Hoekstra: Obama Must Get Tough With North Korea, Iran

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, says the United States needs to treat North Korea like the “rogue nation that it is” or risk a nuclear arms race in the region.

The Michigan legislator also says “it’s crazy” not to profile airline passengers — and vows that Congress will thwart the Obama administration’s “ill-guided mission” to try terrorist suspects in civilian courts if the president “doesn’t come to his senses” on the issue.

Hoekstra, who was first elected in 1992, did not seek re-election this year, instead running unsuccessfully for governor. There have been reports that he might run for the Senate from the Wolverine State in 2012.

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, Hoekstra was asked how the United States should respond to North Korea’s shelling of a South Korean island and news that the North had built a new uranium enrichment facility.

“The way we should respond to both the shelling and the disclosure about this new enrichment facility is not how we’ve responded in the past,” Hoekstra says.

“We’ve got to start treating North Korea like the rogue nation that it is,” he says. “Typically, North Korea does these things, they do it on a pretty regular basis, and then they look for cash payments, they look for food, they look for oil, and they kind of force us back to the negotiating table.

“We give them some stuff, then we find out they break every agreement and every promise they’ve made. It’s like an unending cycle.

Asked whether the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has gone too far by requiring full body scans or intimate pat-downs of airline passengers and should be disbanded, Hoekstra responds: “No, they shouldn’t be disbanded.

“TSA is not out to just harass the people. I find it hard being a defender of TSA, but the threat environment is very high. We’re very worried about what al-Qaida is going to do.

“But TSA could have gone through this procedure and this process in a much more graceful way. I find it hard to believe that they would have implemented a nationwide program without ever doing some kind of test marketing the program to see what the public reaction would be.

“There’s a way that we can do this so people won’t feel violated, they won’t feel that their privacy has been invaded, and at the same time make sure that air system is intact.”

Also on the issue of airport screening, Hoekstra adds: “I think clearly you need to do some type of profiling. With the number of passengers that are flying on airplanes each and every day, it’s crazy to look at them and say they’re all the same and they all pose the same risk. No, they don’t.

“We ought to use the profiling just to make the system more effective, more efficient, and we need to focus our resources at where we think the threat is going to be.”          
More of this interview here