[mburbank]

The key question is more, would you? I wouldn't, for two reasons.

First, Nukes are good deterents. I wish there were none, but in the era of nuclear weapons, both enemies having them has helped keep the peace. Since we have enough to anihilate the world several times over, the fact that our enemies want a few is disturbing but not surprising. If we dialed down our nuclear capacity to say, just enough to destroy the world three quarters of a time, maybe other countries would feel less threatened.

Second, cultural Hyperbole. A statement like that from North Korea means way less than it would if it came from a Western Country. What they are saying is a message saying that the West needs to take them seriously and negotiate. I'd much rather deal with 'nuclear blackmail' otherwise known as 'pre-emption' than Nuclear War. The U.S. is scrupulous in never ruling out the use of Nuclear weapons. Well, the North Koreans believe it.

Th flip side of this is that the Koreans don't understand our rhetoric any better than we understand there's. When W. broke off ('re-evaluated')relations with them immediately upon being placed in office, named them part of the Axis of Evil, stated in a press interview that he 'loathed' Kim and then made it obvious he intends to bring about 'regime change' in Iraq with the full force of the US military behind him... Well, Kim took that all as a serious threat, instead of just the American style swaggery cowboy saber rattling voter hypontism it was.

But I sense I devious undercurrent to what your sayng. You want the response "Hell no, they got them some nukes!" so you can respond "Well. Shouldn't we tackle Iraq BEFORE they get nukes?" If our foreign policy is going to be something along those lines, we need to get cracking. There are lots of countrys out there that want Nukes and don't like or are afraid of us. In fact, the more belicose we become, the longer the list gets. If we expect to keep all those countries from acquiring WMD, we'll need a much larger army, so you should start doing push ups Naldo.