It fools neocons. The only line they want to see is the shrill hard line, and Bush's use of keeping people off balance until he's ready to move in for the kill makes them look single minded and unsophisticated.
It buys us time to get things in order, while leaving North Korea on hold, listening to the slow, sad sound of their regime crumbling away.
Bush just feeds them the rope that they're all to eager to hang themselves with. They can't help but tie the noose and make it tighter it with each passing day.
Pretty much what we're doing: avoid direct contact, run around to China, Japan, and South Korea and tell them they should do something about this... leaving it clear that this one's on them.
Kim wants to get a rise out of us, and that's the one thing I wouldn't give him. He's out to derail our plans in Iraq, and I don't have time for that. He can't do anything to us... all he can do is scare the Hell out of the South Koreans and the Japanese. Good -- the South Koreans need a good scarin' anyway; they were getting 'sunshine' in their eyes.
If three or four months from now, with Iraq behind us, Kim's regime hasn't collapsed, I'd take him out. There was a plan on how to do that posted here last week. It's ugly, and Kim's million-man army dies in the first ten minutes, but it would work. No way in Hell do I let that guy manufacture a hundred bombs. No way. Period.