Not a nice way to go, if true.

SEOUL, South Korea — The North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who suffered a stroke last August, was also found to have “life-threatening” pancreatic cancer around the same time, a South Korean cable television network reported on Monday.

The network, YTN, a cable news station, quoted unidentified Chinese and South Korean intelligence sources for the report, which was made by YTN’s correspondent in Beijing. The station did not explain how the sources obtained the sensitive medical information from North Korea, an isolated, nuclear-armed state that has kept details of its leader’s health a closely guarded secret.

So, what should I have for lunch? I was thinking maybe Mexican, but that would involve driving, and the place doesn’t have a drive-through. I could just grab something at the supermarket when I go - it’s within walking distance and the kid loves stroller rides - but it’s usually not really cost-efficient. Maybe I’ll just have a peanut butter sandwich.

Moe Lane

PS: You know what a common side-effect of pancreatic cancer is? Malnutrition. Which just goes to show: karma has a long memory.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Does Barack Obama listen to himself?

We are more than willing to engage in negotiations to get North Korea on a path of peaceful coexistence with its neighbors, and we want to encourage their prosperity. But belligerent, provocative behavior that threatens neighbors will be met with significant, serious enforcement of sanctions that are in place.

Does this mean that if North Korea continues down this reckless path, that their actions will be met by… continuing with the existing sanctions regime that failed to deter them? Or does it mean that once we determined that they are on this course, we will begin ’serious enforcement’ of the sanctions that exist now?

Perhaps it’s option three: the President was speaking without the teleprompter again.

Last week, I led a group of Republican senators that wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging her to immediately relist North Korea as a State Sponsor of Terrorism and we also introduced an amendment to force the Obama Administration into action.
 
Yesterday on ABC’s This Week, I was pleased to hear Secretary Clinton’s response that they are now considering relisting North Korea. This is a very important step that I hope President Obama will agree to.
 
However, just days before Secretary Clinton’s statement, her spokesman bluntly claimed the State Department doesn’t believe there are any recent acts by North Korea that can be defined as supporting terrorism:
 

REPORTER: A group of Republican senators has written a letter to the Secretary urging her to relist North Korea on the terror list. They specify certain unnamed ongoing terrorist activities. Do you share that assessment, and where do you want to go with that?

STATE DEPT. SPOKESMAN PHILIP CROWLEY: …As for North Korea, I think we’re aware of that letter. But as far as I know, firing off missiles and over-heated rhetoric is unwise and unhelpful, but does not meet the legal definition of terrorism.

REPORTER: They seem to say – but they don’t refer to those tests as a terrorist activity – to say that other ones are ongoing, that those are — Is there anything else that you’re aware of?

MR. CROWLEY: To list a country on the terrorism list, there’s a legal requirement there. And what we’ve seen so far, I don’t think meets that legal test.
 

Based on this statement, I eagerly await the State Department to certify:
 

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A few hours after President Obama finished his Memorial Day round of golf with former Kerry “body man” Marvin Nicholson, North Korea officially entered the nuclear club.

We’ve all known this was going to happen for a lot of reasons. To a certain extent we’re lucky it has taken them this long to produce a nuke. They had a false start back in 2006 and perhaps an industrial accident in 2004, but there was never any doubt that eventually this day would come.

So what will the Administration do now?

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The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has declared itself to no longer be party to the 1953 armistice that halted the Korean War and established the uneasy peace that has reigned on the southeast Asian peninsula for the last 56 years.

The announcement comes on the heels of a long-range missile test, a nuclear detonation, and multiple short-range missile launches, none of which represented physical attacks on neighboring states but all of which were very much intended to be seen as threats by those who would dare out pressure on the hermit kingdom to walk back its aggressive policies and live within the bounds of international consensus and agreements.

Though the Republic of Korea is used to such rhetoric and posturing from its northern neighbor, Pyongyang’s latest ratcheting up of tension on the peninsula comes as a direct result of the ROK announcing its decision to become a member of a program known as the Proliferation Security Initiative, or PSI.

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President Barack Obama nominated Second Circuit appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor as his first nominee to the Supreme Court. Sotomayor, when she is confirmed, will become only the third woman and the first Hispanic to serve on the Court, replacing the retiring Justice David Souter. No word yet on the reaction from Pyongyang.

Pyongyang? Yes, Pyongyang. North Korea test fired not one, not two, not even three, but five new missiles yesterday and today in response to the United Nations Security Council’s condemnation of its recent nuclear test. The two moves have sparked a new international nuclear crisis that has implications for Asia, the Middle East, and the United States.  This is North Korea week in capitals around the globe from Tokyo, to Beijing, to Seoul, to London, Moscow, and even Tehran.  But not in Washington.  The Obama Administration’s response is essentially to change the subject and distract media and public attention from the one thing it does not want to talk about, foreign policy.

