North Korea - "We're Fucked"

The Pentagon held an all-day meeting a couple of weeks ago seeking ways to restrain North Korea. At the end of it, one expert turned to another and summed it up: "In other words, we're" doomed — except he used a pungent phrase I can't.

It was a fair judgment. North Korea was always more terrifying than Iraq, and now the situation is getting worse.

"Time is slipping away for a peaceful resolution of the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula," warns a major report issued yesterday by the International Crisis Group. It adds: "North Korea has the materials and the capability to develop nuclear weapons — more than 200 of them by 2010."

What would it do with them? Well, it may have been bluster, but a senior North Korean official, Li Gun, warned a U.S. counterpart that if the stalemate continued, North Korea could transfer nukes abroad.

While President Bush has said he won't tolerate a nuclear North Korea, it looks as if that may be where we are headed.

"If you wanted a case of imminent threat and danger, according to the principles enunciated in the National Security Strategy document, then North Korea is much more of a threat than Iraq ever was in the last few years," noted Jonathan Pollack, chairman of the strategic research department of the Naval War College.

"The mess is getting messier," noted Ashton Carter, a former senior Pentagon official who wrestled with North Korea. "We have allowed our options to narrow and our position to slip. So it's getting worse."