On the Ropes

This week North Korea tested a nuclear weapon. Johns Hopkins University says that 650,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the 2003 invasion. You know it's a bad week for Bush when these headlines are a welcome change from the neverending Foley media circus.


From Newsweek:

"And so, here we are. North Korea has exploded a small nuclear device. Iran is well on its way to developing the technology to build one if it wants (while saying it doesn’t). And, yes, the regime in Iraq has changed, but the failed state that replaced it has become an infinitely more dangerous terrorist training ground, a clearing house for corruption and a cloaca breeding international radicalism." - Christopher Dickey




I honestly had no intention of taking on John McCain again anytime soon, but he went and misbehaved this week.

McCain is courageously blaming Clinton for North Korea's nuclear capabilities. It's one thing to debate the different levels of responsibility between the administrations over 9/11, an event a mere 8 months in to Bush's presidency. How long does Bush get a pass for national security blunders? Six years?

Fred Kaplan takes the bait:

"Sen. John McCain has skidded his Straight Talk Express off the highway into a gopher's ditch of slime. The moment came Tuesday, when he responded to charges by Sen. Hillary Clinton, his potential rival in the 2008 presidential election, that George W. Bush bears some responsibility for North Korea's newborn status as a nuclear-armed power.

McCain's version of history goes beyond "revisionism" to outright falsification. It is the exact opposite of what really happened.
Did Clinton "reward" them for doing these things, as McCain claims? Far from it. Not only did he push the U.N. Security Council to consider sanctions, he also ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draw up plans to send 50,000 additional troops to South Korea—bolstering the 37,000 already there—along with more than 400 combat jets, 50 ships, and several battalions of Apache helicopters, Bradley fighting vehicles, multiple-launch rockets, and Patriot air-defense missiles. He also sent in an advance team of 250 soldiers to set up logistical headquarters for the influx of troops and gear.

He sent an explicit signal that removing the fuel rods would cross a "red line." Several of his former aides insist that if North Korea had crossed that line, he would have launched an airstrike on the Yongbyon reactor, even knowing that it might lead to war.

This combination of sticks and carrots led Kim Il-Sung to call off his threats—the fuel rods weren't removed, the inspectors weren't kicked out—and, a few months later, to the signing of the Agreed Framework.

McCain called the accord a "failure." This appraisal isn't quite as dead wrong as his claim that Clinton did nothing but toss Kim flowers. But it's highly misleading, to say the least.

The accord fell apart, but not for the reasons that McCain and others have suggested. First, the U.S.-led consortium never provided the light-water reactors. (So much for the wild claims I've heard lately that North Korea got the bomb through Clinton-supplied technology.) Congress never authorized the money; the South Koreans, who were led by a harder-line government than the one in power now, scuttled the deal after a North Korean spy submarine washed up on their shores.

Second, when President George W. Bush entered the White House in January 2001, he made it clear, right off, that the Agreed Framework was dead and that he had no interest in further talks with the North Korean regime; his view was that you don't negotiate with evil, you defeat it or wait for it to crumble.

Third, a few months into Bush's term, evidence mounted that the North Koreans had been … not quite violating the Agreed Framework but certainly maneuvering around it. Confronted by U.S. intelligence data in October 2002, Pyongyang officials admitted that they'd been enriching uranium—an alternative route (though much slower than plutonium) to getting a bomb.

It should be noted that the bomb that the North Koreans set off on Sunday was apparently a plutonium bomb, not a uranium bomb. In other words, it was a bomb made entirely in Bush's time, not at all in Clinton's.
The rest is history. John McCain would do well to read up on it sometime."



John Kerry sets McCain straight:

"He must be trying to burnish his credentials for the nomination process," said Kerry, who labeled McCain's comments "flat politics and incorrect."

"The truth is the Clinton administration knew full well they didn't have a perfect agreement. But at least they were talking. At least we had inspectors going in and we knew where the (nuclear fuel) rods were. This way, we don't know where the rods are, the rods are gone. There are no inspectors. Ask any American which way is better," Kerry said."

Josh Marshall makes the case in the simplest of terms:

"Failure" =1994-2002 -- Era of Clinton 'Agreed Framework': No plutonium production. All existing plutonium under international inspection. No bomb.

"Success" = 2002-2006 -- Bush Policy Era: Active plutonium production. No international inspections of plutonium stocks. Nuclear warhead detonated.

