We'll Take Apocalypse, if We Can Keep the Congress

With a new round of polls showing Bush and Republicans tanking-- 79% believe the Republicans valued political power over the welfare of young pages, only 13% believe Bush is telling the whole truth about Iraq, and all of 3% agree with Bush that the war is going well; Democrats now hold a whopping 23 point advantage in preference for Congress --it's not surprising that Bushites would seize on anything they could spin to their advantage. But North Korea exploding a nuclear bomb?

Despite the contention of one conservative pundit that the North Korean nuclear explosion is excellent news for Republicans, this enormously dangerous moment is all but entirely the responsibility of the Bush administration and its brain-dead policies. First of all, just as members of past and present Republican administrations, in their capacity as government officials and in the corporate sector, armed both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, Donald Rumsfeld helped North Korea acquire the nuclear technology that led to the bomb. As Heather Wokusch writes:

But for all the bluster, US punitive measures against North Korea have been less than consistent. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly threatened Pyongyang over developing its nuclear capabilities, yet failed to mention his own contribution: Rumsfeld was on the board of ABB, a company that sold hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment and services to North Korean nuclear plants. In another intriguing coincidence, despite his administration's slamming "axis of evil" nukes, in 2003 Bush requested $3.5 million for a consortium building nuclear reactors in North Korea.

From the start, the Bushites ignored the agreements and ended the ongoing successful negotiations conducted by the Clinton administration that had halted North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Bush invaded Iraq and named North Korea as one of the axis of evil nations. According to Selig Harrison, an expert on the region who has spoken at length with the most responsible North Korean officials, the regime concluded that the U.S. was a threat to try regime change there, and re-started an accelerated nukes program.

Harrison is among those who believe that North Korea would still give up its nukes if the U.S. would guarantee its security and offer badly needed economic help, but Bush has rejected direct negotiations, and he did so again Monday.

No one knows the real military capability of North Korea to launch nuclear weapons. Some say their test devices aren't suitable as weapons, and are too big for missiles. No one is quite sure how good their long-range missiles are, but if they work, they can reach the U.S.

The immediate threat is North Korea selling bombs or fissile material to terrorists, which would be nearly impossible to monitor, let alone stop, and has no known military solution. So by invading a nation that had no WMD, Bush has made a nuclear WMD attack on America much more possible.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has over 10,000 nuclear weapons and plans to build a new generation of them. We've apparently forgotten the hairtrigger that still separates us from thermonuclear annihilation. A study a few years ago found that the chances of accidental nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia is actually higher now than during the Cold War, and now experts warn that an American attack on Iraq with non-nuclear weapons could trigger an accidental nuclear war because Russia could easily misinterpret it as a nuclear strike on its homeland.

This is no academic exercise--war correspondent Chris Hedges is the latest observer to say that recent movements of American ships and forces strongly suggest that the Bushites are planning such an attack on Iran, possibly before the elections, and that the results will be apocalyptic.

But as long as Republicans retain power, it will all be worth it. And as Hedges and others allege, there are those within the Bush administration as well as among its most fervent supporters who might welcome such an apocalypse, as a scriptual fulfilment. Elected or the elect, it's all good. Delusional and powerful is not a safe combination.