Bush offers North Korea a deal to end the world's oldest cold war

It's the problem for people who take hard line stances. When you eventually back down, the people who you have been bullying and harassing want to make sure you have dotted every "I" and crossed every "T".

And so it has come to pass with North Korea's relationship with the US. Bush now wants to deal with the same North Korean regime that he once proclaimed part of the "Axis of Evil".

South Korea's president, Roh Moo-hyun, pushed the US President to be specific about what he was actually saying:

Mr Roh leaned across and urged the president to be more explicit about the security arrangement.

"I might be wrong. I think I did not hear President Bush mention a declaration to end the Korean war just now," Mr Roh said through an interpreter. "Did you say that, President Bush?" Mr Bush replied it was "up to Kim Jong-il".

The South Korean leader remained unconvinced. "If you could be a little clearer," he said.

A clearly irritated Mr Bush said that he had in mind a formal peace treaty that would end hostilities in the war, which ended with the US still technically at war with the North.

South and North Korea have also failed to agree a truce and their border remains the most heavily fortified in the world.

"I can't make it any more clear, Mr President," Mr Bush said. "We're looking forward to the day when we can end the Korean war. That will happen when Kim Jong-il verifiably gets rid of his weapons programmes and his weapons."

North Korea has already invited the US, Russia and China to inspect it's nuclear facilities in order to prove that it is no longer attempting to develop a nuclear weapon.

There is a terrible irony in watching Bush, who refused to honour the deal which Clinton struck with North Korea, now scrambling to come to an arrangement with the communist regime. In the early days of this administration, deals with Kim Jong-il were viewed as appeasement and the rewarding of North Korea for pursuing a nuclear agenda.

Now, Bush is being embarrassed publicly to make sure he is being specific in the offer that he is now making.

This is the same Bush regime who once claimed that they made their own reality whilst the rest of us scrambled to keep up before they reinvented reality all over again.

Now, reality has caught up with them. Now, the most unpopular President in history has to suffer the ignominy of having the South Korean President ask him to publicly clarify the terms of his U-turn with the North.

It really would have been better had Bush simply accepted Clinton's deal and left North Korea well alone.

But, as always, the neo-cons thought they knew best, and set out to show the world where those lame Democrats had gone wrong.

Now, tail between his legs, Bush is forced publicly to state what he will offer North Korea in order to get us back to where we were before Bush came into office.

There are so many examples of the limitations of US power littering this Presidency, the most obvious example of which is the Iraq war and the quagmire Bush has trapped his country in. But North Korea is another example of Bush's inability to force another regime to bend to his will.

It's really odd, but the neo-con fantasy that they did not need to participate in negotiations and could proceed as an American empire forcing all others to bend to their will has not revealed the extent of American power, but rather, it's limitations.

That is Bush's actual legacy.

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