What is Digg?46 Comments
- RadiantBeing, on 10/12/2007, -13/+41Bush was actually just continuing the Clinton administration's policy of the "Agreed Framework" in which we would give them things like fuel oil, aid, light water nuclear reactors, etc in exchange for good behavior. If this policy is a source of controversy for you, then I suggest you look into your own heart--you just may be a foreign policy hawk! A little later in 2002, the program was proved to be a failure as North Korea had been enriching uranium behind our backs since the late 1990s despite the carrots offered. In October of 2002, Bush sent assistant Secretary of State James Kelly to confront the North Koreans with secret evidence of this and in November of 2002, Bush gave them an ultimatum to stop their weapons program or he'd scrap the aid shipments. Finally in 2003, the Agreed Framework was over and we eventually entered the on-again, off-again 6-party talks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_nuclear_weapons_program
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework - krosk, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16From TFA:
"Under the 1994 Agreed Framework an international consortium is building two proliferation-proof nuclear reactors and providing fuel oil for North Korea while the reactors are being built."
The $95 million was for PROLIFERATION-PROOF reactors. They can't be used to make nuclear weapons. Better to give them all the nuclear power they need for their citizens so we do not deprive them. And if they demand to continue to build their own, we have a better argument that they indeed only want nuclear weapons, not power. Marked as inaccurate. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10The whole of international politics is SUCH a multilayered game - the stuff you see in the media is only the tip of the iceberg. There's layers and layers and layers of stuff going on behind, on different levels with different players, and probably a minority of people who know the big picture.
One thing's for sure, the US and it's allies certainly indulge in the old geopolitical engineering lark a heck of a lot (but then countries always have on large and small scales).
Be interesting to see where this all ends up. And no, it won't be nuclear war.... (touch wood). - omatsei, on 10/12/2007, -7/+13Clinton was president when the Agreed Framework was put into place. The Agreed Framework provided monetary incentives for North Korea not to pursue nuclear weapons. Or, at least, to tell us that they weren't pursuing nuclear weapons. Since we just kinda trusted them on that minor point, it was doomed to failure. The reason Republicans like to pin the blame on Clinton is because he was president when the whole idea was thought up.
Oh, and for the record, you can't just go from no nuclear weapon technology to a minor-yield nuclear bomb in 4 years... so this crap didn't start with Bush calling them part of the "Axis of Evil" in 2002. - mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -7/+13Republicans were blaming the nukes on Clinton for the very same reason a couple days ago..
- bbatsell, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7What I'm assuming diggers feel the problem is is not the aid delivered for LWR's and other infrastructure (which had been flowing continuously since 1994), but the following sentence:
"President George W Bush waived the Framework's requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors."
I'm not making a statement about any of this; I think that North Korea is a much more complicated issue than Iraq. I'm not sure what Bush could have done differently to lead to a better resolution, but I'm also not an expert on diplomacy in North Korea. - julessiegel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6And lied about it. This is very important to keep in mind. It cost $80 million to trap him into fibbing, but it was well-spent, because it distracted him from dealing with bin Laden, thereby giving the Bushbots another excuse for blaming everything on Bill Clinton, even though they also claimed he was doing too much about bin Laden in order to avoid scrutiny of his fibbing about his extramarital fling.
No Republican has ever told a lie about cheating on his/her/its spouse, of course. Or would. They just lie about everything else that matters, while killing thousands of innocent bystanders so that they can continue enriching themselves at the public trough. - drjekelmrhyde, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Nk and nuke tech go way back to the 60's when the Russians let them study thiers but EVERY US president since that been passing the NK problem to the next guy and thats the problem I fear Bush will do it also since he only have 2 years left
- ZenMojo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Why do we ignore the fact that under Clinton we required PROOF that they weren't making nuclear weapons but under Bush the PROOF was WAIVED?
Clinton in 1994: "Let our inspectors into your country and you'll get some cash and Light Water Reactors."
Jong-Il: "Dammit...alright."
Bush in 2001: "What's this deal here? Who are you anyway? Oh well, here's your cash."
Jong-Il: "Thanks!"
Bush...2003: "Wait...you're making nuclear weapons, aren't you?"
Jong-Il: "Oh, you got me...soooo clever. So now what do we do?"
Bush: "***** yourself. We're going home."
Bush to the media: "NORTH KOREA, IRAQ, AND IRAN ARE THE AXIS OF EVIL!"
Jong-Il: "We've still got nuclear weapons! Come on! Talk to us!"
Bush: "No, really, go ***** yourself. Axis bastard...."
Jong-Il: "I don't even know Iraq! I only saw it across the room at a party once...at your place!"
Bush to the UN: "Let's invade IRAQ!"
