Carter says Bush partly to blame for N.Korea test

[cal04]

Former President Jimmy Carter said on Friday the Bush administration was partly responsible for North Korea's decision to test a nuclear device by isolating the Asian country, and he urged Washington to change course and talk with Pyongyang.

"Obviously most of the blame is on North Korea but it is U.S. policies that have brought us to this status," he told Reuters while riding between campaign stops for his son Jack who is running for the U.S. Senate in Nevada.

(snip)
"The Bush administration changed that policy," he continued. "They put in the trash can the agreement with North Korea, and as a result of that -- and threatened North Korea with military attack -- and as a result of those threats and the discarding of the previous agreement, North Korea announced that they were withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty."

(snip)
"Unfortunately, the U.S. government has established an unprecedented international policy of not talking to anyone who disagrees with us," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061020/ts_nm/korea_north_carter_dc

[stop the bleeding]

1. nope

it's always Big Dawg's fault

[Psephos]

2. IMO, it's Kim's fault. All of it.

I give Carter, Clinton, and (biting down on my molars) even Bush a pass on this one. The situation is without meaningful options and has been for a long time. DPRK is an insane asylum filled with terrified, starving people in the last remaining Stalinist state.



Peace.

[BushOut06]

4. Wrong, Bush shares much of the blame

As soon as Bush took office, he broke off the agreements that Clinton had made with North Korea. He immediately began antagonizing North Korea, and later included them in his "axis of evil." He adamantly refused to even engage in talks with the North Koreans. He illegally invaded one of the members of the "axis". Under these circumstances, is it really surprising that North Korea would press forward with its nuke program?

[Psephos]

8. To answer your question, yes, it is surprising that DPRK has pressed ahead

DPRK's bomb test has finally caused the one sub rosa ally the NoKo's had left in the world (China) to publicly castigate them. In the realpolitik chambers of the Chinese government, it has become apparent that propping up Kim is hurting, not helping, Chinese interests, and the damage is growing. South Korea and Japan will no longer pretend they can accommodate what's happening in Pyongyang. As these sleeping giants awaken militarily, China suffers reduction of hegemony as well as prestige.

Your summary of what happened to US-DPRK agreements is wrong, both in what you said and what you didn't say. The agreements were broken after discovery that DPRK had been pursuing a second, secret uranium enrichment program since the mid-1990s, and had lied about it and gone to great lengths to hide it. This flatly abrogated the terms of the 1994 Agreed Framework. Specifically, DPRK agreed to:

- Take steps to implement the Korean Peninsula Denuclearization Declaration.
- Remain a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
- Submit to IAEA ad hoc and routine inspections
- Store and ultimately dispose of nuclear fuel rods without reprocessing in the DPRK.

DPRK broke all of these before the U.S. suspended its aid and obligations under the Agreement.

I completely agree that the cowboy-talkin' Bush administration threw gas on the fire...but the fire had already been lit by Kim. Why is there reluctance among so many here, on a progressive board, to condemn a nuclear nutbag like Kim? North Korean nukes can't possibly lead to anything good, and can definitely lead to something very, very bad. I remember when progressives were, without qualification, against nuclear arms in all forms and all places. To me, that's a core progressive belief. Period.

If there's a less-progressive leader in the world than Kim, with his concentration camps, cult-of-personality government, bizarre fetishes, illegal drug and US currency counterfeiting operations, and his penchant for acquiring nukes, then who would that be? How many North Koreans starved so that cash could be diverted into making weapons? This is a country so desperate that it stole the trains that brought international food aid.

BTW, consider reading up on Carter's role in brokering those agreements. He did it without the approval of Clinton, who was extremely pissed-off that Carter, as a private citizen, was making promises on his own to Kim that seemed to represent the will of the US government. In the end, Clinton's advisors reluctantly suggested he go along with Carter's initiative, but not because it was a good agreement. Instead, it was considered politically expeditious at that point.

