north korea, again.

Now they may not have the bomb.(sorry, it's the LA Times and their registration process is annoying)

The Bush administration has asserted in recent months that North Korea possesses one or two nuclear bombs and is rapidly developing the means to make more. The statements have raised anxiety about a nuclear arms race in Asia and the possibility that terrorists could obtain atomic weapons from the North Korean regime.

But the administration's assessment rests on meager fresh evidence and limited, sometimes dated, intelligence, according to current and former U.S. and foreign officials.


Outside the administration, and in some quiet corners within it, there is nothing close to a consensus that North Korean scientists have succeeded in fabricating atomic bombs from plutonium, as the CIA concluded in a document made public last month.

Independent experts and some U.S. officials also are skeptical of administration claims that North Korea is within months of manufacturing material for more weapons at a secret uranium-enrichment plant.

Look folks, I think the Bush Administration may be functionally correct on this one (yes, I already said Hell froze over, so bear with me!). They have at least one device, which they've had since 1992 or 1993 at least when the plutonium from the Yongbon plant was first discovered missing. This was stated over and over again among various intelligence services including the CIA leading up to the 1994 Framework. In addition, we have a fundamental lack of intelligence on the ground because nearly everything the North Koreans are doing is hidden and their society is so incredibly controlled and secretive. Noone really knows what's going on in there, not even the North Koreans patrons, the Chinese and the article in todays LA Times states this. There is more than ample evidence that the North Koreans helped the Pakistanis (and perhaps even the Iranians according to the research I did a few weeks ago---sorry no link) despite the denial of the Pakistani government. And that help may have been given to Pakistani nuclear scientists who may or may not have links to Al Qaeda.

I understand the rhetoric sounds like the pre-Iraq rhetoric but North Korea is, and has been for decades, a more deadly, and unpredictable threat. I'm not buying that they don't have it.


It also wouldn't surprise me at all of if one of the Pakistani nuclear tests was a test of a North Korean device, given the amount of contact between the two programs in the year leading up to the 1998 tests. Just my tinfoil hat goin' though. I have no proof, of course.