Subject:
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Having it both ways W.R.T. DPRK
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sat, 10 May 2003 06:07:03 GMT
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Viewed:
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81 times
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The agreed framework
(http://www.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/resources/koreaaf.htm) was a bad
idea when the Clinton administration put it forth, and it continued to be a
bad idea all along. How bad an idea indeed, we know now, since the DPRK was
apparently violating it all along.
But under the terms of the framework, a document signed at the governmental
level, "-- The U.S. will organize under its leadership an international
consortium to finance and supply the LWR project to
be provided to the DPRK."
In other words, US taxpayers were going to pay for (much of the cost of) 2
new nuclear plants to be built. By making them light water reactors, it was
felt that they would not be as vulnerable to fuel diversion as the existing
graphite reactors in the DPRK were. That these graphite ones were vulnerable
to diversion is borne out by the fact that apparently, that's precisely what
the DPRK was doing, diverting.
Like it or not, then, whether you agree that the agreed framework was a good
idea or not, the US (meaning US taxpayers, in large part) to Clinton's
shame, was on the hook for financing this construction and seeing it
through. So naturally SOME company would presumably get the job of building
these dane-geldt plants. Sure enough, contracts were let, work was
started... http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/08/07/world/main517772.shtml
SOME company had to do the work or else there would be a violation of the
framework, presumably (although you can argue that DPRK actions prior to
2001 were already enough to declare the agreement null and void... do your
research).
For some random website (such as this one:
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/Swissinfo.html?siteSect=41&sid=1648385) to come
along now and declaim (by implication) that it's scandalous, just
scandalous! that a company sold reactors to the DPRK, (when that's precisely
what the Agreed Framework required!!!) strikes me as typical media cluelessness.
Would they rather that some French company (the country that let its
companies build divertable plants in Iraq) or some Russian company (the
country that let its companies sell GPS jammers to Iraq) got the job? WHO
did they want to have get the work? (1)
And for someone to post here essentially swallowing these implications and
protesting mightily... why that strikes me as a lack of critical thinking on
their part. Or perhaps rabid uncritical acceptance of anything that makes
the US look bad, who can say?
Draw your own conclusions, gentle reader. I did. I think it makes that
particular someone look mighty foolish, (as is often the case, in my view)
but YMMV. You may well think they're doing us all a great service posting
this stuff.
1 - If there's any annoyance here for anyone, in my view anyway, it's that a
non US company got the work after US taxpayers get most of the bill. Better
that a US company would have gotten it so it would be easier for the US to
keep an eye on things...
++Lar
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Having it both ways W.R.T. DPRK
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| Why should the U.S. engage in these activities in the first place? The fact that people placed highly in goverment are probably reaping some kind of on/offshore monitary benefit only makes it worse. I am also non-patisan on the issue -- Clinton (...) (21 years ago, 10-May-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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