Here's one place to read up...there are plenty others. There are good links worth following to respected sources at the bottom of the article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework

Peace

[struggle4progress]

9. BushCo's priorities include undermining Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty

Early indications included the Administration's complete indifference to the Nunn-Lugar framework for securing FSU fissile materials.

In Korea, Administration policy included eliminating IAEA inspectors:

Wednesday, 3 April, 2002, 12:06 GMT 13:06 UK
US grants N Korea nuclear funds

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.

In releasing the funding, 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 ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1908571.stm

This should sound familiar; almost immediately afterwards, the Administration was attacking IAEA inspections in Iraq:

Friday, 20 September, 2002, 04:08 GMT 05:08 UK
US threat to stop Iraq inspections

The American Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has said the United States will find ways to stop weapons inspectors going back to Iraq unless there is a new United Nations Security Council resolution on the issue ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2269462.stm

IAEA: Year for Iraq inspections
Monday, January 13, 2003 Posted: 8:25 AM EST (1325 GMT)

VIENNA, Austria (CNN) -- U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq could take about a year and will be "worth the wait," an International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman has told CNN.

Mark Gwozdecky reiterated comments made by chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei last spring, in which they made it clear the inspections could take "in the vicinity of a year."

Gwozdecky said it was a "far better option to wait a little bit longer than to resort to war." ...

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/01/13/sproject.irq.inspections/index.html

In March 2003, the Administration warned the inspectors to leave immediately. The Administration forbid the inspectors to return after the war.

In this same period, the Administration further set out to undermine nonproliferation agreements by outing WMD expert Valerie Plame:

article | posted September 6, 2006 (web only)
What Valerie Plame Really Did at the CIA
David Corn

... Valerie Plame was recruited into the CIA in 1985, straight out of Pennsylvania State University. After two years of training to be a covert case officer, she served a stint on the Greece desk, according to Fred Rustmann, a former CIA official who supervised her then. Next she was posted to Athens and posed as a State Department employee. Her job was to spot and recruit agents for the agency. In the early 1990s, she became what's known as a nonofficial cover officer. NOCs are the most clandestine of the CIA's frontline officers. They do not pretend to work for the US government; they do not have the protection of diplomatic immunity. They might claim to be a businessperson. She told people she was with an energy firm. Her main mission remained the same: to gather agents for the CIA.

In 1997 she returned to CIA headquarters and joined the Counterproliferation Division. (About this time, she moved in with Joseph Wilson; they later married.) She was eventually given a choice: North Korea or Iraq. She selected the latter. Come the spring of 2001, she was in the CPD's modest Iraq branch. But that summer--before 9/11--word came down from the brass: We're ramping up on Iraq. Her unit was expanded and renamed the Joint Task Force on Iraq. Within months of 9/11, the JTFI grew to fifty or so employees. Valerie Wilson was placed in charge of its operations group.

There was great pressure on the JTFI to deliver. Its primary target was Iraqi scientists. JTFI officers, under Wilson's supervision, tracked down relatives, students and associates of Iraqi scientists--in America and abroad--looking for potential sources. They encouraged Iraqi émigrés to visit Iraq and put questions to relatives of interest to the CIA. The JTFI was also handling walk-ins around the world. Increasingly, Iraqi defectors were showing up at Western embassies claiming they had information on Saddam's WMDs. JTFI officers traveled throughout the world to debrief them. Often it would take a JTFI officer only a few minutes to conclude someone was pulling a con. Yet every lead had to be checked ...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060918/corn

The top Administration official for nonproliferation was John Bolton:

Bolton Faces Allegations That He Tried to Fire Analysts

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 15, 2005; Page A17

In 2003, John R. Bolton, President Bush's choice for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, ordered a young official working closely with then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell removed from duties in the State Department's nonproliferation bureau in what U.S. officials described as a third attempt by Bolton to purge career officials he perceived as impeding his policy goals ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54774-2005Apr14.html

A Nuclear Blunder?
Critics say U.N. Ambassador-designate John Bolton didn’t properly prepare for a key nonproliferation conference ..

