Complete Intellectual Collapse

The insanity of the Bush administration's so-called Korea policy has reached the point of, as John Bolton so aptly put it, "total intellectual collapse. North Korea handed over to the Chinese a piece of paper that might has well have been a hold-up note. They admitted to all the stuff we already know about and don't really care about and completely left out any mention of the plutonium bombs and uranium enrichment program. Anyone with eyes or ears has long known that the State Department prefers any deal to no deal, but there is now the real possibility that history will one day judge Christopher Hill, Condoleeza Rice and the President to have been complicit in the destruction of an American or Japanese city by a North Korean nuclear weapon.

Here's Hill before the agreement:"This idea that we would ignore the most contentious items and take them up later is ridiculous. I don’t believe in ‘carve outs’ and even if I did (which I don’t) how in the world would this work in practical terms? Do you really think we could make concessions on the basis of an incomplete declaration, then somehow we would be able to return to the contentious issues AFTER – AFTER!!!??? — giving away all our leverage? Why? I can tell you this stupidity has never been under consideration by anyone who is part of the process or truly close to the process."

In the event of course, the "declaration" did leave out all of the "most contentious" problems. Here's Hill after the agreement:“you’re looking at a partially finished product here and we’ve got to finish the job.” “Obviously, we would like to deal with things in one fell swoop, but sometimes,” Hill told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on July 1, “you have to kind of do things on an incremental basis… I would draw your attention to the fact that a year ago they were producing plutonium and not only are they not producing plutonium, but they can’t produce plutonium because the thing is disabled.” That's hardly the point. They may or may not be able to produce plutonium now, but they already enough for at least one and maybe as many as a dozen low yield bombs. They're also continuing to enrich uranium. That was omitted from the declaration--just an oversight, I'm sure.

There are only two possibilities here. Either Hill is a liar on the order of Bill Clinton, or he was completely duped by Rice and the President. In either case he should resign.