On Tuesday, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he talked mostly about the Dubai deal.
The subject of a nuclear North Korea also came up, and Sen. Clinton took the occasion to criticize the "six-party" talks the administration has been shepherding the last couple years in the hopes of disarming the rogue state.
"I worry that the six-party talks have really devolved into the Chinese talks, and the Chinese have their own agenda," she said. "I'm not sure that the six-party talks is the only route we should be following."
Then she threw in a cheap sound bite, saying that the United States has "outsourced our policy with respect to North Korea to the six-party talks, which really means outsourcing it to China." Hillary’s apparent distaste for the multilateral talks, which include North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States, seems to conflict with her consistent criticism of the Bush administration for not getting France, Germany or Russia to join the war in Iraq.
In addition, Hillary is on the record in recent months as supporting a massive aid package as a means of encouraging North Korea to cooperate in the nuclear disarmament talks. However, she did not mention at the hearing how her husband's administration cut a deal with dictator Kim Jong Il in 1994 that had the U.S. government provide North Korea with $4 billion worth of light-water nuclear reactors to provide "energy," $100 million in oil and $5 billion in economic and food aid, in return for a promise to halt their weapons program.
As the world now knows, the totalitarian regime continued to ahead with plans to build a nuclear weapon, which the country confirmed in October 2002. So it appears that the Bush administration's plan, which is the exact opposite of what President Clinton did and what Hillary is proposing to do even now, is indeed the right way to go about disarming North Korea.
