White House Press Corps.org: Press Briefing by Tony Snow 10/10/06 (Topic: North Korea)

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Press Briefing by Tony Snow 10/10/06 (Topic: North Korea)
— Tuesday, October 10, 2006 —

Q Okay, a couple of things you've just said -- you've said that you've got to approach this diplomatically, you've got millions of people who are starving to death there under a repressive regime, which is pretty much what you had in Iraq and we invaded. What's the difference here?

MR. SNOW: Well, one of the differences is that you have neighbors that have extensive ties in a way that you did not, with trade and other activity. Also the North Koreans are far more heavily reliant for basic resources, whether they be food or energy, than the Iraqis were under Saddam Hussein -- Saddam not being wholly dependent. Also you have the additional bit of geographic proximity; whereas Baghdad was hundreds of miles from the nearest border, Pyongyang is very close, as you know, to Seoul and the borders are close. So there are differences in the two situations.

Q You also had inspectors on the ground at the time. We had, as far as we thought then, better intelligence. And yet, you're even saying this morning our intelligence is unclear. The President has long said they do not want to wait for a mushroom cloud, and yet you seem willing here.

MR. SNOW: No, you seem to think we ought to go to war. We don't.

Q I don't think anything, I'm asking you.

MR. SNOW: No, no, you do. The declared insinuation

--

Q I'm asking you to explain the difference between why we went to war with Iraq and why --

MR. SNOW: Because in the case of Iraq we had exhausted all diplomatic possibilities. We're just exploring them now in the case of North Korea. We're going to approach --

Q But you had inspectors on the ground. What was completely exhausted? And you had the U.N. saying, wait, wait, wait.

MR. SNOW: No, some members of the U.N. were saying, wait, wait, wait, and other members in the U.N. Security Council believed Resolution 1441 was pretty clear in terms of the obligations.

Q Didn't say, go to war.

MR. SNOW: Furthermore, what you ended up having, as you know, was a constant attempt to try to make life difficult for the inspectors. You can go back and re-litigate that. I think it makes a lot more sense to try to talk about diplomatically what's going on. You have a concerted diplomatic effort that involves, fully now as equal partners, the Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the South Koreans. That offers the best hope. And if you want to argue for war, you're going to have to argue it someplace else.

Q I'm not arguing for anything, Tony. I know you like to do that, but I'm not arguing for anything.

MR. SNOW: I'm arguing for diplomacy.

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