A Man's Gotta Make A Living

by digby


All this lying McCainiac finger-pointing about Clinton being at fault for North Korea having nukes is par for the course. That's the GOP game -- if it wasn't Clinton it would have been Carter --- or Truman --- or Woodrow Wilson. It's never their fault. Here's Rich Lowry explaining it to us from their perspective:

The Clinton administration dealt directly with the North, producing the Agreed Framework, a sham that the North Koreans began cheating on, in the words of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, "as the ink was drying." The North agreed to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for two light-water nuclear reactors and fuel deliveries. Immediately, however, it set up a secret uranium-enrichment program and obstructed inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency. When the U.S. called the North on it in 2002, the North confessed, expelled IAEA inspectors, withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and accelerated its nuclear quest.



I like Josh Marshalls pithy translation for those of us who live on planet Earth:

"Failure" =1994-2002 -- Era of Clinton 'Agreed Framework': No plutonium production. All existing plutonium under international inspection. No bomb.

"Success" = 2002-2006 -- Bush Policy Era: Active plutonium production. No international inspections of plutonium stocks. Nuclear warhead detonated.


But let's take Lowry at his word that all the smart people knew that the agreed framework was bunk and that the eight years of a non-nuclear North Korea it bought were worthless. Why in the world was Donald Rumsfeld involved in building those light water reactors back in the 1990's?

I understand that when this story came out back in 2003 the media were still in thrall to the Hunky Rummy, but what's the excuse for not pursuing that question now? The only person besides Bush who still thinks he's even sane is Midge Decter,and she never loved him for his mind anyway --- it was his hot 72 year old bod and macho aggressiveness that turned her on. (That probably explains Bush's infatuation with him too, come to think of it.)

May 12, 2003

(FORTUNE Magazine) – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rarely keeps his opinions to himself. He tends not to compromise with his enemies. And he clearly disdains the communist regime in North Korea. So it's surprising that there is no clear public record of his views on the controversial 1994 deal in which the U.S. agreed to provide North Korea with two light-water nuclear reactors in exchange for Pyongyang ending its nuclear weapons program. What's even more surprising about Rumsfeld's silence is that he sat on the board of the company that won a $200 million contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors.

[...]

FORTUNE contacted 15 ABB board members who served at the time the company was bidding for the Pyongyang contract, and all but one declined to comment. That director, who asked not to be identified, says he's convinced that ABB's chairman at the time, Percy Barnevik, told the board about the reactor project in the mid-1990s. "This was a major thing for ABB," the former director says, "and extensive political lobbying was done."

The director recalls being told that Rumsfeld was asked "to lobby in Washington" on ABB's behalf in the mid-1990s because a rival American company had complained about a foreign-owned firm getting the work. Although he couldn't provide details, Goran Lundberg, who ran ABB's power-generation business until 1995, says he's "pretty sure that at some point Don was involved," since it was not unusual to seek help from board members "when we needed contacts with the U.S. government." Other former top executives don't recall Rumsfeld's involvement.

Today Rumsfeld, riding high after the Iraq war, is reportedly discussing a plan for "regime change" in North Korea. But his silence about the nuclear reactors raises questions about what he did--or didn't do--as an ABB director. There is no evidence that Rumsfeld, who took a keen interest in the company's nuclear business and attended most board meetings, made his views about the project known to other ABB officials. He certainly never made them public, even though the deal was criticized by many people close to Rumsfeld, who said weapons-grade nuclear material could be extracted from light-water reactors. Paul Wolfowitz, James Lilley, and Richard Armitage, all Rumsfeld allies, are on record opposing the deal. So is former presidential candidate Bob Dole, for whom Rumsfeld served as campaign manager and chief defense advisor. And Henry Sokolski, whose think tank received funding from a foundation on whose board Rumsfeld sat, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the 1994 agreement.


I guess he must have felt that just because Clinton was conducting a "feckless, photo-op" foreign policy, as St. John McCain used to say, that was no reason he shouldn't make a buck on it. He's a Republican, after all.



Update: Dover Bitch points out the irony of the Republicans blaming Clinton and Carter (yes, they've blamed him too) for all things wrong in the universe while simultaneously decrying the notorious "blame America first" crowd. (They are always able to have it both ways, aren't they?) She found this amazing little nugget from Jeanne Kirkpatrick's famous 1984 speech on the subject:


"When Marxist dictators shoot their way into power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies. They blame United States policies of 100 years ago. But then they always blame America first."



I suppose they can always fall back on their belief that Democrats aren't "Real Americans" so it's not inconsistent to them that they always blame America first themselves -- and always have. ("Who lost the civil war?" "Who lost China?" "Who lost Vietnam?" "Who lost Iraq?")In fact, their entire worldview is shaped by the idea that the enemy within, the treasonous Americans among them, are at fault for everything that's gone wrong in the world. James Wolcott dismembers Dinesh D'Souza just today for claiming that Americans are to blame for islamic terrorism.

In fact, I suspect that if Republicans couldn't blame America for every single thing that they believe has gone wrong in the world they would completely lose their moorings.


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