Dems Go Back to "Blame Bush" Playbook in North Korea Krisis

Democrats set a new record on Monday. They all woke up Monday morning and when told the news that North Korea had in fact detonated a nuclear bomb, they squawked like a demented gaggle of Parrots: "It's Bush's fault."

And of course the favored rhetoric of "failed policies" is their mantra. John Kerry, busy campaigning in Iowa ,for God knows what, worked some variation of "failed" into nearly every paragraph:

"shocking failure, gigantic failure, a complete lapse of focus and of effort by this administration... failed to send the kind of negotiating team...disgraceful failure of leadership...The incompetence is really beyond description..."utterly disgraceful."

While using the "f" word fewer times, Senate MINORITY Leader Harry Reid (DEMOCRAT-Nevada) didn't take long to churn out a press release which declared that the: "Administration's failed North Korea policy," demands we "develop recommendations to change course, and directly communicate to the North Koreans the consequences of their actions and the Administration's new course. "

Oh, that "new course," another favorite line of Harry Reid leftover from his demand that we change course in Iraq while outlining what is actually our current strategy.

And of course Senator Hillary Clinton (DEMOCRAT-NY) couldn't help but get in on the act: "the failed policies of the Bush administration, and I regret deeply their failure to deal with the threat posed by North Korea."

One wonders how long it will be before Bill Clinton surfaces to tell us that how hard he "tried and failed" to do anything about the North Korea problem. We're reminded that in 2002 Clinton claimed that he was all set to go to war with North Korea in the 1990's due to the threat they posed with nuclear weapons: "We actually drew up plans to attack North Korea and to destroy their reactors and we told them we would attack unless they ended their nuclear program."

But you didn't attack did you Bill? And North Korea clearly didn't cease their nuclear program. Hopefully we can look forward to another Chris Wallace interview with Clinton wagging that finger again explaining it all.

The common thread running through all the Bush "failed" rhetoric is a demand for direct talks between the U.S. and North Korea. We took a quick look at the success of that strategy yesterday.

Let's expand on the past efforts with this summary provided in the August, 2006 Limbaugh Letter (PDF format). It's long, but eminently readable. And there will be a test on this material:

Clinton's North Korea Legacy

"North Korea cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb."
-- Bill Clinton, Nov. 7, 1993

A recent ad on the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee website opened with the words, "Security Under Bush and GOP?" It claimed "North Korea has quadrupled its nuclear arsenal," and included footage of a tank and North Korea President Kim Jong Il. The ad ended, "Feel safer? Vote for change." Democrats have been hoping we'll all completely forget history. Yes, North Korea is an incredibly dangerous nuclear member of the axis of evil, and for that we can thank Bill Clinton:

