Is Arizona Republican Senator John McCain so hungry for his party's 2008 presidential nomination that he is willing to hurl any accusations-true or false-at potential Democratic competitors to besmirch their reputations? Or is he simply taking directions from Bush hit man Karl Rove? Either way, yesterday (Tues.) he further undermined his credibility.
Here's what he said about the Clinton-negotiated 1994 Framework Agreement with North Korea:
"'I would remind Senator [Hillary] 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 yesterday at a news conference after a campaign appearance for Republican Senate candidate Mike Bouchard."
Here's what Korea expert Bruce Cummings had to say about this on DemocracyNow! this morning (Wed.):
"Well, it [the Framework Agreement]... came after a very dire threat of war in 1994 that froze their entire plutonium facility at Yongbyon in North Korea. They had seals on the doors, closed-circuit television, and at least two UN inspectors on the ground, 24/7, all the time. So there isn't any possibility of that agreement having failed. It held for eight years and denied North Korea the plutonium that would have allowed them to make more bombs. Senator McCain is engaged in some sort of demagoguery here, because I don't know a single expert who would say that that Framework Agreement was not successful, at least for eight years, in keeping North Korea's plutonium facility shutdown.
(Bruce Cumings, Professor at the University of Chicago, is the author of several books on North Korea. His latest are North Korea: Another Country and Inventing the Axis of Evil.)
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