Our Leaders' Successful Policies in Regard to North Korea is Nothing Less than Explosive

For dummies, here it is in a simple nutshell. Hint: Yet another failed policy of this administration. (Its successes can be counted on one hand and they're questionable: accretion of poer/weakening of the system of government and upward transfer of power.)

But I digress:

* * * As Glenn Kessler writes in the Washington Post this morning, North Korea's latest actions "may well be regarded as a failure of the Bush administration's nuclear nonproliferation policy." That's an understatement, a point Kessler makes plain as he lays out the relevant history:

"When Bush became president in 2000, Pyongyang's reactor was frozen under a 1994 agreement with the United States. Clinton administration officials thought they were so close to a deal limiting North Korean missiles that in the days before he left office, Bill Clinton seriously considered making the first visit to Pyongyang by a U.S. president. But conservatives had long been deeply skeptical of the deal freezing North Korea's program -- known as the Agreed Framework -- in part because it called for building two light-water nuclear reactors (largely funded by the Japanese and South Koreans). When then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell publicly said in early 2001 that he favored continuing Clinton's approach, Bush rebuked him."

That's just the beginning of the story; if anyone needs a primer on how we got to where we are today, Kessler's piece is as good as any.

Link.