This is classic. Here is the response.
hughhewitt.com
Josh Marshall has leveled another blast in my direction, so here's another response: Listen closely, Josh, and read your e-mails. Consult especially the Carnegie Endowment's useful "Ten Questions on North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Program." ceip.org
The estimates vary on when North Korea began cheating on the Agreed Framework Agreement, but the Secretary of State says at least four and perhaps five years ago, and others believe almost as soon as the ink was dry. Your confident assertion that the North has no weapons produced via uranium enrichment is not the position of the U.S. government --the government that discovered the cheating, not the Clinton hangers-on around D.C.-- and any close read of the statements would lead you to conclude that the estimates of such a capacity being at least three years off are at best optimistic. Very few serious people doubt that the country possesses at least one and possibly two or more nuclear weapons. Those are the facts. Deal with them, and skip the "pencil-neck" frothing.
Yesterday you asserted on the radio program that, knowing what we know now, it was better to have signed the '94 deal than not to have signed it. This is not an irresponsible position, just a wrong one. Others agree with you, including one could assume from their article on the subject from November 19, 2002's OpinionJournal, Brent Scowcroft and Dan Poneman. But I don't, and most observers don't, and your entire effort seems designed to distract folks from the fact that Clinton did agree to a deal that the North Koreans promptly broke --a deception which went undetected for the remainder of the Clinton years. If it’s incompetence that bothers you, spend some time on the articles from December 2000, when the Clinton lame-ducks were trying to get together a trip to North Korea to celebrate a new era of good will. |
