Submitted by OhadiLangis, Sep 20, 2007 11:05

The whole situation has drawn the attention of right wing spoiler and former U.N. ambassador John Bolton. After completing his recess appointment at the U.N. in 2006, he did not seek Senate confirmation and instead spends his time tossing political grenades over the White House fence whenever the opportunity presents itself to do so. Bolton told the NYT, "It would be a big mistake for the State Department to push ahead with the six-party process without this being resolved."

Bolton is wrong. It makes sense to keep the secretive North Korean regime firmly engaged in the six party talks because that's the only way any possibility exists for the light of reason to reach into their way of thinking. The Foreign Policy Magazine blog has an excellent analysis on this point.

You're not talking to a political presence there, you are talking to a group of crime bosses who have gotten their hands on nuclear weapons and ICBMs. The only way to get their attention is to prove is not in their interests to keep them.

When the U.S. talks to them about disassembling their nuclear weapons program, the folks in charge in North Korea think "fire sale" with Syria being the first customer. Hard currency is after all the same regardless of where it comes from.

Also, I don't buy the "rudimentary" characterization as reported by the NYT. If Syria was buying weapons grade materials from the North Koreans, they certainly were not going to move up the weapons capability ladder one centrifuge at a time like Iran. It was "leap frog" time in Damascus, and that's what the Israelis might have blown up earlier this month.

The problem for the Syrians is that their Arab neighbors might be thinking that the generals in Damascus aren't going to stop at just threatening Israel once their "nuclear capability" had a delivery system, like a North Korean missile. BTW; Iran also has these missiles but so far as anyone knows does not yet have a nuclear weapon.

http://djysrv.blogspot.com/2007/09/nyt-israelis-bombed-syrian-nuclear-site.html

There's lots of speculation about the raid, but until someone turns up physical evidence of a nuclear device on the ground in Syria, and its gets into the news media, the rest of the world will have to assume the Israelis had very good reasons for the air raid and the Syrians may have learned a terrible lesson about the perils of doing business with rogue nuclear powers. The North Koreans were the only nation to protest the raid, from which one can infer they had interests and people on the ground at the site that was bombed.

http://djysrv.blogspot.com/2007/09/murky-nuclear-issue-lurks-in-syria-part_16.html

Once you've gotten into the terrifying arena of bombing nuclear facilities, disinformation undoubtedly comes into play. It is unlikely that the general news media is going to get a definitive answer on the raid. From the point of view of nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, the North Koreans may turn out to be as much of a rogue nation as Pakistan when it comes to selling enriched uranium like it was a package of girl scout cookies.

http://djysrv.blogspot.com/2007/09/murky-nuclear-issue-lurks-in-syria.html

Note: Comments are screened, and in some cases edited, before posting. We reserve the right to reject anything we find objectionable.