Huh.

Yesterday, on the bus home from work, there was a guy reading a book¹ by Kim Jong Il.

Speculate in comments.



¹On the Art of the Cinema

Colossal Catastrophic Clusterfuck #3,749

So, you remember how the Clinton administration had this agreement with North Korea where North Korea stopped its plutonium production except the whole time they were secretly working on a uranium enrichment program which is why when Bush came in they ditched the agreement so now North Korea actually has nuclear weapons and six years later the good news is that we might finally have an agreement that's almost exactly the same as the Clinton agreement except with the, y'know, North Korean nuclear weapons?

Well, it turns out maybe they weren't enriching uranium after all...and Bush's people weren't so sure at the time.

Oops.

Over to Josh Marshall:

It's a screw-up that staggers the mind. And you don't even need to know this new information to know that. Even if the claims were and are true, it was always clear that the uranium program was far less advanced than the plutonium one, which would be ready to produce weapons soon after it was reopened. Now we learn the whole thing may have been a phantom. Like I said, it staggers the mind how badly this was bungled. In this decade there's been no stronger force for nuclear weapons proliferation than the dynamic duo of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush.

Yup. Sounds about right. (And he doesn't even use any dirty words.)

Future Headlines - You Call That A Bomb!?

Washington (f-A-ke. P.) -

U.S. GEOLOGIC SURVEY ANNOUNCES SO-CALLED 'BOMB' WAS IN THE NANO-TON RANGE.

NORTH KOREA ADMITS THAT DEAR LEADER'S DISCOVER OF ZOTZ COULD HAVE BEEN MISTAKEN FOR A NUCLEAR DETONATION.

WORLD OUTRAGED. BUSH CALLS FOR EMBARGO ON SHIPMENTS OF 'RETRO' CANDIES TO NORTH KOREA.

(Thanks to the Praguetwin for the inspiration.)

October Surprise?

I've got a bad feeling about this. Not just because it's a Very Very Bad Thing in itself for North Korea to be a nuclear power (which I think it is), but because I think it could be a gift for the Republicans. Yes, it's a tremendous policy failure for the Bush administration...but Bush's national security failures have a perverse tendency to help the Republicans. The problem is that fear reinforces authoritarian tendencies in the public...and whatever the Glibertarians say, the Republicans are the Party of Authoritarianism.

Josh Marshall highlights part of the WaPo story in which administration officials

said privately that they would welcome a North Korean test, regarding it as a clarifying event that would forever end the debate within the Bush administration about whether to solve the problem through diplomacy or through tough actions...

I imagine they also welcome it because anything that says 'it's a scary scary world' helps the Republicans...even if it's all their own damn fault. I could be wrong; it's possible that people will see this for the catastrophic failure it is. I'm not optimistic.

[That's all, folks]

North Korea: Blame it on the Clenis

Here's Ann Coulter on the North Korean missile launch:

But the point is liberals always have the same reaction to dangerous enemies, which is be nice to them, and that's what Bill Clinton did in his famed 1994 peace deal, giving the North Koreans $4 billion, chocolates, their favorite, you know, flowers, and it was hailed in The New York Times as, you know, the greatest thing since the Peace of Westphalia. But, needless to say, immediately the North Koreans set to work feverishly building nukes, and now we have to deal with that.

See also here, here, here, here, here...well, you get the picture.

Isn't there some kind of statute of limitations for blaming the previous president? Isn't there some point at which it becomes Bush's problem?

Now, some of us remember it a little differently than Coulter and the linked bloggers. Some of us remember it as Clinton making gradual but genuine progress, then Bush coming in and scrapping the whole set of agreements, and the situation deteriorating immediately after (perhaps, dare I say, as a result of) the abrupt shift in policy.

But never mind that for the moment. We're five and a half years into Bush's presidency at this point; surely, even if Clinton screwed things up that badly with North Korea, the Steely-Eyed Rocket Man has had time to make it all better with his Resolve and Determination and rhetoric about the Axis of Evil and all that. Right?

Apparently not. This is a guy who never takes responsibility for anything, and who has a (dwindling but still numerous) crowd of loyalist co-dependents who are ready to shift the blame for him. And Clinton...well, he's the guy they like to blame. And they'll keep blaming him at least until we have another Democratic president they can pin it all on.

[That's all, folks]