Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
The argument is very easy to make if you know anything at all about the technology. What you're saying is kind of like saying that of course the North Koreans were growing corn -- after all, we were sending them wheat.
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We sent them five billion dollars in hard currency and oil. Both the money and oil could and was used to purchase stuff on the black market. That money and assitance we sent them was cut off by the Bush administration.
After we agreed to the deal in 94 we also agreed that there would be no weapon inspectors for five years. The deal was so stupid Japan, South Korea and Hans Blix all objected to it.
William Safire at the time stated that it was insane to let North Korea escape weapons inspections for five years because it would "preclude a pre-emptive strike by us if North Korea, in the next U.S. president's administration, breaks its agreement to freeze additional bomb-making."
The nuclear plants we helped them set up could not be used to help make nuclear weapons as long as they destroyed the weapons grade uranium they had, and the systems they had set up to process the uranium. But if they did not destroy the uranium they had, and they did not destroy the the system they used to process it, the nuclear plants and uranium we sent could be used to facilitate the process. And that is exactly what happened, and we insured that was what happened because we were not allowed to let inspectors go in.
Bush did the only think he could do. He cut of the assistance and he was ridiculed for that.
North Korea has bombs because the Clinton Administration gave them the means (money and assitance) and the cover (no inspections for five years) to build the bombs.
By the time Bush came along, what could he do (besides cutting off the assitance)?
