A new book on Bush lies, like that doesn't happen every week.

Another book is being released about how the Bush administration lied, manipulated intelligence and placed the world in imminent danger.

Not about Iraq this time, but about North Korea.

The book entitled Meltdown: The inside story of the North Korean nuclear crisis, was written by former senior CNN journalist, Mike Chinoy.



He was involved in 14 trips to North Korea, and conducted 200 interviews in Washington, Seoul, Tokyo and other Asian capitals.

There was no credible intelligence that North Koreans actually had a facility capable of making uranium based bombs.

Yet, conservative hard liners bent on ending an "Agreed Framework" nuclear deal with North Korea forged under President Bill Clinton's administration seized on the issue to force a confrontation, the book said.

In brief the Bush administration didn’t want to continue the North Korean fuel deal that Clinton arranged and cancelled it.

Under the deal the US supplied fuel to the bankrupt country in exchange for the military regime ceasing attempts to advance it's nuclear program.

The Bush team sent one of their hawks in the State Department, a former Reganite who worked with Cheney and Rumsfeld in the past to create a crisis that would justify breaking the agreement.

US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly (now a Senator) was given instructions not to negotiate on his October 2002 trip to Pyongyang but simply tell the North Koreans they had to abandon their uranium program before any progress was possible.

He was also ordered not to observe normal diplomatic courtesies such as holding a reciprocal banquet for his North Korean hosts or making a toast at a meal they hosted for him upon his arrival.

Upon Kelly's return it was leaked that the North Koreans admitted to him that they had uranium and were restarting their program. Thus justifying the US default and illustrating another example of increased threat to the American public.

But Chinoy, who interviewed most of the members of Kelly's delegation, said he could not find any evidence that the North Koreans explicitly admitted having such a program.

Meanwhile the increased paranoia of the US media forced the Bush administration to take a series of reactionary moves that heightened the riff between the countries. 

North Korea then restarted its nuclear program that had remained dormant since the mid nineties and tested their first bomb in 2006.

Now we have the US negotiating with North Korea to surrender its nuclear weapons in return for normalized ties and security guarantees, which is what were in place before the Bush administration decided to renege on the agreement.

Unfortunately for the author we already knew this and even though his book might now provide the proof, it really doesn't matter any more.

All we can gain from this is that a government will say one thing and do the opposite and that we should be questioning what their policies are actually designed to do and not not just accept what they are called and how they are marketed.

It applies to Canada too. Look at the Tories environmental program "Turning the corner". In reality it should be called stall and delay.

But there is no satisfaction left in proving that Bush was lying about North Korea. Everyone knew it and there really is nobody that we can even say "I told you so" to.



Well, maybe the crowd that still believe David Frum and his buddy Harper.



So to you wing nuts "I knew it all the time, it was obvious and I told you so, back here."

There now I feel better.

Reference:  AFP via Raw Story here.