You don’t have to agree with everything the generally centrist
Incestuous Amplification says in his latest blog essay on North Korean nukes – I surely don’t – but he certainly piqued my curiosity with his
deconstruction of this
USA Today story published Tuesday:
A year after North Korea provoked a crisis with the United States by admitting a secret effort to make weapons-grade uranium, U.S. officials say the program appears to be far less advanced than diplomats had feared.
Intensive international monitoring and North Korean ineptitude have significantly slowed efforts to build a plant to produce highly enriched uranium, says a State Department official involved in U.S. attempts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. …
A U.S. intelligence official says the CIA, which has conducted extensive surveillance of North Korea, is "not certain there even is" a uranium-enrichment plant. He says North Korea may have overstated its capability as part of a strategy of "bluff and bluster to extract concessions from the United States."
Wow. This sounds suspiciously like what we’re told in some quarters that Saddam did with his nonexistent WMDs. Just a bluff to keep the neighbors in line and the U.S. nervous about attacking.
As Incestuous points out, the uncertainty about North Korean nuke capability isn’t what we were being told
just six weeks ago.
The United States had evidence by the summer of 2002 that North Korea had been enriching uranium to develop nuclear weapons, John Bolton, U.S under secretary of state for arms control and international security told Choe Byung-yul, chief of Korea's main opposition Grand National Party. The two met for talks here [Sept. 15].
The North may have been producing uranium in 1998 or even earlier than that, experts say. But the United States is confident that Pyongyang has breached the 1994 Geneva Agreement to produce enriched uranium, Bolton said, adding that the United States is more concerned about the North's production of enriched uranium than the plutonium reprocessed at the Yongbyon facility. Bolton is considered one of the hawks in Bush administration toward North Korea.
When the Bush Administration came into office, it made a lot of phflbbbbbbbbbbbbting noises regarding the 1994 agreement. The deal, we were told, was a perfect example of Clinton foolishness, in particular, and the Democrats’ naïve dependence on diplomacy, in general. Pyongyang even got included as a charter member of the "axis of evil" in Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address.
Come October 2002, neoconservatives and the whole array of rightwing pundithuggery had a field day when
North Korea admitted that it had been engaged in a years-long secret program to build nuclear weapons in violation of those promises it made to Clinton. It may have been the high point in Dubyanocchio’s we-told-you-so-ism.
The North Korean confession, however, has been followed for months by a White House alternating between, on the one hand, mouthy belligerence, and on the other, hints of quid pro quo diplomacy practically identical to what Clinton chose to do nearly a decade ago.
Out of one side of its mouth, the Administration says (with considerable justification) that Pyongyang cannot be trusted. Also that North Korea’s nuclear program (combined with its advances in the field of intercontinental ballistics) is a good argument favoring a gigantic U.S. investment in Star Wars II. It should be noted that many leftists were also alarmed by the news, and argued, among other things, that going after Saddam, who was only alleged to have nuclear weapons, seemed another example of the Bush team’s misplaced priorities, given that North Korea claimed to actually have some.
But, while the neocons like Bolton did the bad-cop chest-pounding routine, others in the administration hinted at compromise. Amazingly, in spite of all the screaming about Clinton, the White House even suggested last April that it might provide Kim Jong-il more aid before he agreed to shut down his nuclear programs – something any objective observer would characterize as giving into North Korea’s blackmail after it kicked out the inspectors and unsealed its plutonium and began processing it for bombs.
Now we’re presented with the possibility that the uranium enrichment plant may not even exist. If this were true, it would make coming to an agreement much easier. Expert observers believe the North has enough plutonium for two to eight nuclear weapons from its nuclear complex at Yongbyon. We know about that program because plutonium programs emit krypton gas that can be measured from the atmosphere. Uranium programs are much more difficult to monitor.
Incestuous Amp thinks all this chatter is namby-pambyism on the part of Bush.
By taking the uranium program off the table, ignoring the last year of the Bush administration touting the uranium program as a major threat, and pretending that it doesn't exist, the potential inspections regime just lightened their load by about 95%. They can stick with Yongbyon, throw a few more cameras and another few IAEA inspectors in there, and call it an improvement over the 94 Framework that every Bush administration official has trashed at one time or another since entering office.
What is it that the neo-cons and paleo-cons and all the other con artists say about Jimmy Carter’s and Bill Clinton’s foreign policy? Wishy-washy? Indecisive? Unclear to allies and foes alike?