North Korea: "What the *****?"
South Korea: "Shut the ***** up, North Korea..."
South Korea to Bush: "WHAT THE *****!?!?!?"
And that's the real story. Minus the spin. - julessiegel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6As long as we remember that anything that fails on Bush's watch is Clinton's fault, all will be well. Why is that so hard to understand?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The whole reason he waived the requirement is that his other option was to abandon the deal altogether. If North Korea has safe reactors, they have no reason to build new weaponized ones. So giving them the money sucked, but was the lesser of two evils. And of course it didn't work.
- musicmantrs, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10Its right in the article, right there... Lets see, in 1994, agreed framework, oh this is just part of Clinton's deal. Since noone bothers to read the story ever, here it is.
"The US Government has announced that it will release $95m to North Korea as part of an agreement to replace the Stalinist country's own nuclear programme, which the US suspected was being misused.
Under the 1994 Agreed Framework an international consortium is building two proliferation-proof nuclear reactors and providing fuel oil for North Korea while the reactors are being built. "
Heres another nice tid-bit, they were angry at Bush because he accused them of pursuing WMDs, but now they do have them. The "idiot" from Yale appears to be right.
"North Korea has repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the agreement in recent weeks.
It has been angered by President Bush's accusation that Pyongyang was part of an "axis of evil" producing weapons of mass destruction." - everfresh59, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10I thought Americans didn't negotiate with Terrorists?
- AxiomShell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I think I'll play devil's advocate on this one...
As much as I want to see Bush gone as the next (sensible) man, I think I'll have to look at this thing with a critical eye.
This is simple diplomacy.
(Diplomatically) you can't just waltz into a country and make demands, offering nothing in return.
You have to give some kind of carrot.
You can never be sure what other people will do with the carrot (nuclear bombs?) - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -18/+20Did you seriously expect consistency from Republicans? These are the same people who decry evolution as being "godless blasphemy" and then turn around and claim that their opposition to evolution is all about science and has nooooothing at all to do with religion.
- Meadow113, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3In 1994, North Korea agreed to stop enriching plutonium with their ancient reactor at yongbyon in exchange for money from us, oil shipments, and 2 light-water reactors. They had plutonium already enriched at this point, it was a all a big nasty contaminated mess over there, we sent people to help get things cleaned up. The reactor went off in 1994. We continued giving them money and oil shipments but were not satisfied with the way they handled inspections under Clinton, the light-water reactors were never put into place.
For 8 years, the ancient unsafe reactor at yongbyon stayed off, we watched from satellites. They may have played around with the plutonium that they already had, but they did not create more of it for 8 years.
In 2002, Bush called them part of the axis of evil in his state of the union address in January, this article was written in april, so after calling them part of the axis of evil, he continued giving them money, and waived the inspections. In September they told us they were creating nuclear weapons, most experts at the time felt it was a bluff.
Having an administration who communicated in sound bytes only with North Korea, and rushed into Iraq, sending the message that if you have no nuke we will overthrow you, if you do we will not has hurt us on this deal.
North Korea restarted the reactor at yongbyon in february of 03, we didn't do anything about it, we were hell bent on going to Iraq. For the past 3 years they have made it perfectly clear that they were working on developing nuclear weapons, again we have done nothing except refuse to have talks with them. Maybe they have tested a nuke under ground, and maybe they have not, but it doesn't matter because now this administration is hell bent on going to Iran it seems.
Clinton did not give north korea any nuclear technology, or enriched weapons material, no new reactors were ever built in North Korea, what they have is the ancient reactor back up and running for 3 plus years now, the reactor stayed off for 8 years due to the efforts of Clinton/Carter. - Wavey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Moonbats.
Neo-cons.
Liberal whackjobs.
Wingnuts.
Lefty Lunatics.
Bushbots.
Tards.
Tards.
Name-calling runs rampant on both sides of the aisle. - haggie, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5I'm looking at the calendar and the U.S. Armed Services are booked for the next decade or so. Maybe we could push back Iran a few years and pencil in an invasion of NK around 2015.
So many nuclear proliferating countries to invade, so little time... - chall2001, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7So it turns out we attacked the only member of the "axis of evil" that wasn't develping WMD's?
Sigh, thats my Bush. - humanaut, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"Get on your little peace train and tell the Kurds about Hussein not having WMD's - maybe they're just pretending to be dead"
Hussein just can't be trusted. You give him chemical weapons to fight a proxy war against Iran, and what does he do? Turns around and uses them on his other less-strategically-important-to-the-US enemies! What kind of "propped up tinpot dictator" does he think he is? Man, it's a good thing we took him out. Too bad Chalabi, the tinpot dictator we had planned to prop up in his place, turned out to be an iranian turncoat.
