The obligatory "Kim Jong-Il throws a tantrum" post

Nope, never saw this coming, not in a million years. (HT to Captain Ed):

Fuming at the U.N. Security Council for condemning its recent missile launch, North Korea said Tuesday it will restart its plutonium factory, junk all its disarmament agreements and "never participate" again in six-country nuclear negotiations.

North Korea had warned before launching a long-range missile on April 5 that it would tolerate no U.N. criticism of what it insisted was a peaceful attempt to put a satellite into orbit.

When the 15-member Security Council unanimously condemned that launch on Monday and demanded a halt to all future missile launches, the North's reaction was swift, vitriolic and surprisingly substantive.

It called the Security Council's statement a "brigandish," "wanton" and "unjust" infringement of its sovereignty. It said that six-party nuclear talks with the United States, South Korea, Japan, Russia and, even its closest ally, China, had "turned into a platform" for forcing the North to disarm itself and for bringing down its system of government.

"We have no choice but to further strengthen our nuclear deterrent to cope with additional military threats by hostile forces," North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement released by its state news agency.

If it follows through on Tuesday's bluster, North Korea will walk away from six years of slow, fitful but sometimes productive negotiations that have led to substantial disablement of the North's main nuclear reactor and partial disclosure of the scale of its weapons program.

I'll hedge bets that that last sentence was tough for the monkeys at the WaPo to write. I mean, to admit that the previous administration actually had "substantial" progress in getting North Korea to stop their weapons program? Did they contact the White House to get permission to praise the previous administration, or did Barry tell them to omit Bush's name because this is one thing he didn't want to admit he "inherited?" (Oh, quit rolling your eyes. You know you like the snark.)

But this is A-typical of the NorKs. Violate the UN resolutions against them, get caught, get called on the carpet for it, get their wrists slapped, and get all shaken and snippy; basically a take-your-ball-and-bat-and-go-home moment, of which we've seen now for the better part of decade. The question is will Barry take a page from Bush (thereby taking a page from Reagan), and coax Kim Jong-Il back to the table with promises -- as Bush did -- in return for the verifiable means to guarantee his program is shut down, or will Barry take the Clinton approach, and give in to the little midget with the bad haircut? Let's hope it's not the latter. This is one mess I don't think we want to be cleaning up.

And why the Hell did they get ticked at the Security Council's reaction? After all, it was a typical UN response. Condemn them, issue a strongly-worded blustery commentary with no teeth in it, and do nothing! The NorKs have nothing to worry about so long as Russia and China sit on the Security Council, and can veto any measure presented to punish the NorKs. Not that the UN would. I mean, we are talking about the feckless United Nations here, folks.

Oh, and about that "peaceful" launch of a satellite, McKittrick at Closing Velocity calls "BS" to that meme right quick. It seems that the missile in question lacked a significant, cosmetic feature. This was no satellite launch. It was the deliberate, against-the-resolution test of a long range missile that, while failing in it's intended purpose, still yielded the NorKs with some limited success. For the NorKs baby steps is all they need. Eventually, they're going to get it right, and leave it to President Barry to declare an end to missile defense the same day the runt decides to light off a long-range missile. WTG, Barry. Yeah, that's intelligent.

Publius II