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Well, they’re claiming that it was, and there’s evidence that it happened in the form of an earthquake,so that’s how everyone is betting.  Japan is calling for an emergency UNSC meeting; South Korea, dealing simultaneously with this and the suddenly-more-murky suicide of its former President, is doing the same.  The White House hasn’t put up the President’s official statement on this yet, but you can read it here - it differs from the White House statement in 2006 most notably in its unconscious reliance on the UNSC to resolve this situation.  Also missing is any indication that the President has personally consulted with our allies in the region, but no doubt he’ll address that when he holds a press conference this morning on the North Korean crisis.  Note that I am merely assuming at this point that there will be one, and that it will take place before noon.

Meanwhile, John Bolton predicted that this test was going to happen last week; he also noted last week that the administration wasn’t taking the possibility of a second test all that seriously.  Compare the White House statements from today and 2006 again and ask yourself, Which one sounds like it was written by people taken by surprise? Also ask yourself, Is Bolton right when he suggests that not taking even a soft line on this will merely encourage North Korea - and Iran - to proceed?

Please also note that we are in a situation where two of the biggest current, active, and intractable threats to world peace are rogue nations simultaneously pursuing nuclear weapons and missile technology.  Successful creation of both will put at immediate risk our regional allies; allies that we have spent a lifetime cultivating; and who are genuinely alarmed at the activities of their neighbors.  And in both cases, the enemies of said rogue nations were picked for essentially irrational reasons, meaning that normal rules of deterrence may or may not work.

Meanwhile, President Obama wants to gut missile defense programs*.

Um, no.  That’s stupid.

Moe Lane

*Via FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog, via Michelle Malkin.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

The AP is reporting:

North Korea has restarted its nuclear facilities to harvest weapons-grade plutonium, an official said Saturday, in an escalation of the communist state’s standoff with the international community over its nuclear and missile programs.

The move “will contribute to bolstering the nuclear deterrence for self-defense in every way to cope with the increasing military threats from the hostile forces,” the North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said in comments carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

Diplomacy has been a miserable failure as a strategy for the West to deal with North Korea. Negotiations with the NoKors have been dead in the water since December. And, like Generalissimo Francisco Franco, they are still dead. The United Nations, in a characteristically ineffective move, announced sanctions against three North Korean companies. I’m sure that Kim is quaking in his jack boots. The UN is the Barney Fife of world cops. But Barney, at least, had a bullet and he wasn’t afraid to use it.

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Mort Kondracke - who comments on Fox News and serves as Executive Editor of Roll Call - notes that while Barack Obama gets a wonderful reception abroad, he doesn’t seem to accomplish much:

But it’s not a good sign that NATO allies did not answer [Obama's] call for more troops for Afghanistan. They will provide 5,000 trainers, but no more combat forces.

Nor did Europeans — especially Merkel and Sarkozy — go along with Obama’s request to pump up economic stimulus to fight the global recession.

The G-20 summit did agree to an increase in funding for the International Monetary Fund to help emerging economies, including Eastern Europe, but that was not a contested issue. In fact, it relieved the European Union from the burden.

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What a surprise.

The Sunday emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, called to consider North Korea’s launch of a ballistic missile, concluded without any official reaction to North Korea’s provocation.

The U.N. will dither on like it did with Saddam and North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, and as the U.N. continues to do with Iran’s nuclear program.

The U.S. says the “launch constituted a clear-cut violation” of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718 (2006). Unfortunately, as predicted, China and Russia said they were not convinced that Pyongyang had
violated any U.N. rules by trying to send a satellite into orbit.

China and Russia are grasping at straws to protect North Korea. Resolution 1718 states at paragraph numbered 2:

“2.  Demands that the DPRK not conduct any further nuclear test or launch of a ballistic missile;”

The North Korean rocket launch presents a critical test of President Obama’s leadership on a major foreign policy crisis, and of his new friendship with the leaders of China and Russia. Joe Biden warned us Obama would be tested.

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The criminal regime of North Korea takes a step toward becoming even more dangerous by proving that it now has advanced rocket capabilities and here is what team Obama says about it:

“The launch by the North Koreans is seen as a provocative act and will prompt the United States to take appropriate steps to let North Korea know that it cannot threaten the safety and security of (other) countries with impunity,” State Department spokesman Fred Lash told reporters in a conference call.

After his love letter to Iran not long ago, now we get this from The One…. “STOP it or we will say STOP it again!”

The world is getting more dangerous every day and this fool is touring the world on vacation while it happens.