| The Washington Post suggests that the White House is trying to put a Marxist spin on Pyongyang's impending nukes production, arguing that things will eventually get better by first getting worse: According to this theory, once North Korea starts making it nukes, China and Russia will snap to attention and stop playing with Pyongyang.
Meanwhile, as the WP notes, Deputy Secretary of State warned Congress last month, "I don't think, given the poverty of North Korea, that it would be too long" before the country would start selling its nukes.
Though it doesn't emphasize this point, the NY Times notices (as the LA Times did yesterday) that one person in the administration wasn't following the "North Korean nukes are a done deal" script. That official said that if the administration's efforts "don't work diplomatically, they'll have to work militarily." Who was this maverick? George W. Bush.
As everybody notices, the Pentagon also sent two dozen heavy bombers to Guam, which is within easy striking distance of North Korea. Officials said they were just doing it to beef up deterrence.
USA Today mentions inside that the Pentagon plans to at least temporarily suspend spy flights near North Korea because, the paper suggests, "the United States hopes to prevent a confrontation." USA Today doesn't ponder whether there'd be any serious intel loss from the stoppage, but yesterday's NY Times said the planes "track ballistic-missile launchings." (Let's hope that doesn't give North Korea a brainstorm for its next provocation.)
The Wall Street Journal does an instructive Washington-is-from-Mars, Pyongyang-is-from-Pluto piece: "The U.S. doesn't appear to have grasped how menacing its rhetoric, and sometimes its lack of attention, have seemed to the North. North Korea doesn't appear to recognize how alarming nuclear gamesmanship seems to the Bush administration since the Sept. 11 attacks."
Souce: Slate | |