Geez, you just can't trust middle eastern militaristic megalomaniacs these days :( - reeder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2But, but... CLINTON!!!
STFU, neocon jerkoffs. - totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8come on, this was years ago. 9/11 changed everything!
oh, wait, this was post 9/11?
Did I mention Clinton got a blowjob? - Charbax, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I love how the desperate ultra righties actualy want us to believe that North Korea tested a nuclear weapon 1 month before the mid-term elections.
Probably also that within the next month, that we are going to see Osama bin Laden on a tape, maybe something more dramatic involving somekind of terrorist threat and somekind of axis of evil event. - theConstruct, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I'm really, really tired of the "moonbat" bandwagon.
Quit parroting Coulter, and come up with an original insult, will you?
Really. - humanaut, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3It's going to take a LOT of Republican administrations, lots of scandals, wars of aggression, religious intolerance, sexual discrimination, scrapping of science, fences, detention camps, warrantless spying and people disappearing in the night, to undo the 8 years of relative peace and economic prosperity unleashed on the world by that demonic Bill Clinton.
- ZenMojo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The NK problem is a persistent problem, but you can't simply do the right thing every time just because you feel like it. I'm a bleeding liberal but even I can see how the right thing could easily be the wrong thing.
Unlike in Iraq, where I easily predicted sectarian violence would erupt and they wouldn't find any WMDs, in an argument back in philosophy class my sophomore year of undergrad, I know next to jack crap about Korea. None of us really have any idea of what's going on there.
To quote Glenn Beck, "Here's what I know:"
1) Mere contact with the outside world seems punishable by death in North Korea. The regime is so adverse to human decency, so unconscionable, that it cannot maintain itself without pretending there is nothing else.
2) If North Korea falls, no one will want to stay there. All of those refugees will go pouring over the border into China and South Korea.
3) The United States has only 1 stake in this...we have no perspective on the region. We're afraid of a nuclear weapon getting loose, so we want to stomp down there and put a boot in Kim Jong-Il's ass, but other than the fact that we basically said we want to wipe him off the planet, we have no place being in those discussions.
4) Neither South Korea nor China wants those damn refugees. North Korea is poor, harsh, it has nothing to offer when it comes to natural resources, and its people are malnourished and ignorant of the outside world. What technical skills they have could be put to use, but can you imagine the sheer culture shock? Frankly, South Korea and China have very selfish, but pragmatic, interests in keeping Kim Jong-Il quiet and happy but in power.
5) Any attack on Kim Jong-Il will pretty much justify everything that lunatic said about us. We will be fighting a country. I doubt we could get on the ground with an army of 2 million troops staring us down.
6) Expanding on number 5, Kim Jong-Il adjusted the philosophy of his father, which is in and of itself the state ideology on par with a religion. He added the idea of Songun, which changed a benign-sounding power-to-the-people platform into a heavily militarized machine. Songun = MILITARY FIRST, or the idea that the military should get first access to all of the nation's resources. If you starve North Korea, guess who dies and guess who is left behind to fight?
6) No matter what we do, keeping Kim Jong-Il happy and placid is what his neighbors want us to do. His own people, however, would be better off with a less ***** insane totalitarian bastard in charge, but do you really think China wants what the North Koreans want? South Korea would prefer the North Koreans put their ***** back together, but that would require regime change...regime change that would create refugees that would burden their economy.
7) If you want my pragmatic but fairly limited view of the situation, the only real answer is to assassinate him quickly and make sure it is done quietly. I know I'll sound like a cold-hearted bastard, but there you go. Coordinated propaganda and black ops to remove party officials from the top down. Never wage a land war in Asia, they say, so pop the little bastard for the greater good.
This will achieve two things. First, it will help shatter the personality cult that supports him. Second, in the chaos it will be far more difficult for organizations to withhold knowledge of the outside world. - humanaut, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Yep. Rather than moonbats, you should use some other clever name for the leftists/secular progressives/democrats/enemies of freedom. Here are some suggestions:
EMOcrats
DEMONcrats
DUMocrats
demoCRAPS
DIEmorecrats
demoCUNTS
FLAMOcrats
LIEberals
LOLberals
LiberLOLS
FIBerals
LiBOREals
DEMONerals
LiberaHATEAMERICAals
Lesbianerals
Democrazyats
Moonbats.. oh wait, hmm.
MoonDEMONHATEAMERICAcraperaLOLs.
There's a few more I've seen on freerepublic, but these are by far the most cleverest. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+9I love the desperate ultra lefties who actualy want us to believe that North Korea perfected a nuclear weapon from scratch in just 3 years.
