John McCain is attacking Bill Clinton for allowing NorKor to have nukes, showing once again what Mad Gop disease does to a man’s brain. Mr. Incompetence, McCain’s daddy, is just lost in the cavities for a while.
“I would remind Sen Clinton and other Democrats critical of the Bush Administration’s policies that the framework agreement her husband’s administration negotiated was a failure,” McCain said.
If you’d like to know what really happened with Korea during Clinton’s tenure you can start with Fred Kaplan’s piece for Washington Monthly.
And of course these are not simply “You Stoopid!” — “No, You Stoopid!” arguments.
Nobody knows precisely what North Korea has. This is what makes negotiations both difficult and necessary. Bush’s failure to make a deal, while the fuel rods were still locked up, constitutes one of the great diplomatic blunders of our time. It may not be too late to avert the coming disaster. The question is whether the president–whoever he might be–recognizes that a disaster is coming, decides to deal with it, and does so fairly soon. The time is already late; at some point, it will run out.
William Arkin, the WaPo’s security columnist — and no friend of Clinton’s plan — has this to say.
What we are really witnessing is government at its worst, not just promising a capability on which it cannot deliver, but worse, communicating American resolve and toughness on the one hand while exposing weakness and impotence when it matters.
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