Face it. They ditched an imperfect but working policy. They replaced it with nothing. Now North Korea is a nuclear state.

Facts hurt. So do nukes."


Former Defense Secretary William Perry's devastating blow by blow of the Clinton and Bush tactics toward North Korea:

"North Korea's declared nuclear bomb test program will increase the incentives for other nations to go nuclear, will endanger security in the region and could ultimately result in nuclear terrorism. While this test is the culmination of North Korea's long-held aspiration to become a nuclear power, it also demonstrates the total failure of the Bush administration's policy toward that country. For almost six years this policy has been a strange combination of harsh rhetoric and inaction.

The Clinton administration declared in 1994 that if North Korea reprocessed, it would be crossing a "red line," and it threatened military action if that line was crossed. The North Koreans responded to that pressure and began negotiations that led to the Agreed Framework. The Agreed Framework did not end North Korea's aspirations for nuclear weapons, but it did result in a major delay. For more than eight years, under the Agreed Framework, the spent fuel was kept in a storage pond under international supervision.

Then in 2002, the Bush administration discovered the existence of a covert program in uranium, evidently an attempt to evade the Agreed Framework. This program, while potentially serious, would have led to a bomb at a very slow rate, compared with the more mature plutonium program. Nevertheless, the administration unwisely stopped compliance with the Agreed Framework. In response the North Koreans sent the inspectors home and announced their intention to reprocess. The administration deplored the action but set no "red line." North Korea made the plutonium . . .

The attractive alternatives are behind us."

He could be talking about Iraq. In fact, on a number of issues, crises, and challenges, the attractive alternatives are behind us. Six years of corruption, incompetence, and neglect will do that.

Robert Farley of Tapped:

"On the domestic front, the Republicans have settled on their narrative; Clinton did it. The point man here is John McCain, who, as Brad Plumer notes, is making noises that seem to indicate that he would attack North Korea if he were president. This is the perfect political opportunity for McCain. He gets to act hawkish without paying the cost of actually launching a disastrous war. The hearts of his right wing critics, those who believe the problem with neoconservatism isn't that it failed but that it was never tried, are no doubt aflutter. Liberal hawks who hold to the incompetence dodge will also be excited by the prospect of a hawkish president who's possibly somewhat less inept than George W. Bush. Centrist liberals have rather a history of seeing the McCain that they want rather than the one who actually exists, and in the process of swooning they may be willing to excuse his more indefensible statements as just "what he needs to do to win the Republican primary"."

Obama Watch

Jonathan Alter has a piece on why Barack may want to go ahead and jump in while the water's fine. Ezra Kline isn't so sure.

Two Warners from Virginia made news this week. Today, Mark Warner announced he won't seek the presidency in 2008. Most commentary notes that the space he staked out (to the right of Hillary) was getting smaller. The big beneficiary is not Hillary, but John Edwards - another youngish Southerner who wisely has gone left of Clinton.

Sen. John Warner gave the Dems a boost and the White House fits with this assessment from his latest trip to Iraq:

"The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee warned Thursday that the situation in Iraq was “drifting sideways” and said that the United States should consider a “change of course” if violence did not diminish soon." -New York Times

The upshot of all this is don't count on moderate Republicans to provide oversight. Hagel, Warner, McCain and others sometimes make noises about defying White House policy, but they rarely get results. Maybe it's not their fault - maybe there aren't enough senate moderates to make a difference. Regardless, the only way to achieve meaningful oversight in the House or Senate, is to vote Democratic and put Republicans in the minority status. That's what November is about, not whose plan is better for Iraq, or other calamaties - do all congressmen need a plan for Iraq?- no this November is about repudiating the last six years, bringing back Congress' traditional role of oversight by supporting Democratic candidates.

Rep. Harold Ford put it simply:

``If you want to stay the course, I'm not your guy,'' Ford said. ``If you believe America is better than what they've given us this past six years, then I ask for your vote.''

He seems to be making an impression:

Ford's candidacy is going over well with voters such as Steve Pettyjohn, 45, a local contractor who voted for Ronald Reagan in the 1980s but says he is backing Ford because there are "no checks and balances" in Washington now that Republicans control the entire government. -The Baltimore Sun

Left or center, withdraw or redeploy, all Dems can make this simple case: Change vs. more of the same. Do you want a rubber stamp, or have you had enough?