NP? Bush peddling Boeing fighter jets

[Doug Millison]

You don't often find the marketing function of the US Presidency described
so clearly as this:


"U.S. President George W. Bush is likely to urge Korea to buy Boeing Co.'s
fighter jets for its next-generation fighter procurement project when he
visits Seoul next week, officials here said yesterday. [...] "Bush's
description of North Korea as part of an axis of evil seems to have been
issued with multiple purposes, including the protection of the defense
industry," said Cho Myung-chul, a former professor at Kim Il Sung
University in Pyongyang who defected to the South in 1994.

"It seems that the U.S. president took a tougher stance against the North
to divert public attention away from the Enron scandal, to (justify an)
increase in the (U.S.) defense budget, and to press for the purchase of the
F-15," said Rep. Moon Hee-sang of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party
(MDP), a member of the National Assembly's Unification, Foreign Affairs and
Trade Committee.

MDP chief policymaker Rep. Park Chong-woo reportedly said in a closed
government-party meeting on Wednesday, "There is talk that Bush is coming
to Seoul to sell arms." [...]

http://www.koreaherald.com/SITE/data/html_dir/2002/02/10/200202100010.asp