McCain on North Korea, Iraq and Immigration

July 10, 2006 — -- Between low poll ratings, the boiling insurgency in Iraq, and the continuing immigration debate, it's been a tough year for President Bush.

As North Korea continues to rattle the administration with its missile tests and its continued defiance toward the international community, however, the president seems to have abandoned his no-tolerance policy toward the country dubbed part of the "Axis of Evil" along with Iraq and Iran.

Bush's former rival in the 2000 Republican primaries, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said that North Korea had been a problem long before Bush took office in 2001.

"I see the North Korean situation going back a long, long way," McCain said on "Good Morning America."

"Back in 1994, we made an agreement, which was not enforceable and violated repeatedly by the North Koreans as short a time ago as last September. They said they would not pursue this issue of nuclear weapons. So I think this particular crisis has been with us for a long time."

New Strategy

Experts point to the dramatic difference between the bellicose way the Bush administration treated Iraq to they way it is treating North Korea.

In this case, the president is stressing diplomacy and the need for a U.N. resolution.

In the current issue of Time magazine, which is featuring an article called "The End of Cowboy Diplomacy," President Clinton's former Defense Secretary William Perry argues President Bush has been too soft on North Korea.

"For the U.S., the risk of inaction will prove far greater," he told the magazine.

McCain said that he didn't think that the United States had a lot of leverage with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il.

China, North Korea's closest ally, needs to put pressure on the nation, he said. McCain said that the North Korea problem was a defining issue in U.S.-China relations.

"It will affect everything that we do. Unless they weigh in heavily, including a vote if necessary in the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on North Korea," he said. "They are the ones that have the leverage. It is in their interest. We are not asking them for an act of charity. The Japanese would be forced to develop missile defense systems and eventually nuclear weapons and tensions would be heightenedthroughout the region."

Atrocity Allegations

At the same time, the situation in Iraq has turned into a public-relations nightmare for the United States in the Muslim world.

The military is currently conducting investigations into at least five deaths of Iraqi civilians.

Five soldiers are charged with the premeditated rape and murder of a young woman in Mahmudiya. Three members of her family were also killed.

Last week, former Pfc. Steven Green was arrested on one count of rape and four counts of murder.

An investigation into the death of 24 civilians in the town of Haditha also continues. No charges have yet been filed but a group of Marines are accused of killing the civilians after a member of their 13-man squad was killed by a improvised explosive device.

"We have 137,000 people there -- overwhelming 99 percent are acting in the most honorable fashion, under the most difficult conditions," said McCain, who served as a Marine in Vietnam. He was also held as a prisoner of war for five years.

"I'm glad we are bringing people to justice -- that's America. At the same time, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the incredible acts of heroism and generosity displayed by American soldiers has been remarkable and we cannot lose our perspective on that nor our support for them," he said.

Immigration

McCain also weighed in on the immigration debate that's been opening rifts within the Republican Party.

The House and Senate are holding hearings on immigration around the country this summer.

The House bill focuses on enforcement, while the Senate's bill is more aligned with the president's philosophy and would give illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

McCain, a major architect of the Senate immigration bill, is currently attending a field hearing on immigration with other members of the Armed Services Committee. The hearing will focus on the role of immigrants to the Army.

The immigration issue is again at the forefront because Mexico just held a presidential election that is still being contested.

The leftist candidate, Lopez Obrador, said that the conservative candidate Felipe Calderón's narrow victory was illegitimate and made allegations of fraud.

Mexico is bitterly divided. McCain said he hoped that once the dispute was settled, Calderon would cooperate with the United States in border security.

"We need their cooperation very badly," McCain said. "Drug traffickers have also played rather significantly in causing a lot of problems along the border. But I'm, overall, more interested in policies that the Mexican government would enact, which would improve their economy so that Mexicans would be motivated to remain and work and live a better life in Mexico rather than have to come to the United States."

With his prominent stances on some of the most contested issues of the day, McCain continues to get tossed around as a possible contender for president in 2008.

The latest poll has him leading Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., in the traditionally liberal Massachusetts.

"I've enjoyed all of the visits I've made to the state of Massachusetts," he said. "But it really is -- I'd like to say otherwise, but the reality is it's meaningless at this particular time in history."