Nuclear Proliferation: Kim Jong Il Goes Nuclear
October 18, 2002
by Kim
The Bush Administration must feel like the circus parade clean-up brigade following the elephants.
It's been one minefield after another.
First the economic bubble burst. Then, al-Qaeda and Afghanistan came along. Now, it's Kim Jong Il in North Korea causing mischief.
The North Koreans recently admitted to U.S. diplomats that they are developing nuclear weapons (after our diplomats confronted them with conclusive satellite imagery.) This violates a 1994 agreement the North Koreans signed with President Clinton.
Today, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said he believes North Korea already has one or two nuclear devices. Two years ago, they demonstrated basic technology to reach Seoul and Tokyo with missiles. Nukes and a delivery device -- that's a very bad combination.
We can thank Big Bill Clinton for this development.
More partisan Clinton-bashing? Perhaps. But as Howard Cosell used to say so eloquently between glasses of scotch:
"I'm just telling it like it is."
Former President Jimmy Carter (recent Nobel Peace Laureate) and President Clinton teamed up to dissuade the North Koreans from joining the Nuclear Club Mr. Clinton was adamant about keeping nukes away from Kim Jong Il. He told Tim Russert of Meet the Press on November 7, 1993:
"North Korea cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb. We have to be very firm about it."
About a year later, in October, 1994, North Korea and the U.S. signed the "Agreed Framework" deal. North Korea agreed to halt its nuclear weapons program. In exchange, the U.S., South Korea, and Japan would build them two light-water (non-weapons-grade) nuclear plants. While the plants were under construction, the U.S. and its allies would give the North Korean dictator 500 million tons of oil. That would keep the lights on and Kim in power.
How naive.
Clinton and Carter forgot Ronald Reagan's admonition to "Trust, but Verify."
The New York Times, of course, fell for the diplomatic charade, too. Here is the Times' October 19, 1994 editorial:
"Diplomacy with North Korea has scored a resounding triumph. Monday's draft agreement freezing and then dismantling North Korea's nuclear program should bring to an end two years of international anxiety and put to rest widespread fears that an unpredictable nation might provoke nuclear disaster.
"The U.S. negotiator Robert Gallucci and his North Korean interlocutors have drawn up a detailed road map of reciprocal steps that both sides accepted despite deep mutual suspicion. In so doing they have defied impatient hawks and other skeptics who accused the Clinton Administration of gullibility and urged swifter, stronger action.
"The North has agreed first to freeze its nuclear program in return for U.S. diplomatic recognition and oil from Japan and other countries to meet its energy needs. Pyongyang will then begin to roll back that program as an American-led consortium replaces the North's nuclear reactors with two new ones that are much less able to be used for bomb-making. At that time, the North will also allow special inspections of its nuclear waste sites, which could help determine how much plutonium it had extracted from spent fuel in the past."
The New York Times -- wrong again.
Wendy Sherman, President Clinton's point person with North Korea, told Jim Lehrer -- only 10 months ago:
"We have a 1994 framework agreement that stops the production of fissile material, which is the plutonium, the kind of plutonium needed to build nuclear weapons. They agreed to that framework agreement. They have principally kept to that agreement and taken the steps that were necessary for it to take. It's not finished yet. We still have a ways to go, but they do and can follow through. We need to hold them to it. Our agreements have to be verifiable. They need to be tough but it can be done."
Like babes in the woods, these people.
Wendy...Bill...Jimmy: You can't trust dictators!
John McCain, former POW, understands human nature and its dark side. The day of the North Korea agreement in 1994, Senator McCain said:
"On at least eight previous occasions, North Korea has lied to the Clinton Administration. With this agreement, Administration officials have willingly acquiesced in Pyongyang's almost certain further deception.
"Yet again, the Administration has mistaken resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis with merely postponing its apogee. ...I suspect that the Administration's willingness to delay the resolution of this crisis is premised on their presumption that the bankrupt North Korean economy will force the regime's collapse before they violate the agreement. Unfortunately, their economy may be salvaged during the interim period by the half a billion tons of oil they will receive annually, the opening of trade relations with the U.S., and greater trade with its Asian neighbors, which the agreement [provides for].
"Thus, the Administration has accomplished the remarkable feat of allowing the North Koreans to have their carrot cake and eat it too. "
What other left-over doo-doo from Clinton-Gore lies ahead?
Someone can do a lot of damage in eight years. Someone has.
(Our thanks to columnist Andrew Sullivan for his Clinton research.)