The Rational Egoist

North Korea appears to be gaining its strength in their quest to gain nuclear arms.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Thursday it is using plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel rods to make atomic weapons, a move that could escalate tensions on the Korean peninsula and raise the stakes in Pyongyang’s standoff with the United States.

North Korea has said before that it completed reprocessing its pool of 8,000 spent rods, but Thursday marked the first claim that it is using plutonium yielded from the rods to make nuclear weapons. U.S. and South Korean officials have been skeptical that the rods have been reprocessed.

The claim came amid increasing concern by U.S. intelligence analysts that North Korea might have three, four or even six nuclear weapons instead of the one or two the CIA now estimates.

“The (North) successfully finished the reprocessing of some 8,000 spent fuel rods,” a spokesman from the communist nation’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by its official news agency, KCNA. The spokesman was unidentified.

And now, since the likes of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter appeased the North Korean savages when they threatened to acquire nuclear weapons in the past, it will be much harder for us in the present to eliminate this North Korean threat. If we had removed all government aid to the country long ago, the communist dictatorship would have fallen apart and we would not face the threat of a rogue state with nuclear weapons that has openly stated it will sell its weapons to anyone it wants, including terrorist organizations.

Even worse, it appears that President Bush has no intention of eliminating the threat of North Korea. Instead, he hopes to appease the North Koreans by some means (which is ultimately doomed to fail), as he hopes to appease many of the enemies of the United States.

I guess it’s time for me to go out and buy a radiation suit.