REVISIONIST REALITY
CHECK
CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK
FOR
Geoff Metcalf
December 30, 2002
NewsWithViews.com
“Memories of the
past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the
facts.” --Philip Roth
I was hosting a talk
radio program in Dallas recently and received one of those classic smarmy
liberal calls seeking to shift the blame for American complicity with
North Korea away from the Clinton administration to ANY Republican.
The caller asked in those
‘reasonable’ questioning tones if perhaps we should have the ‘full
story’ of how the U.S. enabled North Korea to reach the flash point we
currently face. The suggestion/intimation/rhetorical question was “Who
‘really’ allowed the North Koreans to become a potential nuclear
threat?” She asked, “What
if Bush senior, or Reagan enabled Pyongyang?”
This is typical liberal
obfuscation. When confronted
with facts that contradict their preconceived opinion or prejudice they
seek to either ignore the facts or manufacture revisionist fiction.
And the Texas liberal is not the
Lone Ranger. Subsequent to
our exchange George Stephanopoulos took a knife to a gunfight with
Secretary of State Colin Powell on ABC. Boy George (relying on a Sen John
Kerry quote) tried to suggest the North Korea Problem was created by the
Bush administration.
Powell eviscerated the claim,
“The fact of the matter is that this program was not started during the
Bush administration. It was started during the previous administration.
Back in 1998 and 1999, the intelligence shows clearly that North Korea had
embarked on a program of enriching uranium. And so, we inherited this
problem.”
Before my Texas program was over
(and with a little help from my friends) I was able to disavow listeners
who took the bait of the liberal obfuscator.
What was cool was that we were able to offer documentation from the
chronically liberal news source CNN. http://asia.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/12/22/nkorea.
nuclear.timeline.reut/
Notwithstanding protestations to
the contrary, the FACTS demonstrate that it was NOT Reagan or Bush but
ONLY Bill Clinton who orchestrated North Korea into their current position
of threat.
CNN offers a very nice
“TIMELINE: North Korea's nuclear history” from 1985 to the present.
In December 1985 North Korea
joined the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
However their participation had strings attached.
They required any agreement with the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) contingent on removal of U.S. nuclear weapons from South
Korea.
It was President George Bush (the elder) who
ordered withdrawal of all U.S. tactical nuclear weapons deployed abroad,
including about 100 based in South Korea in September 1991.
As a result of that action in December North and
South Korea signed the South-North Joint Declaration on the
Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
In it they pledged not to test, produce, receive, store, deploy
or use nuclear weapons. They also agree to mutual inspections.
But obviously, they lied!
Just before the ’92 elections in the U.S.
IAEA inspectors discovered some hinkiness in North Korea's
initial report on its nuclear program and asked for clarification on the
amount of reprocessed plutonium.
Very early in the Clinton first term, the IAEA
demanded special inspections of two nuclear waste storage sites.
They claimed evidence that North Korea had been cheating on its
commitments. North Korea flat out refused.
In March with heat for special inspections North Korea said it
intended to withdraw from NPA in 90 days.
After one full year of North Korea playing the
IAEA and the Clinton administration the CIA announced North Korea might
have produced one or two nuclear weapons.
Hell-o?
When North Korea announced its withdrawal from
the IAEA (June 1994), former (failed) U.S. president Jimmy Carter cut a
deal with North Korea in which the North confirmed its willingness to
freeze its nuclear arms program and resume talks with the United States.
So they agreed to do what they agreed to do nine years earlier and had
not.
Then in October 1994 the United States and North
Korea concluded months of haggling and eventually adopted the 'Agreed
Framework in Geneva.
That was when North Korea presumably agreed to
freeze and eventually eliminate its nuclear facilities and to allow IAEA
special inspections.
But there was a ‘quo’ to the ‘quid’.
In exchange for agreeing to what they already had agreed to
Pyongyang scored two light-water reactors and annual shipments of heavy
fuel oil.
With over a year left in President Clinton's
term, the Advisory Group warned that the deal that was ‘supposed’ to
derail Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program had instead backfired.
The Advisory Group warned the provision of two
light water reactors provided North Korea with the capacity to produce
enough fissile material for nearly 100 nuclear bombs ANNUALLY
And the Clinton
administration didn’t do ‘Jack’.
So
despite the revisionist dissembling of ABC’s diminutive propagandist and
doubt sowing callers to radio talk shows, the FACTS are that the North
Korean mess is yet another product of Bill Clinton.
It also personifies the axiom that there ARE consequences to things
we do and don’t do.
© 2002 Geoff Metcalf - All Rights Reserved
Geoff is a veteran
media performer. He has had an eclectic professional background covering
a wide spectrum of radio, television,
magazine, and newspapers. A former Green Beret and retired
Army officer he is in great demand as a speaker. Metcalf has hosted
his radio talk show on the ABC/Disney
owned and operated KSFO and in worldwide
syndication. www.geoffmetcalf.com
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