Bad dealings with North Korea.(George W. Bush)(Column)

"Like the Clinton administration before it, the Bush administration is setting us up for another negotiated fiasco with North Korea. The recent six-nation summit on Korea hosted by Beijing is preparing the way for another decade of extortion payments to Kim Jong Il's totalitarian terror state. On the table are billions of dollars in loans, food, oil, and technology--courtesy (mostly) of U.S. taxpayers--to bribe Supreme Leader Kim to stop acting like the tyrannical megalomaniac he is."

That was the opening paragraph for my column in this space three years ago, in September 2003. Back then, the Bush initiative was being praised by the foreign policy establishment that has been behind one diplomatic betrayal after another, from Yalta to the Korean War to Cuba to Vietnam to Iran, etc., etc.--to the present. Lee Feinstein, the Council on Foreign Relations' (CFR) director for strategic policy, hailed the supposedly stunning achievement by President Bush and his then-Secretary of State Colin Powell of bringing North Korea to the negotiating table as a great "diplomatic victory."

Mr. Feinstein was one of the key Clinton State Department officials who a decade earlier had set up the infamous "Agreed Framework" (brokered by former president Jimmy Carter) to provide the Communist Pyongyang regime with light-water nuclear reactors, oil, cash and food--in exchange for Kim Jong Il's promise to cease its nuclear weapons program. North Korea's recent nuclear testing and its truculent attitude toward global condemnation of its actions show once again how reliable are Kim's promises--and the CFR's strategic advice.

Many had hoped that the change of administrations in 2001 would signal an about-face in this dangerous policy toward North Korea. But the Bush administration continued the Clinton policy of oil, cash, food, and technology bribes for Pyongyang's promises of good behavior. On June 13, 2001, President Bush stated that after several months of review, he was directing his national security team to "undertake serious discussions with North Korea," with the objective of bringing about "improved implementation of the [Clinton-Carter] Agreed Framework."

Three months later we experienced the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The country was no longer in a mood for coddling and aiding terror states. Playing to this public mood, President Bush, in his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, made his now-famous "axis of evil" declaration. He specifically cited North Korea, one of the axis members.

And, he continued, to thunderous ...