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Republican Sen. John McCain on Tuesday accused former President Clinton, the husband of his potential 2008 White House rival, of failing to act in the 1990s to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons.

“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 at a news conference after a campaign appearance for Republican Senate candidate Mike Bouchard.

“The Koreans received millions and millions in energy assistance. They’ve diverted millions of dollars of food assistance to their military,” he said.

Some basic facts.

Under the Agreed Framework put forth by Clinton, North Korea agreed to shut down the plutonium production facility and put the already produced plutonium under international oversight.[the stick]

In return, according to TPM “…the US promised aide, help building lightwater reactors (which don’t help with bombs) and diplomatic normalization. “[the carrot]

the Republican Congress reneged on the agreement:
from http://en.wikipedia.org/…

Some analysts believe North Korea agreed to the freeze primarily because of the U.S. agreement to phase out economic sanctions that had been in place since the Korean War. But because of congressional opposition, the U.S. failed to deliver on this part of the agreement. [10]

So, thanks to Republican arrogance and unilateralism, there was no carrot, and once the USA pulled out of talks, and invaded Aghanistan and Iraq, no stick either.

There was, in short, no policy at all. Just a hope and prayer that local players in the region such as China and South Korea might somehow handle the problem for us.

Here’s the takeaway:

Clinton strikes deal to keep plutonium out of the North Koreans’ hands. The deal keeps the plutonium out of reach for the last six years of Clinton’s term and the first two of Bush’s. Bush pulls out of the deal. Four years later a plutonium bomb explodes.

And talking some more about funding and oversight, how about this:

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In releasing the funding, President George W Bush waived the Framework’s requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors.

Now you have to ask McCaine what planet he’s on to think this is Clinton’s fault.

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When is a rock not a rock? When you pass through airport security. Then it becomes a potential weapon, one capable of bringing an airplane down.

I’m mad. I can think of a better way to combat terrorism than taking mineral specimens away from geologists traveling to their conferences. I suggest we get U.S. forces out of Iraq, where our blundering entry and lingering occupation are inflaming anti-American sentiment throughout the world.

There are two versions of what happened to my specimen at Bradley International Airport, Hartford. In the first version, I was completely at fault. Out of ignorance, I broke some unwritten rule. Then, in the name of homeland security, the Transportation Security Administration took my rock away.

In the second version, the federal government is at fault for not listing mineral specimens as prohibited items and for creating a climate so fearful of terrorism that it’s compromising our economic efficiency, personal freedom and instinct to trust one another.

I was traveling to Hood River, Ore., to attend the annual meeting of the Stone Foundation, an international organization of architects, sculptors, stonemasons, geologists, engravers and engineers united by their love of stone.

To enhance my speech, I nestled one of my favorite specimens between my underwear and shirts in a carry-on bag because I never check luggage on business trips. My banded chunk of the Hebron Gneiss (pronounced “nice”) resembled a broken slice of layer cake composed of licorice and cream cheese.

In retrospect, I suppose I could have put the grapefruit-sized specimen inside my sock, swung it around my head like a mace, charged the cabin and attempted to hijack the flight. This, of course, never occurred to me until the zealous inspector declared my rock a “dual-use” item.

“What, pray tell, is a dual-use item?” I asked. I’m afraid I chucked just a little, causing her to glare, withhold a satisfactory answer and call her supervisor. He hefted my rock, scrutinized it for a moment, and agreed that my specimen was indeed a dual-use item, meaning a potential low-tech weapon. During those uneasy moments when I thought I would be detained, I wondered if a doctor’s stethoscope would also be declared a dual-use item, since it could be used to strangle a pilot.

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“We understand now that piracy is a business model,�? said Sweeney, twice voted Hollywood’s most powerful woman by the Hollywood Reporter. “It exists to serve a need in the market for consumers who want TV content on demand. Pirates compete the same way we do – through quality, price and availability. We we don’t like the model but we realise it’s competitive enough to make it a major competitor going forward.�?

Good. That’s a first step. Now recognizing that treating your customers like shit is helping your competition, and we’ll be getting somewhere.

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European data protection authorities are choking on their baguettes after seeing the detail of the data-sharing agreement the EU signed with the US on Friday. The passenger name record (PNR) agreement was presented as a formality that had been passed by the respective administrations without so much as a hiccup. But it’s proving hard to swallow.

[..]

European data protection authorities said they were “amazed” when they saw the letter yesterday because it watered down the new agreement so that it was even weaker than the last.

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The letter, drafted by Stuart Baker, assistant Secretary to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), states how the US will interpret the agreement just signed. The old provisions that prevented it sharing data with other agencies have been thrown out. As well as US border control, the FBI, CIA and unspecified other agencies will get access to the data.

The US proposes trawling through passenger data to seek out suspicious-looking characters if it doesn’t have a clear idea who it’s looking for. It commits to do this “judiciously and with proportionality”, though there is no US law to ensure that it does, and the DHS has already announced its intention to share data between civil and security databases.

Then the US had wanted to keep the data it collects about people for at least eight years. The EU got it to settle with three and a half years. But Baker’s letter said that as the new agreement only ran for nine months anyway, that restriction had been invalidated.

The real stickler was the EU’s lauded “push” system for giving the US data about its citizens. US border control has been pulling the data, which means it takes what it needs straight from airlines’ passenger databases. In 2004, the US agreed to a push system, which would mean that airlines handed over only the relevant passenger information.

The Department of Homeland Security still hasn’t got round to giving up its pulling habit. But it has agreed to do so. Faull presented this as a way to ensure the US could get its hands on only that data it had agreed with the EU.

But Baker’s letter, said the US push system was not going to be so restrictive: “The design of the system itself must permit any PNR data in the airline reservation or departure control systems to be published to DHS in exceptional circumstances where augmented disclosure is strictly necessary,” he said.

Also, the EU’s requirement that the US query only 34 fields of data about each passenger, was to be ignored (not forgetting a desire in Europe for the US to query no more than 15).

“The undertakings authorize DHS to add data elements to the 34 previously set forth…if such data is necessary,” Baker said.

In other words, the US would take whatever data it wanted from the airlines, regardless of what it had agreed with the EU.

So it’s not just the Chief Executive who gets to write Signing Statements these days… Well, the European Court of Justice has already indicated it willing to block this new contract just like it did with the old one. We’ll see.