No NK Uranium

This is staggering. This has to be one of the all time most idiotic foreign policy blunders in US history. More than that it is a clear demonstration of the almost total failure of conservatives' ability to handle foreign policy and national security. Conservatives have for more than a decade been beside themselves over the threat from North Korea. North Korea, they have been insisting, is well on their way to develop nuclear weapons which will then make them a massive threat to the US. Now, no one doubted that North Korea was interested in making nuclear bombs and were making efforts to acquire them. However, anyone with any sense was aware that the NK plutonium program was the major threat and that the Uranium program, even if the most grave estimates of the NK Uranium program were correct, was not as great a danger. Under this belief the Clinton administration pursued a foreign policy course which shut the NK plutonium program down, but doing nothing about the plutonium program. This has had conservatives in a lather, Clinton had betrayed the US by failing to take decisive action against the Uranium program. Since then the Bush administration, to save us from the NK Uranium program, totally abandoned the Clinton policy. The only effect so far is that the NK plutonium program has gotten underway again and they have in fact built several bombs. Now we learn that the Uranium program that the Bush administration was so intent on saving us from, didn't exist in the first place.

No try and understand this. Conservatives were deeply concerned by the threat of NK nukes. So they destroyed the US policies that were preventing NK from getting nukes by the only route open to them in order to defend us from NK getting nukes by a means that they couldn't have used anyway. This is so absolutely typical of conservative foreign policy. Defend from threats that don't exist and ignore those that do.

See also Josh Marshall on this