Wonkette

Reading articles attached to posts just a few down from this one makes it clear that, at the time, diplomacy with North Korea included light water nuclear reactors (which are near impossible to use for military purposes) for energy, in exchange for cessation to their military nuclear program. The WP article puts for the opinion that it was the breakdown of this diplomacy and the energy assistance program that led to the current state of affairs.

I'm all for making fun of Rummy, as much as the next Dem., but let's leave the questionable political leaps of speculation and deflection to the other guys...

Capitalism's premier rope salesman.

Next you're gonna tell me that the U.S. instaled Saddam as Iraq's dictator nearly thirty years ago and sold chemical weapons to Iraq during the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war. Oh wait....

Until someone reveals that Rummy was selling sexually pliant clones of hunky, Tween stars to 'Lil Kim, I don't think this will get the play it deserves in the press.

I'm sure they're just saving it from the Friday news dump.

This would be a scandalous story -- Donald Rumsfeld, the director of a company selling light water reactors to North Korea! -- except that light water reactors aren't just something that you put in quotations marks to indicate that you don't understand: they're the most proliferation-resistant type of nuclear reactors, and if traded for North Korea's existing plutonium-fueled reactor at Yongbyon would have made it very difficult to produce weapons-grade nuclear material.

And the reactors in question were supposed to be sold to North Korea in exchange for shutting down the Yongbyon reactor and enrichment facilities, as part of the Clinton Administration's "Agreed Framework" with North Korea. In the end, the Framework (unfortunately) fell apart, due to the failure of the United States to deliver its promised fuel oil and the LWRs, and the discovery of a second North Korean weapons program involving highly enriched uranium (as opposed to their earlier plutonium program).

Lest you think I'm a right-wing troll, I think the Agreed Framework was a great idea. But it's either unacceptably uninformed or highly deceptive of you to ignore the context of the reactor deal in question.

Selling weapons to Saddam Hussein, that's another story.

I think it's both "unacceptably uninformed" AND "highly deceptive" ... and I wrote the post!

History, details, frameworks ... come on, nobody pays any attention to such things. Not in the USA, at least. If "Rumsfeld sold nukes to North Korea" (which his business certainly did) gets a few people to realize just how dirty the US/European nuke/arms business is, that's a good thing.

Also, the biggest pre-Dubya no-bid contracts to Halliburton happened during the Clinton Administration. And the Clinton government brazenly murdered a number of people at Waco, Ruby Ridge, etc. Sure, it's no 9/11, but people should remember ALL these guys are evil.