Dangerous betrayal in 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 Kill 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.

While media headlines focused on continuing military actions in Iraq and the MTV music awards, the dangerous policies developing at the August 27th-29th Beijing conference received scant attention. The relatively little coverage the summit did receive was predictable: near-universal optimism and praise for negotiations that will lead to more aid, trade, and concessions for North Korea, in exchange for Kim Jong Il's promises that the Pyongyang terror regime will abandon its nuclear weapons program.

Even before the conference began, the pro-extortion party line was being laid out and reinforced by, naturally, the Council on Foreign Relations, which the Washington Post's Richard Harwood once accurately described as "the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment in the United States." This was apparent, for example, in an August 17th Boston Globe column, entitled "Date With a Dictator: Negotiating with North Korea is an unattractive option--but the only good one," by Lee Feinstein, the CFR's director for strategic policy.

"Last week the Bush administration achieved a diplomatic victory when it succeeded in bringing North Korea to the negotiating table on its own terms," proclaimed Mr. Feinstein, who happens to be one of the Team Clinton State Department hacks who put a smiley face on our earlier North Korea aid and trade debacle. That he is now cheering Team Bush's Korea game plan should give pause to the GOP faithful who still believe we got a total regime change when Bill and Hillary vacated the Oval Office.

What great "diplomatic victory" was achieved by bringing North Korea to the table? According to Feinstein and the usual CFR chorus, the mere fact that Pyongyang dropped its demands for one-on-one meetings with the U.S. and accepted the six-way talks is itself an earth-shaking development. How so? Look at the other participants: China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea. China and Russia are North Korea's main sponsors, suppliers, trading partners, and political supporters. And thanks, largely, to impetus from past U.S. administrations, Japan and South Korea also have become big trading partners with dictator Kim and have adopted suicidal policies concerning his regime. Score a victory for dictator Kim and his Chinese and Russian overlords.

"This administration, like the one before it, must be prepared to withstand political criticism and test the North's seriousness at the negotiating table," says CFR wise man Feinstein. "Seriousness"? Get serious! Kim and his gang of Communist thugs are laughing at that one all the way to the bank. As Feinstein well knows, Kim, like his father before him, has never kept any treaty or agreement with the U.S. or any of his non-Communist neighbors. He runs a murderous, Stalinist thugocracy set up by Stalin himself. Like Stalin, be is a serial treaty violator who has seen his actions rewarded time after time.

Back in 1990, Roh Tae Woo, South Korea's president at the time, began negotiating with the North to denuclearize the peninsula. That effort culminated in a 1992 treaty--which Pyongyang immediately proceeded to violate at will. Nevertheless, Team Clinton, loaded with Feinstein's fellow CFR insiders, concluded a dream deal that must have exceeded Kim's wildest fantasies. The CFR Clintonites gave the tottering regime billions of dollars in food aid, oil, and light water nuclear reactors--for the promise that its ruling thugs would reform and become Boy Scouts.

These treacherous Clinton concessions were accompanied by hard-line statements from administration spokesmen denouncing North Korea's nuclear proliferation and barbarous violations of human rights. It was pure rhetorical cover to camouflage a total sellout. All indications are that we are headed for a repeat of the same. The rhetorical cover is already in place. President Bush pointed to North Korea, along with Iraq and Iran, in his famous "axis of evil" State of the Union address in 2002. "States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world," he declared.

Previously, President Bush had stated, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." Tough talk, but where's the follow-through? Team Bush has not challenged China or Russia on their continued support of North Korea's nuke and missile programs. From what has come out of the Beijing confab thus far, it looks like the Team Bush negotiators are setting things up to adopt the program outlined by Michael O'Hanlon (CFR) in an August 6th New York Times op-ed: a multi-year effort of $2 billion per year "above and beyond assistance provided in the form of food and energy." This and much more--for more promises and unverified reforms.