This is not the Dennis Blair I knew

Dennis Blair, who tried to put diplomacy’s own Jeremiah Wright in charge of writing our national intelligence estimates, has just thrown the entire Obama Administration off message on North Korea’s upcoming missile test. (Mark your calendars for April 4th, though April 15th seems at least as likely). Blair, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee no less, mused that North Korea’s missile test is probably just what the North Koreans say it is:

“I tend to believe that the North Koreans announced that they are going to do a space launch and I believe that that’s what they intend,” said Dennis Blair, the director of U.S. national intelligence. “I could be wrong but that would be my estimate. [Joongang Ilbo]

Until this point, the American government, the Japanese government, and the South Korean government had all been unanimous and on-message, rejecting North Korea’s spurious description of its missile test as a satellite launch and agreeing that such a spurious description didn’t make the launch any less of a threat, or any less a violation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1695 and 1718. The media reaction to Blair’s stoopid-with-two-O’s comment would have thrown any Republican Administration into full damage control mode, and very possibly blunted its capacity to deter the threat.

All I can say is, thank God we finally live in a country where the press never questions the government.

Related: Our Secretary of State, predictably enough, prepares to fold like a cheap pantsuit:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday offered to hold missile-related talks with North Korea amid moves by the Stalinist country to launch what it says is a communications satellite but what intelligence agencies believe could be a long-range missile.

After a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in Washington, Clinton said, “We need to have a conversation about missiles, and it wasn’t in the six-party talks.” She added, “We would like to see it be part of the discussion with North Korea. But most importantly, we would like to see North Korea evidence in some way their willingness to re-engage with all of us and to work together on the agenda that they agreed to in the six-party talks.” [Chosun Ilbo]

And each new set of talks is yet another opportunity to carry tribute to His Porcine Majesty … as opposed to an opportunity to stand toe-to-toe with the aggressive dictator and secure one’s place in history with that tough, smart diplomacy we were promised.

The call came at 3 a.m. The answering machine picked up.