...and our priority is Iraq?

NOTE: I have a lot of reference articles for this post, so rather than just providing links, I'm going to go ahead and copy the relevant paragraphs here so that you don't have to go clicking all over the web just to follow up on the points I'm trying to make.  All links will go to the full articles. - k

After reading a round-up of today's stories about the North Korean nuclear situation, I am even more puzzled as to why we are focusing so much on Iraq.  To the best of my knowledge, Saddam Hussein has not tried to take any of our soldiers hostage, threatened to attack us with nuclear weapons, or test fired any missles recently, yet North Korea has done all of these things (and they plan to test another missle within the next few days).

WASHINGTON, March 7 — The North Korean fighter jets that intercepted an unarmed American spy plane over the Sea of Japan last weekend were trying to force the aircraft to land in North Korea and seize its crew, a senior defense official said today.

One of the four North Korean MIG's came within 50 feet of the American plane, an Air Force RC-135S Cobra Ball aircraft, and the pilot made internationally recognized hand signals to the American flight crew to follow him, presumably back to his home base, the official said. [New York Times]

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North Korea would launch a ballistic missile attack on the United States if Washington made a pre-emptive strike against the communist state's nuclear facility, the man described as Pyongyang's "unofficial spokesman" claimed yesterday.

Kim Myong-chol, who has links to the Stalinist regime, told reporters in Tokyo that a US strike on the nuclear facility at Yongbyon "means nuclear war".

"If American forces carry out a pre-emptive strike on the Yongbyon facility, North Korea will immediately target, carry the war to the US mainland," he said, adding that New York, Washington and Chicago would be "aflame".

A pre-emptive strike on Yongbyon is one of the strategic options in the crisis over North Korea's nuclear arms program. The US has deployed 24 long-range bombers to the Pacific base of Guam capable of launching such a strike. [Sydney Morning Herald]

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WASHINGTON/SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has declared a maritime exclusion zone in the Sea of Japan, signaling it might be planning a missile test in the next several days and again raising regional tensions, the Defense Department said on Friday.

The Pentagon said it was aware of a three-day exclusion warning for March 8-11 in virtually the same area off its coast where Pyongyang tested an anti-ship missile on Feb. 25. [ABC News]

I also find it interesting that Bush calls the North Korean situation a "regional issue", and is insisting on working with China, Russia, South Korea and other countries in the area to find a solution.  We're willing to go to war with Iraq, even if we have to do it alone, but we're not willing to hold talks with North Korea unless other countries are involved.  I'm not sure how, exactly, that makes sense. 

President Bush said Thursday that multilateral dialogue was the best way to deal with the communist nation's nuclear development, which he called "a regional issue." Without mentioning Bush's comments, Pyongyang's daily Minju Joson on Saturday attacked the same proposal mentioned earlier by Secretary of State Colin Powell.

"Through 'multilateral talks' the U.S. seeks to internationalize the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, evade its responsibility for spawning it and make its solution more difficult," Minju Joson said in a commentary carried by Pyongyang's official news agency, KCNA.  [Fox News]

Apparently, North Korea fully believes that they will be the next Iraq.

U.S. President George W. Bush said this week that if diplomatic efforts to find a solution to the crisis fail, then the "military option is our last choice."

The North's state-run news agency KCNA said Friday his comments were "an undisguised revelation of the U.S. intention to make a pre-emptive strike at the DPRK's nuclear facilities." DPRK stands for Democratic People's Republic of Korea. [Canada.com]

Given our insistance that the military option in Iraq would also be a "last resort", while acting in such a way as to make it obvious we consider it to be our "only resort", and given Bush's national security strategy making pre-emptive strikes part of our military strategy, its no wonder that North Korea would make such a claim.

Since it was announced that North Korea had violated the 1994 agreement regarding nuclear weapons, they have become more and more aggressive in trying to get Washington's attention, and we have consistantly downplayed the threat that they pose.  Sadly, the message that other nations may take away from this is that if we think they have nuclear weapons, they can expect to be threatened with invasion and war (and, most likely, will get it), but if we know they have nuclear weapons, we'll pretty much leave them alone.  This does not do much to deter hostile regimes from trying to achieve nuclear capabilities.

I will say this, though:  I am far more concerned about the potential for an attack on the US homeland from North Korea than I am from Iraq or even Iraqi-backed terrorists.

UPDATE:  Even odder than our priorities is this bit of information from the Boston Globe:

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has not suspended or revoked the authority of Westinghouse Co. to transfer documents related to nuclear technology to North Korea, despite the fact that the Asian nation has admitted that it violated terms of a nonproliferation agreement it signed with Washington in 1994, US Department of Energy documents show.

So, we're worried about North Korea becoming a real menace as a nuclear power - but we're still letting one of our major corporations give them information on nuclear technology?  Even if the information is focused more on nuclear energy than nuclear weapons, it doesn't seem wise to help them increase their knowledge of nuclear technology in general.