Pre-Googleian™ Fred Kaplan At Slate

Pre-Googleian Journalist Fossile

Fred Kaplan posted this article to Slate. The Slime Talk Express - McCain is dead wrong about Bill Clinton and North Korea, posted Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006, at 4:32 PM ET

Mr. Kaplan has previously spun for the cream of the leftist Main Stream Media: Boston Globe, New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly. His Pre-Googleian writer's credentials are impeccable.

The following are my comments on his article.

According to Fred Kaplan, President Bush is responsible for the failure of the magnificent agreement Bill Clinton negotiated with North Korea to end their nuclear bomb program. Mr. Kaplan is certain Kim Jong Il would have adhered to the agreement brokered by Jimmy Carter if only President Bush didn’t say harsh words about North Korea. Mr. Kaplan and Jimmy Carter evidence a much higher degree of trust in the North Koreans than in President Bush’s administration, since neither seemed concerned that verification was left out of the agreement.

They probably have a good laugh when someone reminds them of the words of President Reagan, “Trust, but verify.”

However, the Pre-Googleian™ Mr. Kaplan pays scant attention to the events that occurred during the Clinton presidency after creation of the Agreed Framework on October 21, 1994. Mr. Kaplan then fast forwards history to October 2002, when, confronted with United States intelligence data, North Korea admitted they had been enriching uranium. Mr. Kaplan had noted that the North Koreans were obviously upset with President Bush, thus justifying their cheating.
This apparently explains all that a Democrat is interested in knowing – It’s Bush’s fault.

Mr. Kaplan crows that the North Korean “bomb” (which appears to have bombed) was apparently (meaning we aren’t sure, but this assumption fits Mr. Kaplan’s view) fueled by plutonium from the fuel rods that North Korea kept locked up under international inspection during the Clinton administration, not from the uranium they had been enriching during his presidency. Mr. Kaplan makes the point (assuming a plutonium bomb rather than uranium) that the plutonium bomb was created totally during the Bush presidency.

A neat point, if you overlook the fact that the Agreed Framework allowed North Korea to keep the spent fuel rods they would one day process to make their bomb, even in the regrettable circumstance that a Democrat was President.



However, let me play reporter and ask, “When did the North Korean cheating start? Under Bush or under Clinton? Is it not logical to assume that the cheating had been going on long before President Bush took office? United States intelligence identified North Korea cheating in 1997, and the CIA had observed in 1995 that North Korea would not have been a party to the Agreed Framework unless they had already figured out a way to cheat.

In January 1995, Gary Milhollin, Professor, University of Wisconsin Law School andDirector, Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, testified before the Senate Committee on Armed Forces that the North Koreans were already cheating by extracting weapons grade plutonium from spent fuel rods because the U. S. State Department cut a special deal exempting Pyongyang from inspections for at least five years. (Read all the January 1995 tesimony by Mr. Milhollin, then ask Mr. Kaplan why he thought no one would Google it and expose his miserable partisan spin piece. I guess you don't think of that when you're a Pre-Googleian™.)

In 1998 the North Koreans tested a long-range missile by firing it over Japan. Did the Clinton administration wonder why North Korea was developing long-range missiles? Did Mr. Kaplan?

The facts are that the Clinton administration’s dealings with North Korea had stalled out by 2000, a year before President Bush took office. The North Koreans continued their missile development and sales activities, stalled on promises to continue summits and family exchanges, and provoked military clashes at sea. Plus, let’s not forget, they continued clandestine uranium enrichment. It's no wonder that when President Bush saw the collapsed state of the agreement with North Korea that he pressed to revise it.

According to Mr. Kaplan, that’s when the problems with North Korea started. Pre-Google, Mr. Kaplan had a good chance of sneaking such absurdities past an American public whose information appetite was starved for the meager scraps the Main Stream Media deigned to toss their way.

Unfortunately for Mr. Kaplan and the other Pre-Googleian™ writers and reporters, interested citizens can now dine from the riches of the Internet archives and select from a veritable buffet of information.

We're eating it up, while Mr. Kaplan's dead-tree journalism is starving for attention. For affection. And for credibility.



Note: Although “Pre-Google” is already in the lexicon, this post introduces the term “Pre-Googleian™” to modify a word such as “writer” or “reporter.” In that context, Pre-Googleian™ refers to the dinosaur writers and reporters who think they can still feed misinformation to a citizenry whose ability to research topics is limited by time and resources.

It can also be used as a pejorative noun: "Fred Kaplan is so Pre-Googleian™."

Message to Pre-Googleian™ hacks: Your time has passed. You had better stick to the facts.