Cracking down on nuclear outlaws

New York Daily News ^ | 03 January 2004 | Editorial Board

[Lando Lincoln]

North Korea's nuclear blackmail continues with its agreement to let a U.S. delegation visit next week - possibly to peek inside the Yongbyon atom complex, the likely locus of the country's weapons program. The group is sure to return with word that, yes, indeed, strongman Kim Jong Il is building himself a nice arsenal. The wily and duplicitous dictator is staging the show-and-tell as the U.S., China, Russia, South Korea and Japan prepare to press his rogue regime to abandon its nuclear capabilities in historic six-party negotiations. The more nukes he has, on hand or in the making, the more he's likely to demand as tribute for disarming.

The U.S. has been down this road before. In 1994, North Korea agreed to dismantle nuclear weapons production and permit inspections in return for energy aid, only to announce in 2002 that it secretly kept enriching uranium for bombs. It now claims to have processed enough into plutonium to outfit about a half-dozen weapons.

Whether that's true or not is anyone's guess. The delegation, unofficial but waved through by the Bush administration, will be the first, maybe, to gather relevant data from inside the hermetically sealed country in some time. That makes the trip worthwhile, even if the information has to be taken at a heavy discount.

Maintaining the hardest of lines with outlaws like North Korea, Iran and Libya is the way to go for the U.S., and it is paying dividends. Witness Libya, where dictator Moammar Khadafy has renounced nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and witness Iran, which agreed to accept surprise inspections of its nuclear sites.

No, these are not complete victories, particularly in the case of Iran, a member of the Axis of Evil, as is North Korea. Iran is a country that has supported terrorism, refuses to join the fight against Al Qaeda and cannot be gracious in accepting U.S. humanitarian aid after the deaths of tens of thousands in the Bam earthquake.

Nor will stopping nuclear proliferation be easy, quick or pleasant. Libya was brought to heel only after 20 years of pressure and the instructive value of toppling Saddam Hussein. And now Khadafy demands that the U.S. lift economic sanctions by May 12 or else Libya will exact a particularly brutish and ugly form of retribution.

Libyan terrorists, it will be remembered, blew Pan American Flight 103 out of the sky in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. As part of Libya's rehabilitation, Khadafy agreed to pay $10 million each to the victims' families, $4 million up front and $6 million on the lifting of the sanctions five months from now.

It's gross that such a term made its way into the bargain the U.S. struck with Khadafy and grosser still that Libya is threatening to enforce it. There is a long way to go before the world is sure that Libya has given up weapons of mass destruction for good and identified the shadowy merchants who supply them around the globe.

Better safe than sorry...

That's one way, the better way, to look at the spate of flight cancellations caused by terrorist threats. In the opposing camp are those who complain that the sound of "Wolf!" is being heard in the land. They are wrong. In the war on terror, those charged with public security cannot be overly cautious.

For example, British Airways Flight 223 from London to Washington was again canceled yesterday. BA would not say why. But a British defense analyst was quoted as saying there had been a "real and definite threat." And that the intelligence was "very, very precise." Namely, that the plane would be destroyed over D.C. or crashed there. Would the "Wolf!" contingent demand proof - the White House, Capitol or Smithsonian in ruins - before detaining a plane?

While Britain cooperates, Mexico carps, miffed that some Los Angeles-bound flights were canceled. Said government spokesman Agustin Gutierrez, "The question is, what threat? This question must be answered by Homeland Security." Homeland Security is a bit busy right now, Se%F1or Gutierrez. But we could show you a hole in the ground downtown if you insist on proof that a threat exists.

Which brings us to another security matter: continuing to defy the terrorists by living as normally as possible. Case in point: New Year's Eve in Times Square, where a sea of humanity sporting Orange Alert hats showed the world just how joyous and free and spit-in-yer-eye brave the U.S. is. Even Rep. Chris Shays, who is afraid of Times Square and wants everyone else to be, too, must have been impressed. Provided his Connecticut spider hole is wired for cable.

[Lando Lincoln]

Lando

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[SandRat]

Let's hope the inspectors leave a little something behind. Locator that we can turn on when we need it, or something nice on a timer in SYMTEX.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

We need to hit em now, while we've got the muscle. *