Congrats NK

North Korea has handed over to China a dossier on its nuclear activities, and plans to destroy the cooling tower at its Yongbyon reactor complex.

The Bush administration will take North Korea off the State Department’s terrorism blacklist.

Secretary of State Condie Rice says the United States has the means to verify North Korea’s estimates of its nuclear programs. John Bolton thinks she’s full of shit:

“This is a sad, sad day,” said John Bolton, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations and a leading critic of the new American negotiating stance. “I think Bush believes what Condi is telling him, that they’re going to persuade the North to give up nuclear weapons, and I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think we’ve been taken to the cleaners.”

Well, at least Ban Ki-moon is happy.

Eight years, and we’ve got this steaming load of crap. The critics are right — if Agreed Framework 2.0 was going to be the result, we might as well have stuck with the Clinton deal.

Over at Think Progress, “Satyam” gives us a flashback to when Bush was governor and wondering why the hell he should care about North Korea. Funny thing is, the Ineloquent One had the right idea back then. If the Chinese and South Koreans want to pay off the nuclear basketcase in their backyard, that’s their business. Is it now US policy to pay off any regime that threatens to develop nuclear technology? Besides, assuming we’re concerned about North Korea’s sales of nuke technology to third parties (like Syria), isn’t rewarding them precisely the wrong thing to do?

North Korea should have been ignored and left to collapse on its own. Instead, it’s going to be another four years (at least) of watching North Korea play “let’s fuck with another US president.”

I can’t wait.