What a fucked up mess. Both sides have completely dropped the ball on this one. And I want to give Ben Wallace-Wells a pat on the back for reporting pretty fairly on this topic. Usually, Rolling Stone takes the editorial stance that no democrat has ever done anything wrong, where as every Republican is committed to destroying the world.

Its good to see SOMEONE on the Rolling Stone staff actually using their brains…

Both sides made mistakes, to be sure, but even with his mistakes, Clinton’s policy delayed North Korea’s nuclear development. Bush’s accelerated it.

tseving, assertions are not arguments. Do you have a point to make? Please support it.

Andy-

Read the washington monthly piece linked too by Wallace-Wells. Though long, it quite clearly shows that while Clinton’s framework was not perfect, it was working to some extent. It also shows that KJI wanted to engage the US in talks to enter into another framework of an agreement and the Bush and Co. refused to even entertain diplomacy.

“Though we should never negotiate from weakness, we should never be afraid to negotiate.” —JFK

Everyone knows Clinton fucked it up.

at this point i could give a shit less who gave him what

we’re not going to be able to change whats already happened

i think it far better to find a way to keep n. korea’s nuclear program contained(because i dont believe the international community has the guts to actually make him stop his nuclear proliferation), so that he cant sell his weapons to terrorist or whomever, whether it be via economic sanctions, or reductions in aid, etc.

whether clinton or rumsfeld is to blame is beside the point. the problem here is kim jong-il and the danger he poses to asia, particularly japan and south korea

i find it amazing that you anyone can say Clinton fucked it up (with KJI or OBL for that matter), when it is abundantly clear that Clinton, as opposed to W, actually took these threats seriously and acted on the situations. W did nothing on North Korea but talk shit. There was no follow through, only tough talk. As for OBL, according to Woodward’s report (which has been confirmed), we now know that on July 21, 2001 and August 6, 2001 the CIA made frantic attempts at trying to get the administration to take action against the coming threat.

Tough talk and no action. Culpable negligence at the expense of our country’s safety and major losses of human life. Your republican POTUS

Jack D- clever retort. Your attention to detail, keen insight and unique historical perspective are invaluable contributions to this dialouge.

My mother is a dirty slut.

Mike, can you type or are you getting head from Monica too

The Clinton Administration built N. Korea 2 Nuclear Reactors in the mid-90s, so they set the wheels in motion. Bush is a total disaster in many areas, but the road to N. Korea get nukes started with Clinton, just the road to 9/11 started with the Clinton Administration.

Rolling Stone and its alliance to the Democratic Party is completely comical and pathetic. Because they are so blindly supportive of one party (when both are fucked), the come off as a bunch of jokes.

Monica’s box smells like fish, but Hilary’s smells like rotten fish.

Get your own fucking name, imposter

George W is my hero!

RealThing: Don’t you mean *Donald Rumsfeld* built the light reactors, and Bill Clinton paid him to do it? That’s what this entire thread is about.

Though of course that’s not actually true either– since the light water reactors were never actually *built*. It was *agreed* they would be built in exchange for Korea handing over the nuclear materials they’d built as of 1994. But the reactors were never finished, and in 2002-2003 Korea removed the IAEA seals placed under Clinton and switched back on the technology they had from 1994. The technology they had from 1994 is what the nuclear bomb program is using– which was the entire point of the light water reactors in the first place, to trade North Korea technology that couldn’t be used for nuclear bombs in exchange for their older technology which could. Meaning at the worst Clinton pursued a foolish and dangerous policy, but in practice made the problem no worse than it was when he first approached it in 1994; and at best Clinton solved the problem, but the solution came unravelled under Bush. In either case the nuclear crisis we face today regardng North Korea effectively began in 2003.

But of course none of that matters, because this is blogger fantasy land and facts are so much less important than believing whatever makes you feel good about your “side”…

In the meanwhile, I find it funny how the “both parties are equally bad” talking point, while quite probably true, only ever seems to come up on those occasions when the Republicans have screwed up on some issue and are trying to deflect blame.

