Friday, October 20, 2006

supplies!

Lileks on Lil' Kimmy Crackpot:
North Korea's nuclear capability has been tacitly assumed for a few years, and learning they actually set one off is a bit like hearing Paris Hilton appeared unsteady as she left a club. Still, an actual nuclear explosion does focus the mind, and makes you wonder what comes next. Let history be our guide:

First we had the Clinton talks, in which North Korea promised to be good. They were given some lovely parting gifts, including much-needed heating oil to warm the officer barracks in the death camps. Then came the six-way talks, which were interrupted briefly for three-way talks over two-way radios; then the my-way-or-die-way talks we're now experiencing. Along the way North Korea broke the seals, restarted its Secret Bomb Program, enriched nuclear fuel and fortified it with vitamins, lobbed missiles hither and yon, and behaved exactly like the sociopathic criminal state everyone knows it to be. The West's most forceful reaction was a puppet movie that made fun of Kim Jong Il. As we speak, the U.N. Security Council is studying the feasibility of a sequel; debate hinges on a French demand to call the puppets "marionettes."

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