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Originally posted by Spanky
It looks like they bought technology from Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan. Where do you think they got the resources to pay him for the technology?
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North Korea has other sources of hard currency, like counterfeiting.
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Prior to our treaty they had practically no hard currency, and any hard currency they did have they had to spend on oil otherwise the entire country would shut down. We sent them oil and hard currency.
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Where did you read that we sent them hard currency? Where did you read that they sold the oil? Here's one description of the deal that I found:
- Under the Agreed Framework, North Korea agreed to halt activities at its plutonium producing nuclear reactors in Pyongyang in exchange for a relaxation of economic sanctions, a gradual move toward normalization of diplomatic relations, fuel oil deliveries, and construction of a light-water reactor to replace the graphite-moderated reactor shut down at Pyongyang.
If your theory is that Clinton helped the North Koreans to obtain weapons-grade plutonium by sending them fuel oil, that's, um, interesting.
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There is no question that the Clinton administration screwed up. The question is how much.
There is no question they signed a treaty, gave a bunch of stuff to North Korea, and gave the stuff before we had any verification that they were complying with their end of the treaty. In the end they did not comply at all.
So the Clinton administration screwed up. They thought we could trust the "Dear Leader" and they were totally wrong.
The only issue is how badly they screwed up. How can anyone dispute that?
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North Korea stopped its plutonium activities for years because of this deal. And we never built the replacement reactors. It appears that they continued enriching uranium, but that was not nearly the threat that the plutonium was, as you maybe now see from the CRS thing you found.
The Clinton agreement bought time in the hopes that North Korea's government would collapse -- or something -- before it built the bomb. Because it got the plutonium stuff put on hold, it worked, for a while, until Bush blew up the deal (p.i.). Then the North Koreans started with the plutonium again, and now -- whether or not they set off the bomb this week -- we know they have enough plutonium to make one. And Bush persuaded the North Koreans -- as described
here -- that they needed the bomb, pronto.
If sending North Korea fuel oil really had some downside, you could say that the years Clinton bought weren't worth. But you certainly can't fault Clinton for not doing more if you're going to try to defend Bush's bellicose inactivity for the last five years.