I love George W even more than Jack D.

Hee-hee, I just love Rolling Stone. Hee-hee. Down with Bush! Go Dems! Hee-hee.

Kim Jong Il aint crazy. He’s just desperate not to lose power. To that end he might just hold China, Japan and S. Korea hostage. There are better ways of dealing with such people than isolating them.

Just the latest example of W’s failing on threats to U.S. national security.

the issue is not ‘who to blame’ , it is not democrat or republic, the damn issue is we have been attacked, concerns of more arise, and north korea is possibly testing nuclear weapons.Instead of blaming it on some person or political party, look at the issue.
clinton or bush, i don’t care who’s fault it is fix it! hell, i’m paying for it either fixed or not, i want it taken care of.

if the democrats were in power they would have us invite the people that want to kill us to dinner then throw us in jail because we wont give tmem are guns to kill us the enemy loves dems

gosh Clinton’s fuck up prevented the attacks for the millenium because he had border guards on alert and prepared. At the time of the arrest in the canadian border(notice, not mexican border) bunch of other arrests were made around the world preventing major strikes in major western and Middle Eastern cities. This even while being thwarted at every attempt by republicans in congress. When republicans took complete control of government they started dismanteling the infrastructure set up by the outgoing president. The main republican gripe was that the outgoing administration had crazy glued some desks and committed other pranks, this was elevated to the order of ‘Crimes and vandalism’ in the media. Then 9/11 happened and the Clinton plans where revived with a huge dose of steroids and destruction of the protectio of civil rights.

Can you really feel safer with republicans in power?

Hey Jim,

Give your shit to Kim Jong Il AND the Iran Mullahs! They’re all happy Bush is still in power!

“Bush has let the axis of evil spin out of control”

Amy Goodman interviewed Bruce Cumings, professor of history at the University of Chicago on today’s Democracy Now program. Some interesting factoids for y’all:

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Cumings, you just mentioned how A.Q. Khan had gotten nuclear material to North Korea. Three years ago, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh revealed that Pakistan was helping North Korea build the bomb. Hersh reported the CIA had concluded that Pakistan had shared sophisticated technology, warhead design information and weapons testing data with the Pyongyang regime. But according to Hersh, the Bush administration sat on the CIA report, because the White House didn’t want to divert the focus from Saddam Hussein, and Pakistan had become a vital ally in Bush’s war on terror.
BRUCE CUMINGS: Well, I think Seymour Hersh is right. Pakistan did have a nuclear Wal-Mart for North Korea, Iran and Libya, other countries. We did not punish Pakistan in any way for this, even though they were the worst proliferators by far in the world. And the Bush administration, when it came in, in 2000, was presented during the transition, by Clinton administration officials, with intelligence that North Korea had begun importing enriched uranium technologies from Pakistan, and they sat on it for 18 months until the preemptive doctrine was announced in September of 2002.
James Kelly then went to Pyongyang the following month, in October of ’02, and confronted the North Koreans with this evidence of a second nuclear program. And the North Koreans, as they almost always do when confronted with their backs to the wall, said, “Fine, you know, we have it. We’ll see you later.” And they proceeded to kick out UN inspectors that had been on the ground for eight years, removed themselves from the NPT, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and reopened their reactors. Furthermore, they got control of 8,000 fuel rods that had been encased in concrete for eight years, and that probably is the plutonium that would be at the basis of this bomb test.
So, this was a complete and utter failure, because North Korea paid no penalty for jumping out of the NPT again, getting back their reactors. And the Bush administration continued to essentially argue inside the administration about whether to topple the regime or try and negotiate with it. So it was really quite a remarkable failure, and North Korea, let alone Pakistan, neither one of them, until now, has really paid much of a price for this.
AMY GOODMAN: Yesterday, Arizona Senator John McCain gave a speech in Detroit, and he said, “I would remind Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and other critics of the Bush administration policies that the Framework Agreement of the Clinton administration was a failure.” Explain what that Framework Agreement was.
BRUCE CUMINGS: Well, it was an agreement that came after a very dire threat of war in 1994 that froze their entire plutonium facility at Yongbyon in North Korea. They had seals on the doors, closed-circuit television, and at least two UN inspectors on the ground, 24/7, all the time. So there isn’t any possibility of that agreement having failed. It held for eight years and denied North Korea the plutonium that would have allowed them to make more bombs. Senator McCain is engaged in some sort of demagoguery here, because I don’t know a single expert who would say that that Framework Agreement was not successful, at least for eight years, in keeping North Korea’s plutonium facility shutdown.
Now, the enriched uranium program is not even clearly a program for a bomb. It may be to enrich uranium for light-water reactors that were expected to have been built by the United States and its allies. But even if it is for a bomb, it’s much more difficult to enrich uranium to a weapons grade and create a uranium bomb than it is to create a plutonium bomb, plus they already have now, thanks to the Bush administration’s policies, the wherewithal for six to eight plutonium bombs, so in effect they don’t even need the other program.
People say North Korea cheated. Wow, isn’t that really terrible? Kim Jong-il cheated. I don’t know anyone who thinks that Kim Jong-il is a person who can be trusted, but I do know that North Korea kept that agreement made in 1994 and the U.S. did not. We pledged ourselves to normalize relations with North Korea. We didn’t do that. We pledged ourselves to build light-water reactors. They got started in 2002. So when you actually look at that agreement between country X and country Y, rather than the endlessly demonized North Korean regime, you see that we are responsible, as well as the North Koreans, for the current situation.
But as far as Senator McCain is concerned, he is just flat wrong. It’s not a partisan question. It’s a question of knowing what that agreement was and whether it was carried out or not.

