Former Defense Secretary William Perry has spoken, and it's not about Easter Bunnies and Santa Claus. He spoke about a small southeast Asian problem. Called North Korea. In making his stupid Axis of Evil speech, Presdent Quien-Es-Mas-Macho drew the North Koreans into a box. Feeling (and being)far more economically disadvantaged than say Iran, the NK's started to re-develop the one true ecomomic asset they have. Real Weapons of Mass Destruction. Now it's starting to look like they may want to use them, whether as high-atomic weight fund-raising tools or perhaps WEAPONS.

Former defense secretary William Perry warned that the United States and North Korea are drifting toward war, perhaps as early as this year, in an increasingly dangerous standoff that also could result in terrorists being able to purchase a North Korean nuclear device and plant it in a U.S. city.

"I think we are losing control" of the situation, said Perry, who believes North Korea soon will have enough nuclear warheads to begin exploding them in tests and exporting them to terrorists and other U.S. adversaries. "The nuclear program now underway in North Korea poses an imminent danger of nuclear weapons being detonated in American cities," he said in an interview.

"The nuclear program now underway in North Korea poses an imminent danger of nuclear weapons being detonated in American cities,"

Fred Kaplan writing in Slate today sums up all the bad choices that the 1600 Crew has made and distilled it down to the one that might work. Talk to the NK's and begin to offer reasonable, humantiarian aide.

So, unless Bush prefers a nuclear North Korea to the pangs of compromise, he is left with one course—a negotiated buy-out. Kim has been requesting such a buy-out ever since the crisis started last October, and if Bush can see beyond the cliché of tagging all such schemes as "blackmail" or "appeasement"—if his advisers could remind him that all diplomacy (especially nuclear diplomacy) involves a certain amount of bribery—there may be a chance to stop this wreck before it happens.

Essentially, Kim's minions say he will abandon his nuclear program and open up the reactors to inspection, in exchange for a U.S. non-aggression pact and the resumption of some economic assistance. This isn't a bad deal, really. A bipartisan group of congressmen who went to Pyongyang last month put a 10-point plan on the table, outlining a way to achieve these ends. The minions said they liked it. No one has explained why Bush shouldn't adopt the plan as his and start the talks.

Obviously, some administration officials think he should go for a negotiated solution. That's why they leaked Plan 5030—to highlight how closely this crisis might veer to war. Kim Jong-il thinks we're going to attack him, so he rushes his nuclear-weapons program to deter the onslaught—which incites Pentagon officials to drum up better plans to attack him. The alarming question before us all: Will Bush break this deadly circle, or complete it?

And that scares me.