All in the Family

In the blowback from that itty bitty fizzled test, we see the beginnings of the manifest consequences of der decisions from Der Decider. In 2002:

...The US Government has announced that it will release $95m to North Korea as part of an agreement to replace the Stalinist country's own nuclear programme, which the US suspected was being misused.

Under the 1994 Agreed Framework an international consortium is building two proliferation-proof nuclear reactors and providing fuel oil for North Korea while the reactors are being built.

In releasing the funding, President George W Bush waived the Framework's requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors.

President Bush argued that the decision was "vital to the national security interests of the United States"... [with thanks]

Vital, alright.

You can't have a blank check without endless war.

Once again, the Clenis® strikes !

So where was our good Sith Lord when Korea was starting its current nuclear buildup?

Why, selling them nuclear reactors, of course. From 2003:

Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, sat on the board of a company which three years ago sold two light water nuclear reactors to North Korea - a country he now regards as part of the "axis of evil" and which has been targeted for regime change by Washington because of its efforts to build nuclear weapons.

Mr Rumsfeld was a non-executive director of ABB, a European engineering giant based in Zurich, when it won a $200m (£125m) contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors. The current defence secretary sat on the board from 1990 to 2001, earning $190,000 a year. He left to join the Bush administration...

It's worth noting Rachel Weise's great timeline of North Korea's atomic march, given in detail here.