Who Lost North Korea

It seems like there's a blame game going on over "Who Lost North Korea," much like the "Who Lost China" arguments of 60 years ago. While Democrats are looking at six years' worth of policy mistakes and making the assessment based on that, Bush defenders on the right like St. McCain decided to ignore six years of history and blame the Clinton Administration for their successful agreed framework of 1994 that disabled North Korea's nuclear program from moving forward for six years. The current weapon is the result of plutonium fuel rods, which were restarted in 2002. The Bush Administration claims that they pulled out of the framework after confronting them about uranium enrichment. There is no nuclear weapon in North Kora made with enriched uranium.

Josh Marshall lays it out:

But let's review the salient facts one more time.

"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.

Face it. They ditched an imperfect but working policy. They replaced it with nothing. Now North Korea is a nuclear state.

Facts hurt. So do nukes.

And what's insane about this whole thing is how quickly the coddling of McCain blew up in the Democrats' faces. Why you would heap praise on your most likely opponent in 2008 is beyond me. All McCain is doing now is making Bush's deceptions on North Korea sound credible, as he's borrowing his political capital.

Digby is goddamn right:

What were they thinking? Now you have McCain out there talking total nonsense about North Korea and since he's been portrayed not only as an expert, but as a highly moral and decent man whom everyone including the president should trust, the media and everyone else are raptly listening to his crazy utterances like a bunch of fangirls.

The problem is that he's going to be an even worse problem than Bush in many ways as he emerges as a presidential contender. He's just as much of a warmonger, and just as wrong about everything, but he's got this phony bipartisan "credibility" that's going to make the slam dunk run-up to the Iraq war look like a a serious foreign policy debate. Which Democrats are going to be able to summon the nerve to oppose the great McCain when he tells tells the country that in his "expert judgement," we need to launch WWIII?

The Democrats have created a monster and the media has been willing participants by patting them on the head every time they make a bold show of bipartisanship. John McCain is more conservative and more warlike than this President when it comes to foreign policy. His rhetoric NEVER matches his reality though everyone thinks he's a principled maverick. Sonehow he escaped the Military Commissions flap intact even though he completely capitulated everything. He's incredibly dangerous.