5-4-3-2-1...Boom!

Well, Kim Jong-Il is now a nuclear power.

I say Kim Jong-Il rather than North Korea because, in the end, Kim is the guy who matters over there. He is, in all likelihood, the one with his finger ultimately on the button. Aren't you just beaming at how successful President Bush has been at preventing nukes from falling into the hands of psychotic lunatics?

After all, Kim is a guy who added the term "Sex God" to his list of official titles, and who allows his people to starve to death while he lives in luxury. Rather than trying to contain this freak, President Bush has refused to even talk to the North Korean government, lest it contaminate his vaunted purity. He and his administration have been living in a dream world where they can afford to deal only with nice international leaders, or at least leaders who seem nice from their perspective (e.g. Vladimir Putin, Musharraf, etc.) Consequently, they have opened the door to a potential nightmare. Kim is insane enough to actually use these things in an all-out war; at least Saddam had some grasp of reality in regard to using them. (If you don't believe me, take a look at how many of our troops died in chemical weapons attacks in the First Gulf War, i.e. none. The reason for that was that Saddam, genocidal tyrant that he was, realized that gassing American troops would result in a mushroom cloud over Baghdad. I do not think we can rely on Kim for such wisdom.)

Now, we will probably, short of some diplomatic miracle, have to live with the possibility that Seoul and Tokyo could be vaporized just because this wingnut gets paranoid. Congratulations, Mr. President, you've made the world that much safer.