POAC II

Here's round two of the critique of the Project for an Old American Century, specifically the "counterspin" page.

The talking point
North Korea's development of nuclear weapons is Clinton's fault

The facts
Some basic facts regarding Clinton, Bush and North Korea
(POAC)

Apparently it's so complicated to explain we have to endure the begging of the question and follow the link.

The link takes us to another page, which repeats the same information, MOL.

Is North Korea's development of nuclear weapons is Clinton's fault?

Some basic facts regarding Clinton and North Korea

At a debate in 2004, President Bush explained that his policy against bilateral talks with North Korea would be effective in preventing them from becoming a nuclear power.

Is it turtles all the way down? Let's try to get to those "basic facts" again. Ah, this link leads us to noted historian Joshua Micah Marshall.
Using a partisan column as proof might convince somebody who already believes the POAC argument, I suppose, but any critical thinker will dig into Marshall's column to judge its reliability against more trustworthy sources.
Here's what Marshall claims:

The 1994 crisis came about because the North Koreans were producing weapons-grade plutonium. Under the Agreed Framework, they agreed to shutter the plutonium production facility and put the already produced plutonium under international oversight.

In return, the US promised aide, help building lightwater reactors (which don't help with bombs) and diplomatic normalization.

That agreement kept the plutonium operation on ice until the end of 2002.

(Talking Points Memo, italics added)

Did the agreement keep the plutonium operation "on ice" until the end of 2002?

"... some have argued that the Agreed Framework was a success despite the cheating. It averted an imminent war, and it shut down the North Korean plutonium program for nine years—thereby limiting Pyongyang's arsenal to one or two nuclear weapons as of 2002, rather than the nearly 100 it might otherwise have been able to develop by then.

In the summer of 2002 U.S. intelligence discovered that the North Koreans had secretly restarted their weapons development using highly enriched uranium. When Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly went to Pyongyang in October of 2002 to confront the North Koreans, he expected them to deny the existence of the uranium program. They didn't; in fact, evidently they soon restarted their plutonium program, by continuing to reprocess the 8,000 spent fuel rods from Yongbyon (which had been in storage since the signing of the Agreed Framework). In October of 2003 the North Koreans said they had finished the reprocessing—meaning, if true, that they had enough fissile material for up to six new nuclear weapons.

(The Atlantic Online, bold emphasis added)

Here's more in the vein from Yale Global Online:

Even more difficult would be finding out if North Korea has actually begun reprocessing plutonium. The process by which plutonium is extracted from spent fuel results in the release of a gaseous Krypton isotope, but that can only be detected by sensors in the immediate vicinity and not by spy planes at 80,000 feet. It is possible that technological advances made in the past decade have given the US better means to detect such activity. Gary Samore, who served in Clinton White House, notes that the US failed to detect North Korean production of plutonium in 1989-1990. Only the IAEA analysis of North Korean data later revealed that reprocessing campaigns conducted in those years gave North Korea enough fissile material to build one or two nuclear bombs.
(YGO)

So, even though we don't know that North Korea wasn't cheating all along, it is apparently assumed by some that North Korea was keeping their agreement despite the fact that they were working on nuclear weapons development secretly.

For still more (the best stuff, really) see this essay by Henry Sokolski of the Nautilus Institute.
Compare it with a prominent view from the other side (Selig Harrison).

As for the supposed claim by Bush that his plan would work, here's the quotation:

"We began a new dialogue with North Korea. One that includes, not only the United States, but now China, and China has a lot of influence over North Korea. Some ways more than we do. As well, we include South Korea, Japan and Russia. Now there are 5 voices speaking to Kim Jong Il, not just one. And so if Kim Jong Il decides again not to honor an agreement, he's not only doing injustice to America, he'll be doing injustice to China as well. And I think this will work. It's not going work if we open up a dialogue with Kim Jong Il."
(President Bush, quoted in The Raw Story)

So, Bush didn't flatly claim that his plan would work (a misrepresentation in the "truth" column, mind you). He stated that he believed that it would work based on the pressure from China--and China has, in fact, leaned on North Korea in the wake of its recent testing. China has no desire to see Japan develop nuclear weapons, for example, and Japan has made strong hints that they will consider a nuclear self-defense program in light of North Korea's behavior.

And how does any of this absolve Clinton of responsibility for the failed 1994 deal without the unfounded assumption that N. Korea was being honest until Bush took office?

Here's the last of POAC's evidence:

"On Sept. 19, 2005, North Korea signed a widely heralded denuclearization agreement with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang pledged to "abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs." In return, Washington agreed that the United States and North Korea would "respect each other's sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations." Four days later, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sweeping financial sanctions against North Korea designed to cut off the country's access to the international banking system, branding it a "criminal state" guilty of counterfeiting, money laundering and trafficking in weapons of mass destruction." "The Bush administration says that this sequence of events was a coincidence." Source: MSNBC

The source isn't just MSNBC, by the way. It's Newsweek. The author is coincidentally the same one that I provided as a counterpoint for the Sokolski essay.

Again, there's nothing in the evidence to remove responsibility from Clinton.

1) It's an assumption that N. Korea's plutonium enrichment was kept "on ice" through the Bush presidency, and it's effectively irrelevant since N. Korea were cheating with uranium enrichment, which achieves the same end (nuclear weapons).
2) Bush's idea of working with China to stop N. Korea's nuclear ambitions did not amount to a guarantee of success, and it absolves Clinton of nothing.
3) Pointing to Bush's recent dealings with N. Korea likewise fails to excuse Clinton's actions, and there's not even a good case there that Bush's actions were not perfectly appropriate.

It's all distraction to place blame on Bush, based on the assumption that N. Korea did not cheat from the start, and based on the assumption that U.S. intelligence was wrong in its estimate that N. Korea had developed nuclear weapons even before the 1994 agreement (and fault in the U.S. government predates Clinton's presidency, I might add).

POAC flubs their Clinton apology.
It wasn't all Clinton's fault, but he certainly bears a significant portion of the blame.

You'd be crazy to get your facts through the POAC filters.