Jonah — I disagree with you on this one point: By 2001, after most of a decade without anytime/anywhere inspections and no dismantled plutonium program, and meaningful cooperation with the IAEA, the situation was such that the nuclear tests were almost inevitable. Without claiming first-hand knowledge, I can pretty much assure folks that the president was told by intelligence estimates from the start that DPRK was headed towards a full nuclear breakout and it was too late to stop them. We no longer knew where their facilities were , and we thought they already had several devices. Hence there was already by 2001 a theoretical chance that they could incinerate Tokyo, so we were already paralyzed. When you can no longer destroy the capability, that’s the last possible moment for effective self-defense — at least against the uncontainable and undeterrable threat of proliferation and nuclear terrorism. In North Korea it came and went in 1994. There is nothing we can do about it now — absolutely nothing. The Agreed Framework buried any chance for fixing this problem, just as it helped to bury the 3 million North Koreans who starved because Kim Jong-Il wasn’t interested in a real deal. In Iran that moment of truth has not yet come — but it is approaching very fast.