Failed Bush Policy and John McCain

A few days ago Fred Kaplan had this to say about John McCain's response to North Korea's nuclear test.

Sen. John McCain has skidded his Straight Talk Express off the highway into a gopher's ditch of slime. The moment came Tuesday, when he responded to charges by Sen. Hillary Clinton, his potential rival in the 2008 presidential election, that George W. Bush bears some responsibility for North Korea's newborn status as a nuclear-armed power.

Here, according to the Washington Post, is what McCain said in a campaign speech near Detroit:

I would remind Senator Clinton and other Democrats critical of Bush administration policies that the framework agreement her husband's administration negotiated [with North Korea] was a failure. Every single time the Clinton administration warned the Koreans not to do something—not to kick out the IAEA inspectors, not to remove the fuel rods from their reactor—they did it. And they were rewarded every single time by the Clinton administration with further talks.

McCain's version of history goes beyond "revisionism" to outright falsification.

Well it looks like Fred didn't realize how wrong McCain was. The North Korean nuclear test is just another example of what a dismal failure the Bush/Cheney foreign policy has been.

North Korean Fuel Identified as Plutonium

WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 — American intelligence agencies have concluded that North Korea’s test explosion last week was powered by plutonium that North Korea harvested from its small nuclear reactor, according to officials who have reviewed the results of atmospheric sampling since the blast.

[....]

The intelligence agencies’ finding that the weapon was based on plutonium strongly suggested that the country’s second path to a nuclear bomb — one using uranium — was not yet ready. The uranium program is based on enrichment equipment and know-how purchased from Pakistan’s former nuclear chief.

[....]

The supply of plutonium materials is known from the days when international inspectors kept tabs on the fuel rods in the North’s reactor, and intelligence analysts estimate that North Korea has enough material to make 6 to 10 plutonium bombs.

Politically, the results of the test may revive last week’s finger-pointing about who is more responsible for the Korean test: Bill Clinton or President Bush.

As president, Mr. Clinton negotiated a deal that froze the production and weaponization of North Korea’s plutonium, but intelligence agencies later determined that North Korea began its secret uranium program under his watch. The plutonium that North Korea exploded was produced, according to intelligence estimates, either during the administration of the first President Bush or after 2003, when the North Koreans threw out international inspectors and began reprocessing spent nuclear fuel the inspectors had kept under seal.

Unlike the Clinton administration in 1994, the current Bush administration chose not to threaten to destroy North Korea’s fuel and nuclear reprocessing facilities if they tried to make weapons.

That threat in 1994 — which was ultimately resolved with an agreement to freeze the weapons program — was made by William J. Perry, who was the defense secretary then. In an interview on Monday, Mr. Perry said: “There was a brief window to catch this plutonium before it was made into bomb fuel. It’s gone. It’s out of the barn now.”

That's right, the Clinton administration managed to keep the plutonium contained - the Bush administration failed to do so and so North Korea has a bomb.

The world is indeed a more dangerous place because of the insane foreign policy of madmen like Dick Cheney.