Been thinking about Korea tonight. I think that the current problems with North Korea are the first foreign policy mess that can be truly and completely laid at the feet of Bush and his mis-administration. Consider the following: 1) Bush stomps all over a multi-year effort to resolve the conflict between north and south with little thought to blow this would be to the Korean leaders who stuck their necks out to get it done. 2) Bush throws North Korea into his "Evil Empire" diatribe for god only knows what reason (most likely because he needed someone to avoid making it look like he was only going after Islamic countries and he needed a convenient boogieman in order to sell Son-o-Star-Wars). 3) Bush focuses all of the attention of America (and the world) onto the uncertain threat that is Iraq. 4) At just the moment when he is ready to make the final push for Gulf War II, North Korea kicks out the UN inspectors and declares that they are removing all the monitors on their nuclear processing capabilities. Gee, do you think the Koreans, maybe, just maybe, decided to take advantage of our being distracted by other matters to pull a stunt like this? No matter which way you paint this it was a monumental screw up for the vaunted Bush foreign policy team. They make O'Neill and Lindsey look like Nobel Laureates.