• In the spring of 1992 brutal North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung allowed International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] inspectors, led by none other than Hans Blix, into his country. Kim claimed they had "a tiny quantity [of plutonium] far from the amount you need for a weapon," reported Blix, according to The Washington Post. But covert tests showed that the North Koreans had actually reprocessed massive amounts of plutonium, enough for several bombs, reports Jasper Becker in the definitive Rogue Regime (Oxford University Press). When the IAEA asked for access to nuclear waste sites to investigate further, the North Koreans balked.
• In 1993, North Korea declared it would withdraw from the Non- Proliferation Treaty [NPT] unless certain demands were met: "U.S. diplomatic recognition, the end of economic sanctions, one million tons in grain, half a million tons of fuel oil per year and the delivery of two light-water reactors worth over $4.5 billion. The Koreans were quite specific about the sort of reactors they wanted and only these would do" notes Becker. Absurd.
• By 1994, tensions between North Korea, South Korea, the IAEA, the UN, and the U.S. were mounting; actual military conflict loomed. But then, a savior appeared. Yes, the Clinton Administration sent in none other than Jimmy Carter, who Kim Il Sung once referred to as "a man of justice," to take a swing at peace, but only as a private citizen. (Clinton was worried about looking "weak" with the ex-presidential help.)
• From June 16 to 19, 1994, Carter rubbed elbows with Kim for a few days and then "dropped American demands that UN inspections resume and that North Korea surrender its spent fuel rods" [Carter] even said that the U.S. was dropping its support for sanctions at the UN, which wasn't true," writes Stephen Hayward in The Real Jimmy Carter (Regnery). Without the Clinton Administration's knowledge, Carter then popped up on CNN declaring he sweettalked Kim into going back to the negotiating table in Geneva.
• It was at the Geneva talks that the Clinton Administration bent over and grabbed the ankles, despite the death of Kim Il Sung on July 8, 1994 (at which time his wacko son Kim Jong Il inherited "supreme power"). The "Agreed Framework" was signed by the United States and North Korea on Oct. 21, 1994 in Geneva. The Framework promised, as Becker put it, "to reward Pyongyang's breaches of international nuclear safeguards by giving it more nuclear power stations." Yes, the Clinton Administration gave in to the demands of a deceiving, nefarious, nuclear-hungry, gulag-building, peoplestarving, Communist regime.
• Not only were the nuclear reactors pledged; Clinton also agreed to supply the North with 500,000 metric tons of fuel oil annually, as well as tons of grain all in return for a promise to "freeze" all nuclear-weaponry ambitions. Clinton even provided the North Koreans, writes Becker, "with a written assurance that the United States was not contemplating launching an attack [or] seeking the destruction of North Korea." Kim was home free.
• How could North Korea experience one of history's deadliest famines during the 90s while receiving tons of grain/aid from America? The U.S., as Newsweek reports, "did not know where most of the food was going after military trucks hauled it away." Turns out, most of the food went to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea [DPRK] army, and Clinton happily looked the other way, eager to shore up his reputation for "diplomacy and engagement" with adversaries.
• The Clinton Administration's 1995 National Intelligence Estimate flatly stated that "no country, other than the major declared nuclear powers, will develop or otherwise acquire a ballistic missile in the next 15 years that could threaten the contiguous 48 states and Canada."
• By Feb. 1997, Madeleine Albright had officially shrugged off any concerns about North Korean deception, bragging: "The Framework Agreement is one of the best things the [Clinton] Administration has done because it stopped a nuclear weapons program in North Korea."
• On Aug. 31, 1998, North Korea launched a three-stage Taepo Dong-1 rocket, with a range of 1,500-2,000 kilometers, over Japan, landing off the Alaska coast.
• During a 1999 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing, Albright made a blink-and-you'll-miss-it admission that things weren't rosy in Agreed-Framework-land: "We are also engaged in direct talks with North Korea on ways to resolve concerns regarding suspicious underground construction activities and long-range missile programs."
• In 2000, mounting evidence at the underground Kumchang-ri site forced the Clinton Administration to actually confront the possibility that their Agreed Framework was, well, a load of poppycock. They asked Kim Jong Il to allow inspections. Kim refused. So Clinton sent him 600,000 tons of grain.
• In June 2000, the Japanese and Chinese were able to confirm reports of another underground uranium processing plant in Choma, about 17 miles away from Kumchang-ri.
• The final Clintonian gesture was to send Albright herself over to Pyongyang in Oct. 2000 on a first-ever official U.S. visit (granting Kim Jong Il his long-sought-after legitimacy). Nothing was actually accomplished, but Kim and Maddy clinked wine glasses and exchanged starry eyes. As Albright told PBS's Jim Leher: "Basically, you know, we've had such weird stories about him, but it turns out that we had very good discussions. And he seems pragmatic, not hostile."
• Guess what the North Koreans admitted to in 2002? "[P]ursuing a secret nuclear weapons program using enriched uranium in violation of its 1994 pledge to freeze its nuclear program," reported The Los Angeles Times. "A senior official later acknowledged that the Communist nation was pursuing the nuclear weapons program and more."
• But don't expect the Clinton crowd to take responsibility for nuking up one of the world's most evil regimes. Here's a Sept. 12, 2004 exchange between Albright and Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet the Press": Russert: But didn't North Korea develop a nuclear bomb on Bill Clinton's watch? Albright: No, what they were doing, as it turns out, they were cheating. The worst part that has happened under the Agreed Framework, there was [sic] these fuel rods, and the nuclear program was frozen. Those fuel rods have now been reprocessed, as far as we know, and North Korea has a [nuclear] capability."

Cheating? The North Koreans? Who'da thunk?

It's pretty clear the Clinton policy of direct engagement with North Korea was beyond a COLLASAL FAILURE. If John Kerry were honest, he'd be hard pressed to find words to describe it.

So why do Democrats want to go back to that FAILED POLICY?

Answer: They've got nothing else to offer. They've spent the last six years bashing Bush and saying "NO" to everything he tries to do. Had they put half as much energy into finding practical, effective solutions we might have won the war on terror and liberated North Korea by now.