Meanwhile, in La-La Land . . .

Joseph DiTrani has warned North Korea that “the international community has ‘a very strong position’ on the possible export of nuclear materials by Pyongyang.” Everyone from the South Korean Foreign Ministry to Congress and the White House are showing signs that their patience with North Korea’s b.s. has expired at last. So exactly what has this guy been smoking?

Earlier this month, Selig Harrison, director of the Asia Program at the Washington-based Center for International Policy, told reporters in Beijing after a visit to Pyongyang that North Korean officials told him their government would not supply fissile material to third parties if Washington proves willing to talk.

Count the levels on which this is completely insane. Start with the fact that we’ve already found their paw-prints on the other side of the red line. Again, we are assured that there will be peace in our time if we simply renegotiate North Korea’s compliance with an agreement or universal standard for which its compliance has already been bought and broken. Not that we haven’t tried this, of course. When people whith a demonstrated penchant for mass slaughter threaten to sell nuclear material to terrorists–terrorists who want nothing more than to kill millions of your people–you don’t pay them. You put your hands around their necks and squeeze steadily until they twitch no more forever.

Now, I’ve never met Selig Harrison, but I have it on good authority, from a source you know but to whom I’ve promised anonymity, that he is a rambling, senile old coot with the personal presence of an unmedicated, homeless mental patient. Unlike the latter, I have no sympathy for Harrison, who is an apologist for mass-murderers and death-merchants.

You wonder if a guy like Selig Harrison might acquire a sense of moral outrage if the North Koreans were actually dealing in tobacco.