Nuts Over Triplets, Nukes The North Korea threat.

Let's say Kim Jong-il is a thousand times crazier than Micheal Jackson and that he's got nukes. That, in a nutshell, is what the Bush doctrine is all about, the fact that we won't be around for long if we just let things roll along until the craziest people on the planet get their hands on weapons that can level Manhattan in a minute.

I bring this up because there's a photo on my desk from Associated Press that shows nine babies all lined up in a row on the floor, smack up against each other. A single blanket is stretched across all nine, with just their heads sticking out. Picture nine grapefruits on the floor, lined up at the top of a blanket, with crying faces. "Three is the loneliest number," says the caption under the photo. "North Korean triplets snuggle up for a life on an orphanage floor."

The Herald Sun, Australia’s largest-selling daily, tells the story behind the photo: All triplets in North Korea are being forcibly removed from parents after their birth and dumped in bleak orphanages.The policy is carried out on the orders of Stalinist dictator Kim Jong-il, who has an irrational belief that a triplet could one day topple his regime. And so, what it looks like, is that these little triple threats are all going to be raised in government-run orphanages--obedience factories--where their development can be moulded in such a way that they'll never think about things like regime change.

"Officially, the policy was introduced to help poverty-stricken parents in a country where hunger is widespread," reports the Herald. The article continues: But aid agencies and diplomats have dismissed this: triplets born to high-ranking officials are also seized. The children of all high-ranking government officials are taken from their parents at the age of two and transferred to state-controlled schools where family bonds are broken and devotion to Kim is instilled. The seizure of triplets is an extension of a policy designed to ensure absolute loyalty to Kim.

London's Daily Telegraph quotes a veteran Western diplomat: "There is no doubt that the policy is compulsory and universal. It may be officially atheistic and Stalinist, but North Korea essentially operates a state religion infused with superstition, astrology and a personality cult that glorifies Kim as a unique individual. You don't take any chances with rivals in that system." "

In a statement to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, North Korea maintained that triplets were being rounded up for humanitarian reasons: Triplets are supplied by the state free of charge with clothing, bedding, a one-year supply of dairy products and a pre-school subsidy, and special medical workers take charge of such mothers and children and care for their health. Nice, except that they're also grabbing kids from parents who have no problem in providing their own supply of blankets and milk.

Now, true, there's no shortage of whacko people on this planet. And most of the time it's okay, just a mix up of chemicals, nothing that'll blow a giant hole in Manhattan. It's different, however, when a nut has his finger on the nuclear trigger. And that's the case with Kim, a case when the Bush doctrine kicks in, and, unless we're suicidal, when the idea kicks in that we don't need permission from Guinea to gas up the B-ls. With Kim Jong-il, I'd guess we're at the point where the United States is seen as even more of a threat than tiny triplets, and, unfortunately, at the point where Kim can hit Los Angeles with a plutonium warhead.

George Tenant, Director of the CIA, provided this answer in testimony before the Armed Services Committee when asked whether North Korea has nuclear weapons: "I think we've unclassified the fact that they probably have one or two plutonium-based devices today." Asked if North Korea has ballistic missiles capable of hitting the west coast of the United States, Tenant replied, "I think the declassified answer is yes, they can do that."

Along the same lines, Ri Kwang Ho, a senior foreign ministry official in Pyongyang, says that North Korea has the hardware to hit American targets anywhere in the world: "Wherever they are, we can attack them. There's no limit to our attack ability. It would be wrong to say that a pre-emptive attack is a choice that belongs only to the U.S."

Last year, President Bush's axis-of-evil speech, writes Charles Krauthammer, was "met with eye-rolling disdain by the sophisticates." It was easier, of course, when Bill Clinton solved the problem of terrorism by replacing the term "rogue states" with "states of concern," easier when we weren't at war with Iraq, easier when we pretended that North Korea had sworn off nuclear weapons, easier when we thought Iran wasn't mining uranium. Easier, but nothing was solved.

"We are now paying the wages of the 1990s, our holiday from history," writes Krauthammer. "During that decade, every major challenge to America was deferred. The chief aim of the Clinton administration was to make sure that nothing terrible happened on its watch. Accordingly, every can was kicked down the road."

--Ralph R. Reiland is the B.Kenneth Simon professor of free enterprise at Robert Morris University and a Pittsburgh restaurateur. His column appears Thursdays in TAEmag.com.

The comparison to Michael Jackson is apt. Some how dangling your kid over a balcony and dressing them in red veils isn't all that far removed from rounding up triplets.

Good post. We should start a psyops campaign on Kim to put everything in threes -- send three recon birds out over the Sea of Japan, three warships in west sea, press conferences on NK situation with three briefers, warn him three times -- see if we can paralyze him :)

All you need for proof of NK's insanity is the official North Korean website. It's NUTS.

http://www.korea-dpr.com My favorite part: http://www.korea-dpr.com/KFA_hymn.mp3 - Wacko anthem (An inconguous cross between a Dies Irae/Totentanz and a peppy mouthwash commercial!)

Another favorite part is in the "business" section - it takes a while to watch the whole thing, though.

http://www.korea-dpr.com/fiparam.asx

Is a Video of the entire North Korean manufactured
fleet of 15 cars (named the "whistle", because they blow)
shown traversing (on what must be the only strip of NK highway over two miles) the bleak and barren NK landscape.

Check out the factory worker, who talks as though his pet collie is held at gunpoint offscreen, and the kuxurious car radio, which picks up a *single* factory preset station.

If I had to listen to that music everyday, I'd kill myself.

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