"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
- George W. Bush
"I think that Barack Obama needs to explain why he wants to sit down and talk with a man who is the head of a government that is a state sponsor of terrorism...that’s what I think Senator Obama ought to explain to the American people."
- Senator John McCain
"'We have accepted the lawyer-diplomatic fantasy that talking while North Korea builds bombs and missiles and talking while the Iranians build bombs and missiles is progress."
- Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
"We would love to practice diplomacy with people who are worth talking to. But you've heard it before: Don't reward terrorists by giving them any legitimacy or negotiating with them. Maybe if they came over to the right side of civilization, then there would be something to discuss. There's a way to go about these things. Their way is not the way of normal people."
- Anonymous Bush Administration Official
"So the Clinton trip is a significant propaganda victory for North Korea, whether or not he carried an official message from President Obama. Despite decades of bipartisan U.S. rhetoric about not negotiating with terrorists for the release of hostages, it seems that the Obama administration not only chose to negotiate, but to send a former president to do so. With three American hikers freshly in Tehran's captivity, will Clinton be packing his bags again for another act of obeisance?...Obama's "open hand" promise in his inaugural address isn't having much success around the world...The point to be made on the Clinton visit is that the knee-jerk impulse for negotiations above all inevitably brings more costs than its advocates foresee."
- U.N. Ambassador John Bolton
"Clinton and Two Freed Journalists Leave North Korea."
- New York Times
In your face, Republicans!