Square one

With all the hoopla over the financial meltdown, it's gone almost unnoticed that North Korea has now affirmed that they are working to restart their nuclear reactor.

AFP says that reactivation could take less than one year, which would put the whole process back at square one for the next US administration.

North Korea is peeved that the US put new conditions on its pledge to take NK off of the 'state sponsors of terrorism list' by requiring intrusive inspections that were not specified when the six-party deal was made. This has become the typical modus operandi of US diplomacy, used also by lackey Sarkozy while negotiating with the Russians. Make a deal, then change the terms accompanied by a press campaign to distort the issues. It didn't work with the Russians, and evidently it's not working with the North Koreans. They've also announced that they don't care if they're taken off of the 'list', so now further negotiations will be hampered by having one less carrot to offer them.

The Bush administration has been struggling mightily to delay all the looming disasters that almost eight years of arrogant stupidity have assembled. Success at any of their endeavors would have been a small miracle, chalk up another one in the failure column.