Apparently, Kristof can get it right every now and again. His latest column offers up some dead-on truths.

He states, "the most dangerous failure of U.S. policy these days is in North Korea" and that "Mr. Bush seems to recognize that his policy has failed - that's why he isn't talking much about North Korea now." Textbook behavior for a bully: strut and swagger where and when you can, but quickly cower and hide when the going gets tough.

"As best we know, it didn't make a single nuclear weapon during Bill Clinton's eight years in office.... In contrast, the administration now acknowledges that North Korea extracted enough plutonium in the last two years for about half a dozen nuclear weapons." Love to see the right-wing spin this one back at Clinton (and they undoubtedly will).

If you were told of a country that has tossed out international weapons inspectors, I bet Iraq would come to mind. North Korea has done the same, as well as withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Neither Iraq had or North Korea have terrorists (at least how we've come to define this term) and yet both had/have brutal tyrant dictators. Hmm, why invade one but not the other? Could it be that 1) the Bush administration knew all along that Iraq had no WMD, and therefore was no real threat to our soldiers if we invaded (not the case re North Korea), and 2) Iraq had plenty of that prized commodity, oil (North Korea has none).

I've maintained here that those two reasons explain it all.