Impossible! They Don’t Have a Uranium Enrichment Program, No Matter What They Say!

North Korea vowed on Saturday to embark on a uranium enrichment program and “weaponize” all the plutonium in its possession as it rejected the new U.N. sanctions meant to punish the communist nation for its recent nuclear test. North Korea also said it would not abandon its nuclear programs, saying it was an inevitable decision to defend itself from what it says is a hostile U.S. policy and its nuclear threat against the North.  [AP, via WSJ]

Selig Harrison and David Albright were not available for comment.  Thank goodness for our best and brightest diplomatic minds, whose relentless pursuit of the truth got to the bottom of this before it became a threat to our national security:

Both the Clinton administration and that of George W. Bush fell into the same negotiating trap with North Korea. The Clinton team was so wedded to the prospect of a nuclear-free North Korea that the president and secretary of state were willing to ignore intelligence indicating that Pyongyang was cheating on its agreement. When evidence surfaced that North Korea was diverting fuel-oil shipments to military industries in contravention of the Agreed Framework, Robert Gallucci, the agreement’s negotiator, blamed the Pentagon for having insisted on such restrictions. The Bush administration was little better. Indeed, Bush’s North Korea envoy, Christopher Hill, came to personify negotiator’s Stockholm syndrome, reportedly demanding that intelligence regarding North Korean noncompliance with its denuclearization commitments be vetted through him and cutting off the flow of information to diplomats with contrarian views on the wisdom of his approach to Pyongyang.  [Danielle Pletka, Washington Post]

Hat tip:  Andy Jackson.