N.Korea Berates Rumsfeld as Worse Than Hitler
from Reuters

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea issued a blistering attack on Donald Rumsfeld on Saturday, saying the U.S. defense secretary was worse than Adolf Hitler.

The official KCNA news agency also said Rumsfeld's criticism of North Korea this week -- he called it an evil regime -- made Pyongyang doubt the prospects of talks to resolve the North's nuclear crisis.

"It is nothing surprising that Rumsfeld talked such nonsense as he put Hitler into the shade in man-killing and war hysteria. But we can never pardon him for malignantly slandering our dignified and inviolable political system whether he is a political dwarf, human scum or hysteric," the agency said.

North Korea berates Rumsfeld as worse than Hitler!? I do not know if I should take this as further evidence of Korea's tenuous grasp on reality, or if they are the only ones with the courage to speak out against him. Probably the former, but you decide.

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"If his vituperation represents the stance of the Bush administration, it can not but cast a doubt about the prospect of the six-way talks," it said.

The United States held nuclear talks involving the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan in Beijing in August and is trying to convene another round next month.

Rumsfeld said in a speech to U.S. troops at an American air base in South Korea on Tuesday that "people in the North, repressed people to be sure, watch their children waste away, eat bark, as that evil regime spends huge sums on weapons."

As many as one million of North Korea's 22 million people are estimated by experts to have died from famine over the past decade. Dependent on outside food aid, the North spends about 30 percent of gross domestic product on its military, the world's fifth largest.

KCNA said Rumsfeld's remarks showed the North was right to seek nuclear arms and "reinforces the conviction that there is no other way but to stand in confrontation with the U.S. to the end."

posted by awiggins | 01:01 PM