If Only We Had More Dialogue (to be read dripping with sarcasm)

How many AP, Reuters, AFP, CNN, CBS, NYT, LAT, BBC news posts will mention the Clinton administration with regards to the detonation of a nuclear device by North Korea?

(a quick perusal at articles at each site only finds a passing sentence in the NYT article mentioning the 1994 accord and its utter failure, but quickly makes it about the Bush administration's belligerence and assures their readers that it's all Bush's fault)

Only eeeevil Rethuglicans like Hugh Hewitt, or Michelle Malkin would make such a connection, I suppose.

Remember this November 7th. If the Dems get both houses, expect a Bush administration tied up with endless, needless, and ridiculous hearings/witch-hunts/impeachment trials rather than the freedom to do what needs to be done to prevent more crazies getting bigger weapons.

Meanwhile, enjoy this blast from the past of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright greeting Kim Jong-(Mentally)Ill in warm friendship slightly less than six years ago.

Their ability to detonate a device does not match their capacity to deliver that device on a target (accept as a very large bomb dropped out of a plane), so the threat this presents is more symbolic than actual, but it's still a provocative threat, and it's a different world Oct 9th compared to Oct 8th.

We knew they had been working towards this, we knew they had the materials, now they've proven it. But knowing in the abstact they had the capacity and having the proof move seismographic needles across the globe are two different things entirely.

The UN most likely will once again prove its utter inability to be relavent to a real crisis.

Expect Japan to drop out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and begin building their own stockpile of weapons. It's inevitable, and they have the technological prowess, the materials, and the production capacity to produce a sufficient store to obliterate any of their neighbors (even the one with 1.2B folks).