Here's republican validation for w's next outing. I'm sure you will
agree.
Bush manipulated NKorea intelligence like he did in Iraq: US expert
Thu Dec 9, 8:38 PM ET World - AFP
BEIJING (AFP) - The United States manipulated intelligence on North
Korea's nuclear program in a similar fashion to its use of weapons
of mass destruction to justify the war on Iraq, a US foreign policy
expert said in an article.
"Relying on sketchy data, the Bush administration presented a worst-
case scenario as an incontrovertible truth and distorted its
intelligence on North Korea (much as it did in Iraq), seriously
exaggerating the danger that Pyongyang is secretly making uranium-
based nuclear weapons," Selig Harrison said in Foreign Affairs
magazine.
Harrison, from the Washington-based Center for International Policy,
chairs the Task Force on Korean Policy, a grouping of former senior
US military officials, diplomats and Korean specialists.
The Task Force, which includes a former joint chiefs of staff head
and ex-US ambassadors, on Friday issued a report calling on the US
immediately to back down on its insistence that North Korea come
clean on its alleged uranium program.
Instead, they should first negotiate the dismantling of Pyongyang's
plutonium facilities, it said.
Harrison said his claims were based on South Korean and Japanese
intelligence sources who participated with the Central Intelligence
Agency (news - web sites) on the issue.
He blames the US insistence on a uranium program for the stalling of
six-party talks while Pyongyang moves closer to producing an atomic
bomb with its plutonium program.
The intelligence was manipulated for "political purposes," he said
in the magazine's December 17 issue.
This was largely to waylay South Korean and Japanese efforts at
reconciliation with the North and ostensibly to keep open the option
of "regime change" as in the case of Iraq, Harrison claimed.
In late 2002 the Bush administration cited North Korea's alleged
uranium program to pull out of the Agreed Framework. That deal had
frozen Pyongyang's nuclear program since 1994 in exchange for energy
aid and the construction of two billion dollar semi-proliferation-
proof light water nuclear reactors.
No concrete evidence of a uranium program has been presented
publicly.
In retaliation, Pyongyang kicked out international nuclear
inspectors and resumed plutonium reprocessing at its Yongbyon
facility.
It is now believed to have reprocessed enough plutonium for four to
six nuclear bombs, experts say.
"The danger posed by North Korea's extant plutonium program has
grown since the United States announced it was no longer bound by
the Agreed Framework, and it is much greater than the hypothetical
threat posed by a suspected uranium enrichment program about which
little is known," said Harrison.
Harrison said the claim of a uranium capability was largely based on
several failed attempts by Pyongyang to buy enrichment technology,
including electrical-frequency converters and aluminum tubing to
make centrifuges.
The US also cites a 2002 conversation in Pyongyang between US
Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly and North Korean Vice
Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun, in which Washington maintains Paek
admitted his country had a uranium enrichment program.
Pyongyang, however, insists Paek only said North Korea
was "entitled" to have such a program, possibly referring to the
processing of low-enriched uranium for nuclear energy.
This is allowed by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty, which Pyongyang also pulled out of in late 2002.
"Unless conclusive new evidence comes to light, the entire uranium
issue should be deferred so that the parties can focus on the more
immediate threat: North Korea's known plutonium reprocessing
capiabilties," said Harrison.
"By scuttling the 1994 agreement on the basis of uncertain data that
it presented with absolute certitude ... the Bush administration has
blocked action on the one present threat that North Korea is known
to pose: the threat represented by reprocessed plutonium."