Short memories and present dangers
By Alan Caruba
web
posted December 2, 2002
On Sunday, November 24, The New York Times informed its readers that North Korea and Pakistan have been cooperating to insure both nations remain potent members of the nuclear weapons community. North Korea is ruled by a madman named Kim Jong Il and Pakistan who, until the US needed it to invade Afghanistan, was a key player in the worldwide Islamic jihad. Barely weeks ago, it came within inches of a nuclear war with India.
If this is the first you have heard of this, let me remind you of what former President Clinton told the nation on February 18, 1996. "Our diplomacy backed with force persuaded North Korea to freeze its nuclear program."
The threats and deceptions the United States and the rest of the world are facing as 2003 approaches were identified during the traitorous years of the Clinton administration. And denied.
As anyone who has read Bill Gertz's book, Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security knew back in 1999 when it was first published, US intelligence agencies had come to the startling conclusion in 1997 that North Korea had been building a huge underground complex whose sole purpose was to make plutonium, a key component of a nuclear missile warhead.
The so-called "freeze" the Clinton administration had negotiated in 1994 had turned out to be yet another very bad deal made by people convinced they could sweet talk and/or bribe any nation to tread the path to peace. The US squandered $4.6 billion on that pipe dream, dragging in South Korea and Japan, in the belief one can make a deal with a Communist nation.
With sublime irony, the then-director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Hans Blix, estimated at that time that North Korea had enough plutonium for at least one nuclear warhead and probably had more. Blix is now leading the UN inspectors only small children believe will find evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The record of international agencies is always too little, too late.
On June 12,1994, North Korea withdrew from the Agency so it would not be bothered by any international oversight of its plans to become a major exporter of WMDs. Clinton's response was to appease the North Koreans with more useless negotiations that resulted in an "Agreed Framework" that would get them to return to the Agency.
The agreement gave them ten years to dismantle their weapons program. This year the North Koreans announced to the whole world they were a nuclear power and, what's more, possessed missile technology sufficient to lob one into Los Angeles. You can send your thank you notes to Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Madeline Albright who, in 1998, lied to the Senate Finance Committee, telling them the nuclear accord had "frozen North Korea's dangerous nuclear weapons program."
US spy agencies, despite having had their budgets slashed throughout the Clinton years, had spotted the underground facility at Kumchangni in early 1997. By then, North Korea was earning $1 billion a year from missile sales to nations that included Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Libya.
Aiding its Communist cousin, Red China has had a long record of providing assistance to North Korea's WMD programs and, in particular, facilitating the development of its missile program. Who helped Red China in this endeavor? The Clinton administration which continually loosened export controls on critical technologies that included sophisticated high-performance computers.
The Clintonistas ignored Red China's two decades of successfully stealing America's nuclear secrets. Why? Because it favored "engagement" with Red China that also permitted some of its top corporate contributors to keep their money flowing to insure Clinton's reelection.
As Gertz noted in his book, "Not only did the White House go to great lengths to ignore and cover up Chinese violations of international agreements that should have triggered economic sanctions, it also offered more concessions and a way to avoid US missile sanctions."
Clinton and his operatives should be behind bars for knowingly working against the security of this nation and the world. Gertz called Bill Clinton "the best friend the communist regime (China) has ever had in its long march forward to surpass the United States as the chief power in the Pacific."
When the US gets through with its "regime change" in Iraq, it will have to direct its attention to North Korea, the third element of President Bush's "axis of evil" that includes Iran. Red China is not likely to take kindly to this, but until the US can develop and install a missile defense program that former President Reagan wanted, it will buy us the time to survive an attack. And some people are still worried about the need for "preemptive" action to defend this nation and others. Some people still do not want a missile defense system.
Short memories combined with the slavish pandering of the US mainstream
press during the Clinton years have left the United States in a state of clear
and present danger. 
Alan Caruba writes "Warning Signs", a weekly column posted
on the Internet site of The National Anxiety
Center. In January, Merril Press will publish a collection of his columns.
© Alan Caruba, 2002
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