Three months ago, someone who should have known better declared a landmark diplomatic victory for the Bush Adminstration over the communist regime of Kim jong-IL’s North Korea and its supposed agreement to give up its nuclear weapons program. Somebody who DID know better bellowingly dissented, and made a prediction:

We gain nothing of any substance from this twenty-sixth agreement with the Kim regime, which will be riven by them just like all twenty-five of its predecessors, and the NoKos and Red Chinese gain breathing room for the rogue regime’s next round of nuclearization and consequence sabre-rattling and mischief-making.

Three weeks ago the NoKos announced to the world that they were going to reverse course and rebuild their Yongbyon nuclear fuel facility right in front of ourselves, the Japanese, and the South Koreans, all of to whose faces Pyongyang had agreed to dismantle it in the first place. Ourselves, the Japs, and the SoKos didn’t so much as yawn. The only thing the Kim regime hadn’t done was formally throw out Ourselves, the Japs, the SoKos, and the Internatonal Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and monitors.

You can check that detail off the list:

North Korea has expelled U.N. monitors from its plutonium-making nuclear plant and plans to start reactivating it next week, rowing back from a 2007 deal to scrap its atomic bomb program, officials said on Wednesday.

The Stalinist state said on Friday it was working to restart the Yongbyon atomic complex it had been dismantling since last November under a disarmament-for-aid agreement with five powers.

Olli Heinonen, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s head of non-proliferation safeguards, told a closed meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors that monitors were forced to leave the plutonium facility this week.

“There are no more seals and surveillance equipment in place at the (plutonium) reprocessing facility,” IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said, referring to the most proliferation-sensitive installation at Yongbyon.

So…doesn’t that put us right back to square one? Yongbyon reassembled and back on-line by the end of the year? Fresh, and perchance successful, nuclear tests next year? Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. west coast under threat of North Korean nuclear attack just as Europe and the U.S. eastern seaboard will be under threat of Iranian nuclear attack? And terrorist network customers lining up to buy warheads like harried mothers at Toys-R-Us the week before Christmas?

No, Ed, it’s not a “negotiating ploy.” We’ll still give ‘em the economic aid we promised, because we don’t break OUR word to lying, meglomaniacal, murderous dictators. And you know damn well that President Hussein will tear up the “terror-supporting-nations” list altogether. And no, Ed, the NoKo military doesn’t fear a war with Ourselves, the Japs, and the SoKos, because they know that (1) they could and would clean the latter two’s clocks and (2) they know we have utterly no stomach for an(other) armed conflict in Northeast Asia when we’re still pacifying Iraq AND have Iran to deal with AND have to worry about a revival of the Cold War AND have to worry about a ChiComm grab for Taiwan AND keep an eye on Hugo Chavez’s Latin American ambitions, etc., etc., etc.

All of that is wishful thinking, Ed. Remember your Occam’s Razor. The truth is a lot simpler: the NoKos, just like the Iranians, want nukes, and they’re going to get them, and then they’re going to use them against us and our allies. And President Hussein will let them do it.

Sad to say, but George W. Bush completely wasted his time with this six-party-talks five-knuckle-shuffling. The only thing left to do now is deliver an ultimatum: honor the agreement or else. Starting with cutting them off completely from any and all aid until they let the inspectors back in and put Yongbyon back in mothballs - even better, destroy the plant equipment outright so it can’t be reassembled.

Diplomacy is fine, diplomacy is great, but without a commitment to national interest and the hard-headed, realistic mettle that goes with it, it’s nothing more than a suicidal fetish. If we let North Korea so openly and brazenly renege on an agreement they’ve already signed, there is utterly no point in saying another word to them - any more than there ever was in the first place.

[cross-posted at ]

By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, July 7, 2008 – Defense personnel have completed the transfer of 550 metric tons of Iraqi uranium ore to Canada, Defense officials said here today.

The Iraqi government asked the United States to help transfer the yellowcake — as the ore is known — from Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center near Baghdad to its buyer in Canada, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said today.

The military dubbed the movement Operation McCall, and it ended July 5. DoD’s portion of the operation involved the transfer of the ore.

Yellowcake is a uranium ore that can be processed to become nuclear fuel. State and Energy Department personnel also participated in the transfer.

Officials transferred the uranium by convoy from Tuwaitha nuclear research facility to a secure location in Baghdad’s International Zone, Whitman said. The ore was in 110 shipping containers. The shipping containers were placed aboard Air Force C-17 Globemaster III airlifters and taken to an intermediate location. It took 37 sorties to transfer the yellowcake.

At the intermediate location — which Whitman could not name — the ore was loaded aboard the SS Gopher State, a Military Sealift Command ship, which took it to Montreal.

“This was material that was discovered when we initially went in to Tuwaitha,” Whitman said. “It was under the control of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency since that time.”

Whitman stressed that yellowcake is not of direct use in a nuclear weapon. “It is a commodity that is traded routinely in the global nuclear energy sector,” he said. “It can be used as a feed material for nuclear weapons if a country has access to the necessary fuel technology.”

The cost of the transfer was $70 million, and the government of Iraq will reimburse the United States for a portion of the cost, Whitman said.

My personal editorial comment:

I thought Iraq in no way had any type nuclear program, or held NO capability to have one? But then why did Saddam have…wait “yellowcake” where did I hear that before? Oh yeah, Wilson yappin’ about how Saddam was not involved with nuclear work.

How will the left explain this away?

Straight from Fresno… Remarks as Prepared for Delivery:

Thank you all very much. I appreciate the kind introduction from Jim Woolsey, and the warm welcome to Fresno State. I’m here to listen about energy issues as well as to talk. So let me just offer a few ideas before we begin our discussion.

