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Spanky, you seem to think I'm saying things I haven't said, so let me try again.
The North Koreans did some things according to the agreement -- they stopped processing plutonium. They also broke the agreement -- they processed uranium. Even though they broke the agreement, we were still better off than we would have been had they continued processing plutionium.
You seem to think that we can each have our own version of reality -- is that a requirement for Republicans thinking about foreign policy? -- but it is simply a fact that we never built the nuclear reactors promised to the North Koreans under the agreement. As a result, insofar as you think the North Koreans used them to build the bomb, you are wrong.
Notwithstanding all your prattle about appeasement, the fact is that we were better off bribing the North Koreans to stop processing uranium (the Clinton approach) than we were talking a lot and doing nothing (the Bush approach). Neither approach was, ultimately, sufficient, since the fundamental problem is that there's not much we can do to stop the North Koreans from building the bomb if they want to, given the number of guns they have pointing at Seoul, etc. Under Bush, though, we apparently have succeeded in convincing the North Koreans that they need nuclear weapons to ensure that we don't do to them what we did to Iraq.
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“It was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage." - Larissa MacFarquhar
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