Gareth Porter's article today at Truthout is essential reading in understanding the treasonous action of our military industrial complex, which is willing to nuke all or part of the American people in exchange for wealth and power. It connects not only Cheney and Rumsfeld, but, without mentioning him, James Comey, who was Lockheed counsel and thus part of the proliferation lobby dedicated to destroying nuclear disarmament.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/43048-how-cheney-and-his-allies-creat...

How Cheney and His Allies Created the North Korea Nuclear Missile Crisis
Thursday, December 28, 2017
By Gareth Porter, Truthout

… Cheney and his allies derailed diplomatic efforts to curb North Korean nuclear and missile development, not because they opposed "arms control"... but because those agreements would have been a political obstacle to fielding the group's main interest: funding and fielding a national missile defense system as quickly as possible. The story of Cheney's maneuvering to kill two agreements shows how a real US national security interest was sacrificed to a massive military boondoggle that served only the interests of the powerful contractors behind it.

In October 1994, the Bill Clinton administration reached a historic agreement with North Korea called the "Agreed Framework," under which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its existing plutonium reactor and related facilities within a month, with full monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and to dismantle them as soon as they could be replaced with light water reactors. The United States promised to provide the reactors, as well fuel oil, until the light water reactors were built. And even more crucially, the US also pledged to take steps to end the enmity toward North Korea and normalize relations between the two longtime adversaries.

No sooner had the Clinton administration negotiated the "Agreed Framework," however, than the Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress in the 1994 election. That seismic political shift enabled a powerful lobby of military contractors pushing for a national missile defense system to achieve a congressional mandate for rapid development and deployment of such a system.

... the missile defense lobby's strategy was to create a sense of urgency about an alleged imminent threat to the US homeland from ballistic missiles armed with nuclear weapons mounted by "rogue states"-- Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

… No less than eight figures with direct or indirect ties to Lockheed Martin, the leading defense contractor in the missile defense business, became policymakers in the new administration. The most important was Dick Cheney.

… Cheney had a bureaucratic strategy to frustrate that endeavor and finish off the Agreed Framework. The NSC staff initiated a "nuclear posture review," which was carried out without any participation by Powell's allies. The final document included North Korea on a new list of countries that could be targets for US use of nuclear weapons.

That designation, which was leaked to the press in March 2002, conflicted directly with the US pledge in the Agreed Framework to "provide formal assurances to the DPRK, against the threat or use of nuclear weapons by the U.S."

Then Bush's State of the Union message in January 2002 introduced the idea of North Korea as part of an "axis of evil" along with Iran and Iraq. That was not merely a throwaway line introduced by a speechwriter, but reflected lobbying by Cheney and Rumsfeld for "toughening sanctions and isolation to lay the groundwork for regime change in North Korea," according to Condoleezza Rice's memoir, No Higher Honor...