All across this state and nation, people are hurting because the price of gasoline is higher than it should be, and more than many folks can afford. Because of far-off events in the world oil market, a barrel of oil has more than doubled in a year. And the bad effects of that are spreading across our economy. The cost of business is rising, the cost of food and other essentials is rising, the whole cost of living is rising. What isn’t rising is the value of your paychecks and the rate of America’s economic growth. Back in the 1970’s, they used to call this “stagflation.” And it feels the same today, because the unwise policies of our government have left America’s energy future in the control of others.

America imports about one third of its oil from Canada and Mexico and no one need worry about a reliance on friendly, stable neighbors, and partners in NAFTA. The Middle East and Venezuela are a different story. We import roughly a quarter of our oil from them, and they have a disproportionate impact on world prices. When we buy foreign oil from these and other sources, there are many consequences — all of them far-reaching and none of them good. Worst of all, by relying on foreign oil, we enrich bad actors in the world, some of whom finance terrorists.

Some in Washington seem to think that we can still persuade OPEC to lower prices — as if reason or cajolery had never been tried before. Others have even suggested suing OPEC — as if we can litigate our way to energy security. But America is not going to meet this great challenge as a supplicant or a plaintiff. We are not going to meet it with words at all — we are going to meet it with action. We’re going to produce more, conserve more, and invent more. And to a large extent, this strategy hinges on innovations in the cars and trucks we drive.

Ninety-seven percent of transportation in America runs on oil. And of all that oil, about 60 percent is used in cars and trucks. Yet the CAFE standards we apply to automakers — to increase the fuel efficiency of their cars — are lightly enforced by a small fine. The result is that some companies don’t even bother to observe CAFE standards. Instead they just write a check to the government and pass the cost along to you. Higher end auto companies like BMW, Porsche, and Mercedes employ some of the best engineering talent in the world. But that talent isn’t put to the job of fuel efficiency, when the penalties are too small to encourage innovation. CAFE standards should serve large national goals in energy independence, not the purpose of small-time revenue collection.

Innovation in the use of alternative fuels in transportation presents the greatest opportunity for energy independence. At the moment, entrepreneurs and engineers are trying to figure out which among the various alternatives to oil works best. Alcohol-based fuels are the farthest along in both development and commercial use. Some, such as ethanol, are on the market now, and new sources of ethanol are on the horizon that will not require the use of so much cropland. Corn-based ethanol, thanks to the money and influence of lobbyists, has been a case study in the law of unintended consequences. Our government pays to subsidize corn-based ethanol even as it collects tariffs that prevent consumers from benefiting from other kinds of ethanol, such as sugarcane-based ethanol from Brazil. The result is that Americans take the financial hit coming and going. As taxpayers, we foot the bill for the enormous subsides paid to corn produ cers. And as consumers, we pay extra at the pump because of government barriers to cheaper products from abroad.

Here’s a better way. Instead of playing favorites, our government should level the playing field for all alcohol fuels that break the monopoly of gasoline, lowering both gasoline prices and carbon emissions. And this can be done with a simple federal standard to hasten the conversion of all new vehicles in America to flex-fuel technology — allowing drivers to use alcohol fuels instead of gas in their cars. Brazil went from about five to over 70 percent of all new vehicles with flex-fuel capacity. It did all that in just three years. Yet those same automakers that helped Brazil make the change say it will take them longer to reach the goal of 50 percent new flex-fuel vehicles for America. But I am confident they can do more, and do it faster, in the interest of our energy security. And if I am elected president, they will. Whether it takes a meeting with automakers during my first month in office, or my signature on an act of Congress, we will meet the goal of a swift conversion of American vehicles away from oil.

At the same time, smart policy can also help to broaden the market for energy-efficient cars. Right now we have a hodgepodge of incentives for the purchase of fuel-efficient cars. Different hybrids and natural-gas cars carry different incentives, ranging from a few hundreds dollars to four grand. They’re the handiwork of lobbyists, with all the inconsistency and irrationality that involves.

My administration will issue a Clean Car Challenge to the automakers of America, in the form of a single and substantial tax credit based on the reduction of carbon emissions. For every automaker who can sell a zero-emissions car, we will commit a 5,000 dollar tax credit for each and every customer who buys that car. For other vehicles, whatever type they may be, the lower the carbon emissions, the higher the tax credit. And these large tax credits will be available to everyone — not just to those who have an accountant to explain it to them.

Furthermore, in the quest for alternatives to oil, our government has thrown around enough money subsidizing special interests and excusing failure. From now on, we will encourage heroic efforts in engineering, and we will reward the greatest success.

I further propose we inspire the ingenuity and resolve of the American people by offering a $300 million prize for the development of a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars. This is one dollar for every man, woman and child in the U.S. — a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency — and should deliver a power source at 30 percent of the current costs.

My friends, energy security is the great national challenge of our time. And rising to this challenge will take all of the vision, creativity, and resolve of which we are capable. The good news is, these qualities have never been in short supply. We are the country of Edison, Fulton, and two brothers named Wright. It was American ingenuity that took three brave men to the moon and brought them back. Think of all the highest scientific endeavors of our age — the invention of the silicon chip, the creation of the Internet, the mapping of the human genome. In so many cases, you can draw a straight line back to American inventors, and often to the foresighted aid of the United States government.

For all the troubles and dangers our energy vulnerability presents, we know that we can overcome them, because we have overcome far worse problems and met far greater goals. Together, we Americans can achieve anything we set our minds to. I believe this about our country. I know this about our country. And now it is time to show those qualities once again.

Thank you.

The McCain campaign also released a new ad today, “Energy Security.” For those of you wondering about the significance of Fresno, McCain’s California Delegation to the GOP Convention is an ethanol guru - former CA Secretary of State Bill Jones.