Of course what this story ignores is the fact that Light Water Reactors don’t throw off weapons grade plutonium or uranium…

you guys are morons. If north korea get Nukes, they aren’t going to use them. The nukes simply serve as insurance, as the U.S isn’t going to attack a country that has nukes. Think about it, dictators want to stay in power, if they attack the U.S with nukes, the U.S will retaliate.

so basically, this blog is saying that the Clinton Administration agreed to let any type of nuclear anything in a country with a known crazy dictator, and Rumsfeld used it to make money in a capitalist society? Rumsfeld truly is a bastard.

why is it we don’t hold our politicians to a higher standard of proof?
If they are to make outrageous claims they MUST back that up with irrefutable proof, otherwise it is slander or pandering.
To allow politicians to continually lie and distort the truth is to allow yourself to be lead like sheep to the slaughter.
We must not allow people to distort history for political or monetary gain. History should always reflect the actual facts rather than the emotional desires of those rewriting it.
Let’s wake up folks, we must demand truth rather than truthiness.

Jed,
Unfortunately Politics and Facts don’t really mix. In this age of sound bites and short attention spans, Political consultants advise that the message must be SHORT and simple. Unfortunately reality is complex and messy. In a working Democracy it is incumbent upon the PEOPLE to find out what the reality is (to the best of their ability) and not to take Politicians at their word. Those who do not seek the truth merely try to relay their version of it.

TFH,
“…relay their version of it. ” Very good. Original? Not that it matters. May I have your permission to use it?

Stop blaming each other! Everyone messed up. The person who’s really at fault is Kim Jong Il. There is no fucking reason to hate each others party more than this guy. No Democrat or Republican is in control of Il or North Korea. Ultimately it’s their decsion and theirs alone. Remember that.

Isn’t it funny that after placing blame on Democrats and spouting off a bunch of half truths and outright lies when confronted with facts that condemn their man the rightist will suddenly understand the logic of not placing blame and ‘moving on’?

Dennis,
Why not, I stole it (paraphrased) from Mark Twain (my hero). Lessee if I can find the entire quote:

“I have seen several entirely sincere people who THOUGHT they were (permanent) Seekers after Truth. They sought diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect honesty and nicely adjusted judgment–until they believed that without doubt or question they had found the Truth. THAT WAS THE END OF THE SEARCH. The man spent the rest of his life hunting up shingles wherewith to protect his Truth from the weather.”

