This Time About North Korea...
(Apparently truth-telling is not one of those 'Moral Values' we've heard so much about.)
By Brad Friedman on 3/20/2005, 10:58am PT  

The beat goes on. We are hated by the world not because of our "freedom", but because of a hypocritical foreign policy that has gone on for decades and --- even in the wake of 9/11 --- continues to this day.

The latest hypocrisy, blaming North Korea for nuclear exports to Libya, when it fact it was our (theoretical) "ally" Pakistan who did the deal.

From today's Washington Post...

In an effort to increase pressure on North Korea, the Bush administration told its Asian allies in briefings earlier this year that Pyongyang had exported nuclear material to Libya. That was a significant new charge, the first allegation that North Korea was helping to create a new nuclear weapons state.

But that is not what U.S. intelligence reported, according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction. North Korea, according to the intelligence, had supplied uranium hexafluoride --- which can be enriched to weapons-grade uranium --- to Pakistan. It was Pakistan, a key U.S. ally with its own nuclear arsenal, that sold the material to Libya. The U.S. government had no evidence, the officials said, that North Korea knew of the second transaction.
...
The Bush administration's approach, intended to isolate North Korea, instead left allies increasingly doubtful as they began to learn that the briefings omitted essential details about the transaction, U.S. officials and foreign diplomats said in interviews. North Korea responded to public reports last month about the briefings by withdrawing from talks with its neighbors and the United States.
...
"The administration is giving Pakistan a free ride when they don't deserve it and hurting U.S. interests at the same time," said Charles L. Pritchard, who was the Bush administration's special envoy for the North Korea talks until August 2003.

"As our allies get the full picture, it doesn't help our credibility with them," he said.

Look the other way Bush supporters. Heads back in the sand! And when another 9/11 happens, be sure to tell yourself it's because "they hate our freedom". Not because we look the other way when our "friends" --- the chosen despots and U.S. approved villians --- destabilize the world (see friends and business partners Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein at right) even while we trump up phoney-baloney charges against those regimes which won't play ball and/or don't serve our current economic interests.

It's nothing new. It's just more brazen than ever with this bunch and, in the wake of 9/11, more shamefully obvious and more clearly self-defeating than ever. A very good lesson apparently not learned.

"Freedom" American Style continues on the march...

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