What's the most important national security goal America has? To stifle the proliferation of nuclear weapons as a bulwark against the day when a bomb will go off in one of our cities. Well, in this case we had come to an agreement for exactly that - the much ballyhooed September 19 2005 Agreement, wherein the North Koreans would return to the requirements of the Non Proliferation Treaty. The day after announcing that agreement, a different division of the US Government accused the North Koreans of counterfeiting billions of dollars and being a "criminal state." They froze the Nork's international accounts - quite the blow for an already poverty-stricken nation - driving the Norks from the agreement, and guaranteeing that this "terrorist madman" acquire a half-dozen nuclear weapons."From our investigations it is apparent that ... the Bank did not introduce counterfeit U.S. currency notes into circulation," the Ernst & Young audit said, noting that large cash deposits from North Korea were routinely screened for counterfeits by the Hong Kong branch of an unidentified bank with U.S. operations.
The audit's conclusions about the laundering of counterfeit currency are significant because they cast doubt on Bush administration claims that North Korea has engaged in state-sponsored counterfeiting and introducing these fake bills via Banco Delta.
That, of course, is the charitable interpretation. There's an increasing chance that this counterfeited blow-up was manufactured for the express purpose of derailing progress, as part of a "spread the chaos" grand strategy. This cynicism is supported by the fact that this is an exact repeat of the uranium enrichment fabrication that destroyed Clinton's Agreed Framework in the first place. The failure of Bush's policy could not be more clearly demonstrated. It begins to amount to a dereliction.
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