Mark Twain – What is man

“McCain is concerned”?

We did not have N.Korea testing nukes eight years ago, seven years ago But….Guess what, folks, Bush has another “First”…

Under Bush: Surprise attack-major, large cities drowning, wars that linger forever and lack any factual basis and manage to kill 602,700 people, rob billions from our infra-structure, Republican corruption that has included breaking every commandment, selling our country out(bit by bit)(We know, “It’s Qwinton’s Fawt” and, McCain waffles like a crazy lapdog with a split personality and, now N.Korea(Who has been rearing its ugly head for six years-in Bush’s face-while “Rough and Ready”(Only when it’s other real soldiers at stake) salivates over Iraqi Oil and War and Ignors any attempts at Discussion/Diplomacy)and, What does McCain have to do with anything-he is Bush’s puppet-man…?Who Knew? Everyone-like Powell, McCain- lost his -ah, character, guts, etc. when he fell for “towing Bush’s far-right party line…Sell Out and Corruption are some of the words that come to mind…
McCain’s “Time” came and went when he Sold Out to being Georgie’s lapdog…(And didn’t Rumsfeld sell N.Korea equipment for processing nuclear fuel?)

Clinton talked with N.Korea and had them cease buying/using it for awhile…

The one that Blows is Mr. GWB(Read his pyschological profile-very interesting) and his idiotic disdain for anything approaching dipomacy/open discussions with N.Korea…

many thanks TFH for the twain quote. I needed that!

cake, very interesting.

I always thought Powell, would be the one to force cooler heads to prevail in that bunch. Unfortunately I didn’t count on how thorough the military brain washing is in enforcing loyatly and following orders on people. If he would have placed his loyalty on the american people, as his oath of office demands, rather than his party and his president we might have gone into Iraq with the proper numbers, equipment and plan.

Our predicament is much worse than we can imagine.

TFH,

My Hero!! No, not you Hat, Twain. Of course, if you keep coming up with gems like that, you could become ‘respected person without portfolio.’ Hey, it’s a start.

Jeez Cake, I looked up psychological profile, like you said, and found he has symptoms of dementia. Probably everybody but me knew that, if you read the hits on google. I especially like this ‘comment’ in 2003 from a site not particularly supportive of the prez:

“To those who deem it unseemly to count the brick’s on one man’s load, let us recall that this unselected President is one brick short of killing what the UN fears could be up to a half-million people in Iraq.”

“Half-million!!” So much for the Rabid Pit Bulls (RPBs) on the right that so vilify the UN.

Jed Clampett | 10/13/2006, 7:27 am EST

Isn’t it funny that after placing blame on Democrats and spouting off a bunch of half truths and outright lies when confronted with facts that condemn their man the rightist will suddenly understand the logic of not placing blame and ‘moving on’?

———————– ——-

Acutally if you read any of my comments, you would see that I think that America messed up as a whole when dealing with NK. In fact, I always try to not blame parties, be fair, and come up with actual solutions (you wouldn’t know about that); it’s the Moderate way of thinking. By the way, there is NOTHING in the way of information that implicates Bush or Clinton over the other. You are a piece of shit Jed. Learn to actually read what I say before acttacking me. You are generalizing me, and I won’t stand for that political spin. Shut your face unless you got a real agrument against me, jackass.

Bush ignores everything until the last minute, then when it is a looming disaster, he attempts to handle it but, pushes the Delay Button…

By then the disaster is a catastrophe and WE IS IN TWUBLE….

Get me another Planet, Quick!And don’t let Bush and his Republican politicians anywhere near it…

Georgie is intent on getting it blown to smitherines….GHUA

Bush has an uncanny way of taking a problem and making it a crisis-he should have kept discussion open and, contained N.Korea instead of IGNORING it for the past four/five years….

And, Yummy, his Doplomacy-name-calling a serious enemy is always terrif when you want to create more wars/attacks…

Feelin Lucky, J.C., DD, and, Tseving?

