Dan, You asked what I would have done, had I been in Bill Clinton's shoes....
I think that my first criticism of Clinton's greatest failure would not be his broad strategic decision to negotiate and cut and deal. Similar to your central criticism of George W. Bush in regards to Iraq, my first criticism would be in the *execution* of the broad strategic decision. I am not convinced that it is a given that any negotiation and deal-making with the DPRK beginng in 1994 or so would result in their taking our bribes and then building nuclear weapons with us completely unawares. Certainly, part of the execution would have been his lack of leadership in overhauling the US Intelligence System in the post-Cold War environment, even as failures of US intelligence began to mount. I don't have the information Bill Clinton did to fullly evaluate all the options in the DPRK, so he may well have chosen the best strategic option. He may have even executed it to the best that any US President would have been able (which I find less plausible.) Suffice to say, now that the DPRK has nuclear bombs, I feel Much, Much, Better that one of the DPRK's wealthiest and most-proactive potential customers is safely off the market. JDG _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
