NORTH KOREA UPDATE….So, um, I guess the negotiations with North Korea aren’t going too well:
North Korea told a six-nation conference that it has nuclear weapons and has plans to test one, a U.S. official said Thursday.
….The remarks by North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il set a negative tone at the conference and raised questions about the success of the negotiations, which were scheduled to conclude Friday morning.
Kim at one point accused delegates from Russia and Japan of lying at the instruction of the United States when they tried to point out positive aspects of the American presentation, according to a U.S. official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The United States has always talked about a “red line,” a point beyond which it can’t allow North Korea to go. This line has shifted considerably, but it’s hard to imagine that testing a nuclear bomb wouldn’t go way over it. Unlike Stanley Kurtz, however, my guess is that if they do test a nuclear weapon, we won’t go to war. We’ll just move the red line once again to, say, exploding a nuclear weapon in someone else’s country.
Then again, it wouldn’t surprise me if this was just more bluster and the North Koreans don’t actually have anything at all. Our own intelligence agencies don’t seem to have much of a clue about what’s really going on, so how can I?
