Looks like Bush really did screw up on North Korea.

[ProSense]

About that North Korean uranium…

Posted 10:25 am | Printer Friendly | Spotlight
In my heart of hearts, I find it impossible to believe that Bush is some kind of Manchurian President, intentionally screwing up American foreign policy and deliberately making the United States less safe.

But once in a while, one really has to wonder.

Last October, the North Koreans tested their first nuclear device, the fruition of decades of work to make a weapon out of plutonium.

Snip…

“The question now is whether we would be in the position of having to get the North Koreans to give up a sizable arsenal if this had been handled differently,” a senior administration official said this week.

The 2002 “revelations” about North Korea processing uranium touched off the most recent crisis, and led conservatives to scream bloody murder about how the Clinton administration’s policy and the Agreed Framework were a disaster. Indeed, when the Bush administration became convinced that Kim Jung Il was using enriched uranium as part of a nuclear weapons program, the president effectively tore up the agreements the United States had crafted with North Korea.

But the Bush gang got every possible part of this story wrong, and in the process, dramatically increased the security risk for the United States.

Snip…

Josh Marshall summarized this nicely: “Because of a weapons program that may not even have existed (and no one ever thought was far advanced) the White House got the North Koreans to restart their plutonium program and then sat by while they produced a half dozen or a dozen real nuclear weapons — not the Doug Feith/John Bolton kind, but the real thing. It’s a screw-up that staggers the mind.”

When Bolton's nomination was still up in the air, the media totally dropped the ball on covering this failure. From the Senate Foreign Relations Committe hearing, July 27, 2006:

KERRY: Mr. Ambassador, at the time -- Secretary Perry has testified before this committee, as well as others -- they knew that there would be the probability they would try to do something outside of the specificity of the agreement.

But the specificity of the agreement was with respect to the rods and the inspections and the television cameras and the reactor itself.

BOLTON: Senator, the agreed framework requires North Korea and South Korea to comply with the joint North-South denuclearization agreement, which in turn provides no nuclear weapons programs on the Korean Peninsula.

So it was not limited only to the plutonium reprocessing program.

KERRY: Mr. Ambassador, the bottom line is that no plutonium was reprocessed under that agreement. No plutonium was reprocessed until the cameras were kicked out, the inspectors were kicked out, the rods were taken out, and now they have four times the nuclear weapons they had when you came on watch.

Snip...

BOLTON: Senator, really, it's hard to understand how you can't look at the notion of conducting the bilateral conversations in the six-party talks and not say that North Korea has an opportunity to make its case to us.

KERRY: Sir, with all due respect, I mean, you know -- what I've seen work and not work over the course of the years I've been here depends on what kind of deal you're willing to make or not make and what your fundamental policies are.

If you're a leader in North Korea, looking at the United States, and you've seen the United States attack Iraq on presumptions of weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist, if you announce a preemptive strategy of regime change, if you are pursuing your own new nuclear weapons, bunker busting nuclear weapons, and you're sitting in another country, you would have a perception of threat that makes you make a certain set of decisions.

And historically throughout the Cold War, that drove the United States and the then-Soviet Union to escalate and escalate. And first one did and then the other.

In fact -- in fact -- in every single case, we were the first, with the exception of two particular weapons systems to develop a nuclear breakthrough first. They followed -- until ultimately, President Reagan, a conservative president, and President Gorbachev said we're going to come down in Reykjavik to no weapons.

So we reversed 50 years of spending money and chasing this thing.

I would respectfully suggest to you that North Korea is sitting there making a set of presumptions. And unless you begin to alter some of the underlying foundation of those presumptions, you're stuck.

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[louis-t]

1. I've said this for 6 years: If you keep threatening people..

they will defend themselves. bushgang got it wrong again. They ASSUMED Iran and North Korea would cave because an ignorant cowboy threatened them. He is so arrogant, he ASSUMES everyone is afraid of him. His hired enablers have him believing he's a real tough guy.

[BayCityProgressive]

2. Definately true

after the DPRK saw what we did to iraq and Afghanistan, and saw the Reps and Dems line up behind the Nazi doctrine of preemption they and everyone else would be STUPID not to arm themselves. The fact is, militarily North Korea will never be changed. it is idiocy. Use S Korea and allies like Cuba and China to open the country up to trade, thus pening it to the world. Sign a peace agreement and de-escalate the DMZ on both sides. Push Korea to adopt a more socialist market economy like Vietnam or Cuba so that they are able to support their own people without all this aid. Peaceful trade and negotiations will trump military action almost every single time.

[PATRICK]

3. I wonder if it boils down to Cheney

who has gathered his henchman and ideologues carefully over the years. What they think is seriously warped. Is it just possible however that Cheney, who has aided proliferation and thrived on it always intended to set up nuclear enemies deliberately? Having nukes means you can nuke them or, more likely, you can sit back and set rivals nuking each other in a world destined for chaos and death anyway.

On some level I believe Cheney himself intended to arm our enemies and force America into his groove to keep ahead of them. For the rest of us it would appear to be self-defense and reaction. For Cheney it would be retooling the US for empire- or else.

This is far bigger than treason and we have trouble enough getting the nation to speak the obvious of the results and intentions that are clear already.