Smoking Gun in Korea. Bush and Condi Knew. Didn't Tell.
Remember all the Hullabaloo about the Smoking Gun in the shape of a mushroom cloud referring to Iraq? Guess what? Wrong country. And, it didn't have to happen this way. Check out this great article: Rolling Blunder, How the Bush administration let North Korea get nukes. By Fred Kaplan It's a bit long but you will feel SMARTER after reading it. (Thanks to Digby for directing me to it.)
On Oct. 4, Kelly flew to Pyongyang to confront North Korean officials with the evidence [that North Korea may have been acquiring centrifuges]. The North Koreans admitted it was true. For almost two weeks, the Bush administration kept this meeting a secret. The U.S. Senate was debating a resolution to give President Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq. The public rationale for war was that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. If it was known that North Korea was also making WMDs--and nuclear weapons, at that--it would have muddied the debate over Iraq. Some would have wondered whether Iraq was the more compelling danger--or asked why Bush saw a need for war against Iraq but not against North Korea. The Senate passed the Iraqi war resolution on Oct. 11.
The Bush administration publicly revealed what it had known for weeks about North Korea's enriched-uranium program on Oct. 17.
4 Comments:
They never ever planned on building power reactors as Clinton's plan required. Clinton apparently did nothing to support his own policies..
"By this time, Clinton's Agreed Framework was unraveling. The light-water reactors, it was clear, were never going to be built. Normalization of relations was another non-starter. The CIA got wind that North Korea may have been acquiring centrifuges for enriching uranium since the late 1990s, most likely from Pakistan. By September 2002, the conclusion was inescapable. It was debatable whether this literally violated the Agreed Framework, which dealt with the manufacturing of plutonium, but it was a sneaky end run and a violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty."
This article also assumes everything happened in a vaccuum. Where is the mention of russian and chinese efforts?
Seems to me a lot of people have left NK to twist in the wind, in a lot of ways, including Kim Il-Sung, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, China, Russia, and the rest of the international community.
Someone over at Glenn Greenwald's postulated that this nuke test is another in NK's long line of attention-seeking behaviours, and possibly motivated by their just having a bad harvest that may lead to mass starvation by January.
Remember though, kids, as with all authoritarian personality cults, Juche cannot fail, it can only be failed.
do you smell the smell of rome burning? which one do you think is really fiddling?
hi Betmo!
Why yes, yes I do. Speaking of burning and Condi. I had forgotten about the fact that Condi's office was behind the EPA changing the press release about air quality after 9/11. So now there is a person in NYC who is working to block claims for medical care for first responders who need medical treatment from lung problems based on being in ground zero.
http://tinyurl.com/yj9d4z
The woman who wrote this, Susan Edleman, also revealed that the decision to reword that press release that said, "Safe Air" came from Condi Rice's office. Condi she didn't even have the decency to admit she approved it, she let her "press secretary" take the hit.
Hey heros of 9/11! Be sure to send your medical claims to Ms. Condi's office and say, "Thanks for looking out for me!"
RICE OK'D CLAIM OF 'SAFE AIR' AFTER 9/11
SUSAN EDELMAN, HEATHER GILMORE and BRAD HAMILTON; New York Post; Sep 24, 2006; pg. 023;
September 24, 2006 -- Condoleezza Rice's office gave final approval to the infamous Environmental Protection Agency press releases days after 9/11 claiming the air around Ground Zero was "safe to breathe," internal documents show. Now Secretary of State, Rice was then head of the National Security Council - "the final decision maker" on EPA statements about lower Manhattan air quality, the documents say.
Scientists and lawmakers have since deemed the air rife with toxins.
Early tests known to the EPA at the time had already found high asbestos levels, the notes say. But those results were omitted from the press releases because of "competing priorities" such as national security and "opening Wall Street," according to a report by the EPA's inspector general.
The chief of staff for then-EPA head Christie Todd Whitman, Eileen McGinnis, told the inspector general of heated discussions, including "screaming telephone calls," about what to put in the press releases.
The notes come from a 2003 probe into public assurances made on Sept. 16, five days after the 9/11 attacks. They tell how a White House staffer "worked with Dr. Condoleezza Rice's press secretary" on reviewing the press releases for weeks.
Whitman said through a spokeswoman Friday that she never discussed her press releases directly with Rice. She also defended her collaboration with the White House.
Now-retired Inspector General Nikki Tinsley told The Post her auditors tried to question the head of President Bush's Environmental Quality Council, but "he would not talk to us."
Calls and e-mails to Rice were not returned.
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