while on vacation was the story about the Bush administration’s reversal on an extremely important issue, the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. Basically, this is a long-sought treaty that will compel states to no longer produce new fissile material – i.e., material that can be used to make weapons. US policy has always been to support the treaty with a strong verification plan, but last week, the US changed its policy on the nuke pact. As you can see by the chronology on this issue, this is a big reversal of policy. But as I have argued before, this is entirely in line with the mainstream of US foreign policy, which for years (since Reagan and GHW Bush and accellerating through Clinton and GW Bush) has been to commit other states to treaties that do not bind the US.
Two things to note. First, as usual, Bush says that he supports something (FMCT) and acts against it. Second, the ultra-conservative Washington Times gets the story exactly backwards, in what is obviously a willful editorial decision to misinform the paper’s readers.
