Bad dealings with North Korea.

"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 applause, "We will work closely with our coalition to deny terrorists and their state sponsors the materials, technology, and expertise to make and deliver weapons of mass destruction."

But what really happened? Barely two months after making that seemingly resolute vow, Bush was already backtracking on his anti-terror pledge with regard to Korea. On April 1 (yes, April Fool's Day), President Bush issued Presidential Determination No. 2002-12, a memorandum to the secretary of state, in which he ordered $95 million to be delivered to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), the agency in charge of transferring funds to Kim's regime.

Most significantly, the president went on to say: "I hereby waive the requirement in Section 565(b) to certify" that Pyongyang was abiding by the Agreed Framework, i.e., that North Korea was verifiably complying with its promises to end its nuclear weapons program, eliminate its ballistic missile threat and stop further ballistic missile technology imports. Not that any sensible person viewed the certification provisions as a reliable protection against North Korean cheating. But when Kim Jong Il refused to allow inspectors access to his facilities, President Bush simply ignored even these minimal demands of the law and sent the $95 million anyway.

The Bush administration didn't cut off U.S. oil aid to North Korea until November of 2002, when evidence of its nuclear weapons cheating became too obvious to ignore. And it wasn't until 2005 that the administration cut off U.S. food aid to Kim's criminal regime.

On December 21, 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney announced: "I have been charged by the President with making sure that none of the tyrannies in the world are negotiated with. We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it."

Nevertheless, here we are back negotiating with Kim and, more importantly, Kim's longtime main sponsor, financial backer, and supplier of verboten technology: Communist China. Beijing is the big winner, pretending to be our indispensable ally in reining in its surrogate regime in Pyongyang. Gary S. Samore, the CFR's vice president and director of studies, in an October 6 interview, confirmed the CFR party line on North Korea, claiming that "the most important asset the United States has is to work with China." And that is our official policy as well.