Amazing, but that is what you are trying to say when you suggest that Clinton is blameless. You are basically saying htat North Korea did not go back on the agreement until after Bush labeled them partt of the axis of evil.
The best part is the same stupid ***** suggesting this are also the same ones saying "It would take Saddam at least 15 years to have a nuclear weapon." So, Saddam taks 15 years, North Korea takes 3?
Guess what? They were developing nukes in the 90s. Clinton knew, but didn't want to upset the fragile bubble economy. So he looked the other way. - fredrated, on 10/12/2007, -9/+9@RadiantBeing
Did you even read the blurb above, much less TFA?
"Bush waived the Framework's requirement..."
The point is Bush didn't adhear to the framework, however much we ahould all love it because it's "continuing the Clinton administration's policy"!
As for looking into our heart, how about looking into your own to discover the soure of this obfiscation? - mirunit, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3It started with Clinton, if they were to suddenly stop what was started they would be labeled racist.
- endlessrayne, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4I am deeply worried about his spelling ability.
- limeaid, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Get on your little peace train and tell the Kurds about Hussein not having WMD's - maybe they're just pretending to be dead
http://www.gendercide.org/case_anfal.html - aleahey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I heard Bush has been moonlighting for the NK's as a uranium enricher, to boot!
- th3p0p3, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3@greymaxcat
Lol I was not catching your sarcasm until half way through your comment, for a few lines there I was deeply worried about your mental state. - Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Let's all just agree to disagree...gotta reload...
- Aaryn015, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1North Korea has to import all of it's oil from China. It's of absolutely no value to Bush.
But Iraq, Now that's clear and present danger.
Oh, and the NK army is made up of 1.5 million VERY patriotic men that have been fed so much pro-"Dear Leader", anti-Western propaganda that fighting Americans in the name of the Dictator tops their list of "Things I want to do before I die". I really doubt America could win a war there without dropping the bomb.
It would be another Iraq, but a total nightmare.
Um.......... - lava, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4This is a little off topic, but american foreign policy is just horrible. Messing with the middle east in the 70s and 80s came back to bite us in the ass. The Korean war is coming back to bite us in the ass.., we put dictators in charge (I'm not saying this necessarily happened in korea) and later on we wonder why we're getting attacked. It reminds me of the simpsons episode with the lizards:
so how do we get rid of the lizards?
well, we're bringing in a new snake that feeds off these lizards
then what're we gonna do with the snakes?
well then we're gonna get a kinda snake eating gorilla to take down the snake
then what about the gorillas?
well when winter hits, the gorillas will freeze and die and all will be well again.
Man, I just want a candidate whose campaign pledge is to not ***** with other countries for 4 years. - aleahey, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2Hmm...Your comment was not anti-Bush enough, and it sounds almost like you might be blaming Clinton as well. Prepare to be dugg down in to double digit negatives, dear friend.
- vbbx, on 10/12/2007, -8/+4Flash back, in one on one talks, Carter and Clinton gives North Koreans plutonium -- 1994. Which the NoKos did what with the plutonium? In 1999 Madam half-Bright publicly said before Congress, the NoKos were violating the 1994 framework accord, and reprocessing the fuel rods we gave them -- into bomb material. She repeated the same claim in 2002. Why, because they are communists and communist lie.
Oh yeah, the Clinton 1994 framework included boat laods of cash and other goodies.
You lefty moonbats going to have to try and do better, this is just pathetic. - lateralus, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2$95 mill. wow, must be nice to be in the axis of evil(tm).
this could be called negotiating with terrorists. - aleahey, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Quit parroting the liberal *****, and we won't have to.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -13/+7Clinton was giving NK loads of cash before Bush even thought about being president.
Marked as inaccurate. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -10/+3only liberals do.
- sugardaddy4242, on 10/12/2007, -14/+7If Bush gave NK money for nuclear testing then why did NK tell the world they need nukes to fend off a US invasion. Something doesn't add up. The title of this article is misleading.
- wizbor, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1This ad scrapped by the GOP was produced by David Zucker (Scary Movie, Airplane etc) says it all in a nutshell.
From the report:
"....An actress playing Secretary Albright is shown presenting Kim Jong Il with the Michael Jordan basketball(this really happend!), painting the walls of Osama bin Laden's Afghanistan cave and turning a blind eye to suicide bombers..."
http://drudgereport.com/flashma.htm - greymaxcat, on 10/12/2007, -16/+8Bush wants NK to have nukes so he can stage another fabricated war... just like he blew up the WTC and the Space shuttle... He is a nasty evil conservative... he can only be up to no good...
Remember we are the worlds poliece man or poliece woman... poliece person... yeah... we are the worlds poliece person... so everything that goes wrong any place ant any time is Bush's fault. Especially if Bush tries to stop the bad guys...
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