.. if the NPT needed so much fixing under U.S. leadership, why was the United States so shockingly unprepared when the treaty came up for its five-year review at a major conference in New York this month, in the view of many delegates? And why has the United States been losing control of the conference’s agenda this week to Iran and other countries—a potentially serious setback to U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran?

Part of the answer, several sources close to the negotiations tell NEWSWEEK, lies with Bolton, the undersecretary of State for arms control. Since last fall Bolton, Bush’s embattled nominee to be America’s ambassador to the United Nations, has aggressively lobbied for a senior job in the second Bush administration. During that time, Bolton did almost no diplomatic groundwork for the NPT conference, these officials say.

“John was absent without leave” when it came to implementing the agenda that the president laid out in his February 2004 speech, a former senior Bush official declares flatly. Another former government official with experience in nonproliferation agrees. “Everyone knew the conference was coming and that it would be contentious. But Bolton stopped all diplomacy on this six months ago,” this official said ...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7817986/site/newsweek/

There is also the Administration's complete indifference to AQ Khan's nuclear trafficking. And, as disturbing, the willingness of the Administration to further undermine the NPT framework by arranging nuclear deals with India without requiring India's signature on the NPT.

The underlying reason for this, of course, is clear: by fostering general proliferation, the Administration has hoped to create a climate in which it could develop a new generation of nuclear weapons as part of its militaristic stance.

While I have little sympathy for North Korea, the context strongly suggests the Administration deliberately sought to terrify the North Koreans into an accelerated weapons program, while simultaneously ensuring that no UN inspectors would be available to monitor events, and that the Administration did so for cynical reasons ...

[Psephos]

14. Struggle, you raise some good points there

Clearly, you've been thinking about this for a while.

The Plame angle is less convincing than some of the other points; the Bolton "oversight" speaks volumes. Thanks for providing good food for thought.

Peace.

[MrPrax]

11. Interesting post...?

The OP is about Carter (D) blaming Bush (R) for yet another diplomatic failure and implicitly calling into play that the current policy which has simply encouraged DPRK to expand it's capablitities.

BUT --

The poster really wants us to know that Carter and Clinton had a hand in it TOO to blunt the real criticism of Bush's general handling of foreign policy, to get the points out for the election.

1) DPRK is an historic problem facing THS US and no ONE President is to blame
2) Kim is crazy and you can't negotiate with crazy people like the democrats did
3) Negotiating was tried with Democrats and it didn't work, so Bush's strategy is still sound.

It reads like a GOP 'door stop' script.

It tries to anticipate Democrat or undecided questions about North Korea's expanded nuclear capabilities done entirely under the current Republican administration's quite candid and stupid 'war on terror' umbrella.

Of course, attempting to seek agreement on a whole range of subjects in a multi-laterial forum is a far cry from sanctioning, ripping up framework agreements and practically declaring war on North Korea, but the poster doesn't want to dwell on that distinction....the Bush strategy is still sound and Korea will ALWAYS be a problem for AMERICA and the President simply needs more time for his strategy to work.

The fact that China, South Korea and Japan have criticized the Bush 'boycott' of the talks (and the Admin's escalation of the dispute), is not really relevent to the poster who wants to make sure that Carter and Clinton get blamed for neogitiating agreements ulitmately killed by a GOP dominated Congress and undermined by North Korea. (How exactly their well-intentioned attempts to honestly solve a 50 year old regional problem only to have, by the poster's own admission!, DRPK and crazy Kim break the agreement, is a strike AGAINST either Clinton or Carter is only something the poster can answer.)

But apparently you still see them as having a hand in the CURRENT problems which are ENTIRELY and CLEARLY the result of Bush's failed foreign strategy. (One of the big tip-offs is of course during this time Clinton is negotiating, Rumsfeld is actively working for a company (ABB) to sell the same nuke-clur plants to North Korea -- a fact well-known to most here at DU)

Even odder still the poster the uses that usual 'three person' voice to define Progressives:

I remember when progressives were, without qualification, against nuclear arms in all forms and all places. To me, that's a core progressive belief. Period.

