McCain, if you're going to be a maverick, you have to keep away from the tactics of the GOP you claim to be a rebel against.
His latest idiocy? Claiming that Clinton was responsible for North Korea's nuclear proliferation.
Diplomatic failure? Heck no. We don't use the word failure around here.
"I would remind Senator (Hillary) Clinton and other critics of the Bush administration policies that the framework agreement of the Clinton administration was a failure," McCain said in a statement, referring to a 1994 deal under which North Korea agreed to halt work on a plutonium-based nuclear facility, partly in exchange for free fuel oil deliveries.
"The Koreans received millions of dollars in energy assistance ... and what did the Koreans do? They secretly enriched uranium," McCain said.
It's quite simple, people. In 1994 North Korea wanted to make nuclear bombs. They weren't seeing anything from the
Nuclear Proliferation Treaty in which the United States promised to build everybody a nuclear reactor if they promised to not build any bombs. Of course we've done nothing about that since, so North Korea was logically getting a little anxious. So in 1994, North Korea wanted to start the re-processing of plutonium, and begin work on some more nuclear reactors. We talked them out of it. We promised to build them some light water reactors.
Right about then, Congress got in the way. (A Republican majority was elected in 1994.) Two years later, the Bush administration stomps in. They refuse to talk to North Korea for a year and half. Of course North Korea is starting to think that maybe the deal is off. Then the Bush administration labels Pyongang part of the 'Axis of Evil' and puts out a statement indicating that North Korea is a potential nuclear target.
Hmm... Think the deal's off? What would you do, if you were another country?
I know what I would do, if another country was threatening to bomb me. I'd build some nuclear bombs of my own!
What hasn't been said is that without the agreement we made with North Korea in 1994, they'd have a hundred bombs by now.
Blame Clinton. That seems to be the remedy for every ailment. Iran wanting to build nuclear reactors? Blame Clinton. China invading Taiwan? North Korea building bombs? Blame Clinton. Because if we started pointing fingers at the people actually responsible for this failure of diplomacy, something might actually be done about it.