Bush responsible For the North Korean Mess!! Read on!

Here's a part that put things straight.

Dear Leader Brings It On
By Robert Scheer
Truthdig

Tuesday 10 October 2006

Well, Bush showed them, didn't he?
Over the past six years, our "my way or the highway" president blew up a crucial nonproliferation agreement which was keeping North Korea's plutonium stores under seal, ended bilateral talks with Pyongyang, squashed Japan's and South Korea's carefully constructed "sunshine policy," which was slowly drawing the bizarre Hermit Kingdom back into the light, and then took every opportunity to personally insult the country's reportedly unstable dictator because it played well politically at home.

If you shun them, they will shape up - this was the essence of President Bush's non-diplomacy, as it was in regards to Iran, Lebanon and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The result? Cold War-style brinkmanship that has left the United States helpless.

If anyone is to blame it must be Herbert, who procreated a no-brain son to become the playboy of the corporate world.

Thank you, Mr. President. I feel so much safer now that we have a wannabe cowboy in charge of the free world.

In the ongoing story of Bush and Co.'s dangerous leadership, the North Korea chapter is one of the least understood - and potentially the most disastrous. And, as with the sordid saga of Iraq and the "missing" weapons of mass destruction, the devil is in the details obscured by the ugly glare of tyrants such as Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il.

Republican cheerleaders are now making the case that, as with every other problem in the world, this is all Bill Clinton's fault; the line is that former President Clinton caved to the North Korean communists, who then broke their agreements. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, what happened is that Jimmy Carter, on Clinton's behalf, had negotiated an historic deal back in 1994 to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to seal Pyongyang's plutonium in exchange for major energy assistance in the form of fuel-oil shipments and the building of safe nuclear reactors. (Incidentally, Donald Rumsfeld was a director of one of the companies that profited from the reactor deal.)

Clinton then followed the lead of Japan and South Korea in trying to lead paranoid North Korea into the world community through baby-step agreements.

Nearly a decade later, with the plutonium still safely under seal, however, Bush repudiated this approach, effectively driving North Korea to abandon all agreements and return to its pre-1994 pursuit of plutonium-based nukes. The White House rationale was that North Korea had broken the agreement by trying to enrich uranium enough to use it in weapons. However, not only are any such intelligence claims coming from this administration now highly suspect, but such a program would take a level of energy production and technical ability that seems to be beyond Pyongyang.

In any case, now Kim Jong Il and his scientists don't have to worry about the enormous difficulties posed by enriching uranium: They have back their far, far more dangerous plutonium reserves - thanks to Bush - with enough material to make between four and 13 bombs - and have missiles capable of carrying them into Alaska. Even worse, we know now that this rogue nation also benefited from key nuclear technology training provided by Pakistani nuke scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who then inexplicably was pardoned by our "war on terror" allies in Islamabad and has never been made available to U.S. investigators.

What did tough-talk Dubya do in response to this international outrage? He dropped the sanctions previously imposed on Pakistan because of that country's nuclear weapons program.

By the way, to a Non-american Carter and Clinton seems to be the only sane Presidents the US had in recent times.

^^^
Yeah...
adding that to my list:
AQ Khan has NOT been made available to US authorities for even simple questioning..

Originally posted by Esoteric Teacher

I concede he shares in the blame, but certainly not all of it.

Heck! I thought he was the president of the United States of America. You make it seem that he is just poodle faking around when foreign policy decisions are being made and executed by others.

I believe that a commander of a force is entirely responsible for approving and successful prosecution of a plan that is made with inputs provided by his advisors. The overall responsibility lies with him to take the right decisions. Similarly, GWB is responsible for the policy decisions being made. Afterall he is the head of state, isn't he? Or is the US being run by a bunch of self serving neo-cons ? He cannot shirk responsibility.

What Bush did was that he failed to apply his mind to arrive at the right deductions leading to rational and logical policy decisions from the inputs, right or wrong, provided by his advisors. As the Pres of the most powerful nation in the world, his performance has been pedestrian.

The bottom line is that in spite of knowing full well that Pakistan was clandestinely bartering nuclear technology for missiles with North Korea , he continued to twiddle his thumbs. His priorities were, needless to say, the emaciated bearded Osama lurking somewhere in the dusty hills of North Western Pakistan and, of course, his endless vacations at his Texas ranch.

I think your signature along with your posts are right on "I said "Let there be light-And there was light". Only problem is some readers go-"I said "Let there be light-And then I tripped over the cord"

So, C-130s make it America's fault Mike?

Number one, most of Khan's work took place before 2001. The Pakistanis fired as director of Pakistan's nuclear lab in March 2001, just 3 months into Bush's presidency.

Also keep in mind that this happened before 9/11, thus the idea that Bush cowtowed to Pakistan for access to Afghanistan is virtually inseparable from the idea that Bush was completely committed to a US invasion of Afghanistan from day 1.

The confessed proliferation took place between 1989 and 2000, though it is suspected that proliferation activities to North Korea continued after that date. The network used to supply these activities is global in scope, stretching from Germany to Dubai and from China to South Asia, and involves numerous middlemen and suppliers

It is suspected that he continued after 2001, but at that point lacked his previous level of access in Pakistan. He had a global network: the same one he used to arm Pakistan in response to India's nuclearization. You can hardly pin the blame to Musharaff and by proxy to Bush with that being the case.

It is also an error to presume that Pakistani intelligence equals Pakistan. The ISI is virtually a second government within Pakistan. It is noteworthy that Pakistan went on the US list of terrorist supporters because of ISI policy and came off not after a change in political leadership but after General Nasir was out of the ISI.

The ISI has rigged elections, they have intimidated the legislative branch into votes of no confidence, they have independently opposed US policy they have cooperated with terrorists even while the Pakistani military had 80,000 troops comitted to the Waziristan War. They also have a history of using Pakistan's assets to line their own pockets, such as in the Mehran banking scandal.
Despite a purge attempt in 2001, the UK MOD still believes links to terrorism continue, and Musharaff is afraid to rock the boat on them too much, probably because he knows what will happen.

For all your complaints about the beating of war drums, you seem fairly comfortable with a postiion which can only logically conclude that we must affect regime change in Pakistani intelligence. Might want to mull that over.