“The whole thing just doesn’t add up,” said one senior administration official who has been tracking the cargo ship’s lazy summer journey. “My worry is that we make a big demand about seeing the cargo, and then there’s a tense standoff, and when it’s all over we discover that old man Kim set us up to look like George Bush searching for nonexistent W.M.D.”

That’s largely short-sighted hooey.

A resolution authorizing inspection for possible illegal things does not say something has to be found or else. What would we do if it did? Customs checkpoints at airports and other points of entry would become obsolete fast.

Or, another way to look at it — we have laws about false arrest but we don’t extend that to “false search warrants” if a search is sanctioned but turns up nothing.

The point of creating the resolutions in the first place is – like with a search warrant – North Korea has already proven itself a criminal/rogue regime by using commercial shipping to ferry drugs, weapons, currency, you name it. It has already been caught at this before – thus the need to check them out.

Such resolutions (or search warrants) are not a house of cards that falls apart and can’t be used again just because you don’t find something one of the times you look…

And besides, what would we do if we did find something? Last time we just watched it go back on its merry way…

Pentagon officials are clearly not eager to confront the Kang Nam 1. The intelligence about what is on board is typically murky. Some say they suspect small arms, which are banned by the United Nations resolution but hardly a major threat.

–Sigh–

There is no hope…

Our military is afraid to search a ship because it might not find anything banned. Goody for North Korea – rubbing its hands together thinking about all the illegal stuff that will get through.

And the NY Times doesn’t really care about enforcing UN resolutions unless they are really, really important…

–Sigh–

Mr. Obama’s top aides say they are acutely aware of the dangers if the same happened with the Kang Nam 1. Whatever momentum the administration has created to confront the North Koreans would be lost if the first intercepted ship was carrying sea bass, or Ping-Pong balls.

Only because that is how orgs like you have defined it!!!

Because –

But the Kang Nam 1 is a test of whether United Nations sanctions have some teeth.

– if that’s true, the search itself — boarding the ship on the high seas or forcing it to port to be searched — is the point. That is the teeth the UN is showing. It isn’t dependent on finding something dirty.

It is no wonder Pyongyang so frequently laughs at the world community…

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/world/asia/01sanger.html?ref=asia

at least there is more negative press for the NK more than EVER in the past few years.

why am i being so damn glass half full? it’s freaking me out.