North Korea policy sharpens the knives

CONFUSED by the belated revelations over North Korean help with a Syrian reactor of some sort? The best way to understand the method if not the substance is to think back to late December and the Iran saga.

A lot of people in Washington, D.C., were worried the Bush administration was eager to attack Iran. President George W. Bush stood before the microphones to hint at World War III and mushroom clouds unless something was done to stop Tehran's nuclear aspirations.Out of the bureaucratic blue, the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran materialized to report the country's nuclear program had ended in 2003. The intelligence and defense communities aired information to halt movement in a direction they strongly opposed.

The same strategy is being recycled by opponents of improved relations with the despotic regime in North Korea.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill is at work on a compact with North Korea that looks to full denuclearization.

Hill is trying to finesse an arrangement whereby North Korea does not have to disclose past activities — including suspected uranium enrichment and transfer to Syria. Hill is focused on North Korea's full disclosure about activities at home and the dismantling of its weapons program.

Conservatives and some nonproliferation experts strongly oppose Hill's apparent concession.

Lo and behold, the administration reveals a video showing North Koreans working at a Syrian site. An Israeli airstrike destroyed it last fall. Further, the administration had apparently known of the work for years.

The information served a political purpose when a deal with North Korea looked like a reality.

Syria has howled about the motives applied to its destroyed nuclear program. The Associated Press reported top U.S. intelligence officials conceded there was no reprocessing facility at the site, something needed to enrich nuclear material for a bomb.

What is in jeopardy is the goal Hill clearly saw as achievable: a commitment by Pyongyang to back away from a weapons program.