From last night’s Special Report with Brit Hume:

—On McCain’s Chances—

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: [T]he point is the other leading candidates are no more conservative than him, and in the end, I think he figures that the judgment will have to be ultimately made on another issue, which is the issue of our time, the war in Iraq, the war on terror.
And if you look at his credentials on that are amazingly strong. He’s been consistent, he’s also been quite honorable. He’s risking his career on the fact that he believes in the Iraq war and it has to be concluded successfully.
I think he figures he muddles through the primaries, ends up as the candidate, and then on the basis of national security he wins the general election.
HUME: Now, so your view is that he remains; although the polls don’t suggest that, really the frontrunner.
KRAUTHAMMER: Absolutely.
MORT KONDRACKE: I think he’s the front runner, too. And I — you know, the scrutiny machine has not turned on Giuliani yet both on all the social issues and his personal life and the rest.

—On North Korea’s Nukes—

HUME: [T]here’s a story that hit today from the New York Times which said that . . . the level of certainty about the state of the North’s nuclear program was lower than had previously been indicated, and that that had perhaps led to a lot of unnecessary confrontation with North Korea . . .
KRAUTHAMMER: Well, the story means to imply that this is Iraq redux, that the administration had hyped the uranium issue four years ago and that as a result, we in a sense caused North Korea to go to break the agreements and have a nuclear explosion.
This is nonsense. What we had was an agreement in the `90s where the North Koreans said we’re going to stop all our nuclear programs in return for all kinds of inducements and bribes. We discover — the Bush administration discovers the AQ Khan, the rogue Pakistani had sold them the uranium enrichment equipment, meaning that there was a backdoor second program hidden, that would produce nuclear weapons. We confront the North Koreans with this, and they tell us, yes we are actually doing this.