This is definitely rather odd as it is the 'usual' tactic to settle on a 'strawman' to characterize an entire movement by hand-selecting your target. Of course the Democratic party has never endorsed anything like this as well as most mainstream liberal groups.


But oddly the poster, presumeably someone who would fall into one of the many center left of center categories here at DU themselves, sees the Progressive as distinct and extreme. We'll just forget the OTHER part that the 'no nukes' thing is actually a smaller part of a total rejection of war being the ONLY basis to solving human conflicts or forget that the 'no nukes' position is "without qualification" something to be applied to ALL nations, not just North Korea.

Moreover it becomes painfully obvious that the poster is 'trolling' when you read lines like :
If there's a less-progressive leader in the world than Kim.

Why would someone characterize Kim as 'less-progressive'? Was this in any dispute? I've met died in the wool raving psycho Maoists that praised Pol Pot but thought Daddy Kim was a fascist lunatic. Unless you can find a large body of progressives in the States or anywhere else that MIGHT think that Kim WAS progressive, I would suggest leaving off the 'less than' smear.

Unless of course it's your intention to conflate Progressives with Communism and suggest that the local democrat running for office is in fact a commie who wants to talk to the enemy, like Clinton did, and your 'mark' is a 'less than' happy GOPer and not posters at a progressive internet forum.

So much for your understanding of 'core progressive belief(s)' which you probably only 'remember' from seeing protestors on TV during the Reagan era and laughing your ass off at the 'fucking granolas' and how you can't TALK to crazy guys like Daniel Ortega.

[Psephos]

13. I looked for the "sarcasm" icon, but didn't see it

But then I realized you actually weren't making a parody post. Heh heh, I mean, without realizing it. :D

So I'm a granola-hating repuke talking-points robot sent to subvert DU? LOL. Hmm, lemme guess: you're an INTJ on the Meiers-Briggs temperament profile, right?

"Once a man whose ax was missing suspected his neighbor's son.
The boy walked like a thief, looked like a thief, and spoke like a thief.
But the man found his ax while digging in the valley, and the next time he
saw his neighbor's son, the boy walked, looked and spoke like any other
child."
-Lao-tzu

Here's the Cliff's Notes translation of your post: "I am a True Progressive. Anyone whose opinion differs from mine is a troll or a subversive mole. My response to such apostates is cold, swift, and merciless." Ok, Purity Cop, back to your keyboard. Type up another hard screed in your darkened apartment. Egos are like babies, you can feed them six times a day, and they still cry.

Meanwhile, on my planet, nuclear proliferation is a Bad Thing, no asterisks needed. "Hoping it will go away" is not a great treatment for cancer. That's been true since I marched in Ann Arbor during the '80s against nukes. Funny, I don't remember seeing you.

Judging by the results, there've been fifty years of fuck-ups on North Korea. The BushCo clowns are the worst of the lot, no surprise there, but only a True Believer could ignore how that can has been kicked repeatedly down the road since the days of Eisenhower. When next you pontificate on North Korea, "think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight." (Albert Schweitzer) As if that's what drives you, anyway.

[goforit]

5. Yes.... terrified and starved. And I'm sure Bush scares the shit out them.

[Vidar]

3. I love Jimmy.

[rodeodance]

6. yo. carter, keep in Bush's face.

[rodeodance]

7. Under Bush we have Nuclear proliferation---with Clinton we did not.

[bahrbearian]

10. Partly ?,, I don't think Carter is giving Chimpy enough credit.

[jwirr]

12. I agree with Carter. Much of the world thinks of *ss as the most

dangerous man in the world, they do not hate the US, they hate *ss. When he starts threatening leaders of countries around the world with what he did to Iraq they react. They begin to build up their defenses. What I blame NK for is turning to one of the most dangerous weapons available.