Robert, regarding N. Korea, the moment that the administration learned that the agreement on nuclear materials had been violated, it should have conferred with S. Korea, Japan, China, and Russia (the neighbors) and secured agreement on action to remove the threat. It is easy to suggest that all we needed to do was use precision bombing to destroy the manufacturing capability and the missile launch sites, but doing that alone, without the blessing of S. Korea in particular, would be reckless.
The administration simply didn't do its homework on the best way to attack this threat (I think precision bombing is a good idea, but only with the consent of the neighbors). Now we have a country openly defying the U.N. on nuclear proliferation, a country that insults N.Korea by calling it part of the "axis of evil" (an insult not designed to win friends or get agreements), complicated by the fact that it now turns out that Iran is also closer to being able to field nuclear weapons than had been expected earlier.
Acting like a bully to solve these problems doesn't work well, if at all, and it is the expensive way to proceed. As I have said on this thread many times, this administration has shown itself to lack the kind of skills for solving these problems. They just don't know how to run the government because they suffer from this naieve belief that all it takes is the "right" ideology, literally and figuratively speaking.
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