Condi Rice Saves Thirty Minutes of My Life

[Update:   Senior State Department official Victor Cha flat-out says it aint so.]

… by raising serious doubts about the hearsay report that Kim Jong Il had apologized to a Chinese envoy for his recent nuclear test, or promised not to do it again.
I don’t think apology and regret are components of the emotional vocabulary of a psychopath or a malignant narcissist, except as a means of manipulating others.  Kim Jong Il had his reasons.  I don’t know what they were, though I’ve offered a couple of wild guesses.  Whatever they were, I don’t think he regrets what he did, nor do I think he would he say so.  I think men like Kim Jong Il will always find ways to blame others for their own actions, and the consequences of those actions.
The “grand bargain” Kim Jong Il reportedly offered was a non-starter in any event.  He’d return to six-party talks if we dropped the sanctions intended to get him to quit his counterfeiting of our currency — in other words, yet again rewarding him for discussing an eventual cessation of conduct he shouldn’t have engaged in to begin with.  Some deal.

On the contrary, Rice thinks the North Koreans intend to escalate the crisis, and she’s continuing on with the execution of an actual policy by working on the Russians to implement 1718.

“It seems clear that the Russians take 1718 seriously,” a senior State Department official said Saturday after Rice held talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, referring to the UN Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on North Korea.

“They talked about tightening some of their controls on the border,” the official said, adding: “They are interested in working with us” on the sanctions.

It’s too bad I’ve already said “trust but verify” once today.