Flexibility...? In the Bush administration...?

a headline i didn't ever expect to see...

U.S. Flexibility Credited in Nuclear Deal With N. Korea

The six-nation deal to shut down North Korea's nuclear facility, four months after Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear test, was reached yesterday largely because President Bush was willing to give U.S. negotiators new flexibility to reach an agreement, U.S. officials and Asian diplomats said yesterday.

but, no surprise, the hard-ass neocons think bush wussed out, and the dems reflexively oppose it...

[T]he agreement came under attack yesterday, with conservatives labeling it a betrayal and Democrats charging that Bush allowed North Korea to become a nuclear-weapon state without gaining much improvement over a Clinton-era deal that collapsed during Bush's first term.

no surprise either that condi, barely treading water after being increasingly (and accurately, imho) labeled as worthless, wants to grab the credit...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a prime architect of the accord, said it is just the beginning of a long process. "This is not the end of the story," she said, calling it the result of "patient, creative and tough diplomacy."

if you believe steve clemons - and i do - it's this guy that did the yeoman's work...

I have written about Asst. Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs Christopher Hill before and surmised that if he was given some running room to construct a deal with North Korea, he could walk the situation back from the brink.

[...]

[S]omehow Hill has been able to successfully sideline and silence naysayers in Cheney's wing of the national security establishment and keep them from undermining his work.

but, steve concludes with this sober caveat...

One hopes today that Chris Hill has not succeeded in securing a positive arrangement in North Korea in some sort of quid pro quo that State will acquiesce to Cheney's desire for military action against Iran.

it's about friggin' time that "patient, creative, and tough diplomacy," supposedly the first and best tool of honest and sincere governments, was given a shot, and, even better, that it carried the day... why, then, i would like to know, is it not being given a chance with iran, syria, and palestine...?

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