'Intel spin' by US hardliners sparked NKorean crisis: book (shades of Iraq)

[sabra]

Source: AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) — In circumstances echoing the Iraq war controversy, hardliners in US President George W. Bush's administration spun intelligence and triggered a nuclear crisis with North Korea, says a new book to be released this week.

Intelligence on a North Korea effort to acquire components for uranium enrichment was politicized to depict the hardline communist state running a full-fledged production facility capable of developing a nuclear bomb, said the book by former senior CNN journalist Mike Chinoy.

Now with the Los Angeles-based Pacific Council on International Policy, Chinoy wrote "Meltdown: The inside story of the North Korean nuclear crisis" after gaining unprecedented access during his 14 trips to North Korea and conducting 200 interviews in Washington, Seoul, Tokyo and other Asian capitals.

...

There was no credible intelligence that North Koreans actually had a facility capable of making uranium based bombs.

Yet, conservative hardliners bent on ending an "Agreed Framework" nuclear deal with North Korea forged under president Bill Clinton's administration seized on the issue to force a confrontation, the book said.

Read more: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j_CwsYm8vAfZjdJ3fEthjmrNh8sw

[tanyev]

1. Is there anything they HAVEN'T royally effed up?

[gratuitous]

2. And then, after all this hyperventilating . . .

The Bush administration signed basically the same accord they could have had six years earlier based on the groundwork done by the Clinton administration. Of course, they don't look it here with the media cowed as they are, but you can bet that the North Koreans and their sponsors in China aren't really impressed with the "Ready-Fire-Aim" style of conducting international affairs practiced by the Bushistas.