don't care if the North Koreans are using him, using us, using sob sisters like me. Two girls are coming home. Two families can breathe again.

North Korea's welcome mat was a well-staged performance by an outlaw nation, but it's also something of a relief. At least they want to look better in the eyes of the world. They want to look like a regular country, the kind of place that presidents and former presidents visit, the kind of place with pretty little girls in fancy dresses carrying beautiful flowers.

Of course North Korea is not a regular country. We don't sit around wondering whether regular countries can bomb Hawaii. Or whether they will. North Korea doesn't play by the rules that we think, generally, make "states" less dangerous, which is why the girls were seized, why the families held their breaths, why it took Bill Clinton to bring them home.

Still. Being used is better than being bombed. Lives are more precious than photo opps. It's still a happy ending, and there aren't so many of those to celebrate that I'm going to give this one up.

Emphasis is mine.

[blue]

Tough crowd! I wonder...if Walter Cronkite had been taken captive while in say...Viet Nam....would he have been called a bimbo for being there? Do you think he went to Viet Nam to get a book deal? Or should that be the ubiquitous...."moron"....

Yes.

Mr Cronkite should have kept his opinion to himself about the war and just reported the news.

What lesson would that be Richard ? By the way, do you know what project they were working on when they were arrested?

Dont enter a country illeagaly should have been the leason, regaurdless of the project they where working on. NK isnt the USA, NK actually enforces their laws on who enters their country.

[RICHARD]

Richard - do you remember your thoughts back in 1983, when Jesse Jackson, then a potential candidate for President, went to to Syria to secure the release of a captured American flier, Navy Lt. Robert O. Goodman, Jr?

I know the situations were different - Goodman was shot down over Lebanon while on a mission to bomb Syrian positions in that country.

Many people thought Jesse was grandstanding; Reagan had misgivings. But he got the job done - and then didn't even get nominated.

Were you as cynical back then as you seem to be now?

I was LUI back then.

Hey! We are finally bringing Scott Speicher home. Which politicians do we thank for that?

Hey, what every happened to the F-111 that was lost when we went to bomb Ghaddafi? Did they ever come back?

Andy McNab walked his way out of Iraq, on his own, after a huge effup happened on his way to kill Iraqis..

I am very cynical.

Getting a serviceperson out of a jam is very different than what these two were into.

These two were being cute, way too cute to even bother with. Watch CURRENT and check out all the hijnks this moron was into...She seems to be always working outside the rules to get a tape.

Drive around town and find the house with the meanest dog in the yard.
Try to sneak over the fence and walk around.

Remember the incident on the SK/NK border where people were hacked to death- Panmujon?

Wanna bet that neither one admits to crossing the border?

The big, bad border guards swept down from the hills, and kidnapped them from SK territory?

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Here. Let's do it like a Tom Clancy novel?

Two western 'journalists' cross the NK border for a story, and are seen by the NK goons. They run to the south, get fired up and killed when the NK border guards chase them into SK.
The SK guards, not knowing that the "journalists" are there and being chased, begin to fire up the NKs.

Everyone starts to shoot bigger and bigger guns until some one decides a really big bomb will solve everything.

The End.

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P.S.
I remember the buffoon, Daryl Gates, who at the time was the police chief of El Lay and father of the modern day SWAT team, wanted Carter to give them the go ahead to fly to Iran and save the hostages.

Lovely thought and the same idea as journalists going to different countries and acting stupid.

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I vote for Margaret Cho to play Ling.