No Wonder Hanoi Jane Loved This Guy...

Hugh Hewitt at Radio Blogger is covering Ted Turner's interview (by Wolf Blitzer) about his latest visit to North Korea: here.

Some highlights:

• "I am absolutely convinced that the North Koreans are absolutely sincere. There's really no reason for them to cheat or do anything to violate this very forward agreement."
• WB: But this is one of the most despotic regimes, and Kim Jung Il is one of the worst men on Earth... TT: ...he didn't look too much different than most of the other people I've met.
• WB: But look at the way he's treating his own people. TT: Well, hey. Listen, I saw a lot of people over there. They were thin, and they were riding bicycles instead of driving in cars.

There were other revelatory remarks, like when Wolf Blitzer mentioned the million North Korean soldiers on the DMZ, Ted Turner corrected him that there were only half a million troops -- ours. And he blamed us for keeping them there in an unproductive job when they could be doing things like building hospitals. Wolf Blitzer asked about Kim's missiles. Ted Turner responded that they couldn't hit the U.S. and dismissed as unimportant their ability to attack our allies in Japan and South Korea. And he concluded by insisting that any "facts" Blitzer thought he knew were irrelevant because he'd never personally been permitted to enter North Korea. And his "then go there on vacation" response to Blitzer's claim that NoKo had always refused his requests to visit has to rank up there with "let them eat cake" in the not-getting-the-problem category. But by far the most insane line was this:

Praising a genocidal dictator for the fact that his people (who are being systematically starved to death) are so thin, unlike our own car-and-obesity epidemic. I haven't the words.