How the 'Tough Talkin' New Sheriff' Screwed the pooch.

Robert Parry at Consortium News

During one lectern-pounding tirade before congressional Republicans in May 2002, Bush denounced North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Il as a “pygmy” and “a spoiled child at a dinner table,” Newsweek magazine reported.

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Worrying Signs

By early July 2002, U.S. intelligence agencies had picked up evidence that North Korea had acquired key equipment for enriching uranium.

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In early October 2002, U.S. diplomats confronted Pyongyang with this evidence and were surprised when North Korean leaders admitted that they were working on building nuclear weapons.

Despite North Korea’s public warnings seven months earlier, official Washington was stunned. Many analysts puzzled over what might have caused Pyongyang to violate its earlier promises about suspending its nuclear program and then admit to it. Bush formally canceled the 1994 agreement.

For its part, North Korea issued a press release at the United Nations on Oct. 25, 2002, explaining its reasoning. The statement cited both Bush’s “axis of evil” rhetoric and the administration’s decision to target North Korea for a possible preemptive nuclear strike.

“This was a clear declaration of war against the D.P.R.K. as it totally nullified” the 1994 agreement, the North Korean statement read. “Nobody would be so naïve as to think that the D.P.R.K. would sit idle under such a situation. … The D.P.R.K., which values sovereignty more than life, was left with no other proper answer to the U.S. behaving so arrogantly and impertinently.”

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While Bush may have intended the Iraq War to be an object lesson about the futility of defying his will, some American adversaries learned something else – that disarmament and cooperation with the U.N. are for suckers.

After all, Hussein had complied with U.N. demands for eliminating his stockpiles of unconventional weapons and had forsaken active development of nuclear weapons. He even agreed to unfettered U.N. inspections.

Hussein’s reward was to see his two sons killed, his country ravaged, and the almost certain end of his own life coming as he dangles from the end of a rope, rather than his request that he die before a firing squad.

So, instead of cowering before Bush and his Doctrine, North Korea pressed ahead with its nuclear program, claiming to have detonated a small nuclear device on Oct. 9.

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