Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Adventurer]

McCain is dead wrong about Bill Clinton and North Korea.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006, at 4:32 PM ET

Did Clinton "reward" them for doing these things, as McCain claims? Far from it. Not only did he push the U.N. Security Council to consider sanctions, he also ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draw up plans to send 50,000 additional troops to South Korea�bolstering the 37,000 already there�along with more than 400 combat jets, 50 ships, and several battalions of Apache helicopters, Bradley fighting vehicles, multiple-launch rockets, and Patriot air-defense missiles. He also sent in an advance team of 250 soldiers to set up logistical headquarters for the influx of troops and gear.

He sent an explicit signal that removing the fuel rods would cross a "red line." Several of his former aides insist that if North Korea had crossed that line, he would have launched an airstrike on the Yongbyon reactor, even knowing that it might lead to war.

At the same time, Clinton set up a diplomatic backchannel, sending former President Jimmy Carter to Pyongyang for direct talks with Kim Il-Sung, then North Korea's dictator and the father of its present "dear leader," Kim Jong-il. (The official Washington line held that Carter made the trip on his own, but a recent memoir by three former U.S. officials, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, acknowledges that Clinton asked him to go.)

This combination of sticks and carrots led Kim Il-Sung to call off his threats�the fuel rods weren't removed, the inspectors weren't kicked out�and, a few months later, to the signing of the Agreed Framework.

McCain called the accord a "failure." This appraisal isn't quite as dead wrong as his claim that Clinton did nothing but toss Kim flowers. But it's highly misleading, to say the least.


http://slate. com/id/2151354/ %20nav/tap2

[Article cut in parts to reduce size, so read the link.]

[EFLtrainer]

Yes, it's been a shame to watch a man I once considered a proud patriot and American subjugate his ethics and morals to political expediency. He must want the presidency badly.

[Pligganease]

There are two schools of thought on this topic...

1) Clinton screwed the pooch. He gave too many things to Lil' Kim ans his papa and sacrificed the security of the peninsula in doing so.

However, this doesn't take into account that all this happened right when the house was taken over by the Republicans who all firmly a) believed this or b) wanted to make the American people believe this in order to diminish the cajones of the Clinton administration.

2) Clinton didn't have enough backing from the newly Republican house to follow up and make good on the promises made by Carter in order to fulfill the agreement.

Personally, I don't care which one you believe. They both lead to the same place.

However, disrespecting McCain for anything is backhanded. If he says he believes something, you should take him at his word. He seems to me to be a man that sticks to his opinions regardless of what others think of him.

[EFLtrainer]

He used to be. This is not the only issue on which he's been doing some spin since the last election.

It's sad. I thought he was one of the rare ones. He's just another pol.

[Octavius Hite]

McCain has lost all my respect as well. the fact that he now supports torture is so pathetic. The big hope for him was that if he ran he would get a lot of votes from Dem's and now that will never happen. He is pathetic, and its sad that the Republican machine has so broken and destroyed the man's ethics and morlity, but that happens when you play with the devil.

[NAVFC]

Oh please. The North Koreans dropped their plutonium program, but data indicates soon after the frame work they began a uranium based program...with the help of Pakistan's A.Q. Khan. The North Koreans cheated almost as the ink was dry.

[NAVFC]

[Atassi]

[NAVFC]

[Doutdes]