North Korea Deal

Good news, I would say. Of course the fly in the ointment is that we could have gotten a better version of this deal years and years ago had Bush and Cheney not stomped on it. The tragedy of it is that not only could we have gotten this deal years ago, but the personnel who were ready to get it have been there inside the administration all along, being overruled by the blinkered ideogues they work for.

I was joking earlier today that we should just send Christopher Hill to Teheran to try and work something out. It turns out, though, that Hill's opposite number as Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs David Welch is another career foreign servive officer with a long record. Odds are he could do a fine job, too, were it not for the fact that, like the rest of the Cossacks, he works for a crazy Czar.