Madeleine Albright on Meet the Press this morning talking about North Korea...

Russert: But didn't North Korea develop nuclear weapons on Bill Clinton's watch?

[pause]

Albright: No.

She went on to say something about "what they did was, within the context of the Agreed Framework, they cheated", and she talked for a while about how they processed rods they shouldn't have, and blah, blah, blah. It was all smoke and bullshit.

What is clear and known is that the North Korean nuclear program dates back to the 1980's. It is also clear that despite the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea continued development of nuclear weapons. It is in fact possible that they had a working nuke before Clinton ever came into office...though it is much more likely that they developed their first working weapon during the 90's.

Albright: I think Bush's policy on Iraq has sent the wrong message to North Korea, namely that if you don't have WMD, you'll be invaded, but if you have nuclear weapons, you won't be.

Wow...no shit, lady. Is she serious? Is she suggesting that we invade North Korea and risk a nuclear war? Or is she saying we should go ahead and let countries that are developing nukes go ahead and do so?

Then, on This Week, here's an exchange between George Will and Fareed Zakaria (not exact...transcript's not out yet):

Will: So what is Kerry's objection to George Bush's policy toward North Korea...that it's too multilateral?

Zakaria: No, his objection is that the number of nuclear weapons in North Korea has quadrupled under George Bush.

But wait a minute...how could the number of nukes quadruple if there weren't any there in the first place?

Here is another area where Kerry is incoherent on foreign policy, and North Korea will be a major policy issue in the next four years. I prefer Bush's attempt at a real multilateral agreement...the alternatives (and none of them are really all that great), are invasion, appeasement, or to try to work through the U.N. (and we know how well that works). Again, criticizing your opponent isn't worth squat unless you're willing to propose a viable alternative. Albright certainly didn't present one this morning...she just engaged in vacuous partisan criticism.

From Kerry's website:

End Nuclear Weapons Programs in Hostile States, including by prioritizing negotiations with North Korea to ensure the complete, irreversible and verifiable elimination of its nuclear weapons program, and leading a global effort to prevent Iran from obtaining the materials necessary to build nuclear weapons.

"Prioritize negotiations"? What kind? Are we back to the Clinton days where we sign a bilateral "agreement" with no verification and no enforcement? Yeah...that'll work just fine.