George isn’t a bit worried-Junior Simples just likes to play bully and chase Tumbleweeds….

Hey C. Co, It’s rather interesting how you concluded from my generalized statements about a general topic that I was talking directly to you. More of that ‘reading between the lines’ and ‘mind reading’ some people on here seem to be so fond of. They project their own fears, emotions and insecuritys on others in order to make a direct statement and attack a person rather than addressing the true issues at hand. You may say you are moderate in order to convince yourself and the rest of the readers here. But it’s very evident you have the same logic (or lack there of) and tactics the extreme right wing has fostered, incubated and grown in themselves and the population in the last 12 or so years.

You were talking to me, don’t try and lie to people. Your comment was right after mine and addressed what I had mentioned. Don’t try to recover by using some physcological logic evalutation on me as your thesis, when you know what you were doing from the beginning. Other people might not realize you are just trying to recover, but I know you know you were and that’s good enough for me.

Also I am a Moderate. I’m for stem-cell, reasearch, pro-choice, take very environmentalist stances. In addition, I think we made a wrong choice in attacking Iraq without help; we should have gone after the more immediate threat of Iran, if anything. I also think that we should have respect for our President and try to understand his motives and judge fairly (without ignorrance blinding us). Is it so bad to treat people fairly Jed? Do you honestly think that Liberals are right 100% of the time? Give me a break. I have viewpoints that can’t be contained in either party, and that’s why I’m Moderate. You don’t know me so you have no way to judge my political affliation. The only reason I seem like an “extreme right winger” is because you are so far left you don’t understand that someone who tries to judge people fairly and with actual logic and fact, can be a Moderate or even a Democrat. Go back to trying to convince yourself that you aren’t an extremeist. Also tell youself that there aren’t people out there who disagree with you that aren’t Nazis. I bet you won’t think about that long. But when do you ever really think anyway?

CO,

I only learned today that you are young, very young. I confess I’m surprised, pleased and disappointed, all at one time. Surprised because your comments led me to believe you are older, pleased because you are young and getting involved AND because your comments belied your age and disappointed because I would hope that the young would be more idealistic than you reveal yourself.

Life WILL, I can assure you, give you just cause to lose any idealism you might possess. Life WILL, I assure you, lead you to believe that no one can be trusted, save family, and lead you to choose a ‘platform of life’ from a limited set of options.

I will leave my remarks at that, save for two things: speak out for what you believe (you seen to need no help with that) and avoid personal attacks and invectives, they’re all too common on this site but actually detract from one’s message. At a later juncture we can debate the difference between being moderate and being A moderate.

I can appreciate that Dennis. And I do realize that idealism is lost as we get older. That’s a fact. Idealism can be good and bad. I’m an idealist in the facet that I think that America is generally a good country and the big problems we have today can be solved in the future if good people are around to do so. With that said, I’m also a realist. Not everything is as black or white as people want to make it out to be. It is nesscary that we treat everyone fairly and not let outside influences cloud our judgement. I would ask that you not judge me differently based on what you think my age is. Points are points, no matter who is delivering them. Save for having a little more appreciation for the intellegance level of high schoolers, there is no need to look upon me different. And don’t be disappointed with my lack of idealism. I think a good mix of idealism and realism is nessacary for a person understanding the issues of the world around him. I’m happy with were I stand, though I’m interested in what you view as differences between being a Moderate and moderate.

Good!! And a little scary that you’re so mature in your thinking. As you have no doubt noticed, I suffer from retarded maturity, so we’re probably pretty close on some things, far apart on others. I’m not nearly as intelligent as some (too few, sadly) that post here, but I can bring a perspective of having actually lived under various presidents and ‘regimes’ and having traveled across much of this country in a variety of professions.

I’ll await a proper subject matter to introduce the ‘discussion’ of M/moderate (nice ‘call’ Kid). That’ll give me time to compose myself.

If you ever want to ‘exchange’, you can contact me at dirtydennis at excite. I’m retired, somewhat lame and like to exchange emails.