Putting things in perspective. The only thing one can say about Moore's apparent loss is he was never accused of drowning a young woman and leaving the scene. He drowned himself.
http://www.americanthinker.
Bannon, who is a loser himself, keeps picking/supporting losers.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
More Rants. (See 1 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++
America has a new weapon - oil. (See 2 below.)
And
Keep digging, this time for dirt? Don't sack Mueller, give him more rope. (See 2a below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Sometimes justice comes very late. (See 3 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Until N Korea and Iran are defeated Trump cannot be boastful about his presidency even though he has made some significant accomplishments. (See 4 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dick
+++++++++++++++++++++++
1) Rants From Joe Ross
I am back from Europe. Travelogue. Prague. Terribly overcrowded and worth maybe one day only. The Intercon or Four Seasons are best choices. Was told when it became free everyone was ordered to repaint their building or home to a bright color to erase the old Commie grey and brown all buildings were painted. So today it is a colorful city. Dresden. Interesting how city has been rebuilt and many old historic buildings are now back as original. Despite what you may have heard, that the bombing was all incendiaries ,and a terror attack killing well over 100,000 people, that is not true. It was ordered by Churchill because the Russians were closing in from the east, and the Nazis were sending several divisions from the west to confront them. Churchill ordered the city to be bombed because it is a main rail and communications center, and the Germans were having to send their army through there to face the Russians. By bombing the city he intended, and succeeded, in blowing up roads and rail lines and sewing chaos in the German plans. Only a portion of the hundreds of bombs were incendiary, but they did cause massive fires. 25,000 were killed, not the press reports from two reporters at the time of over 100,000. Those press reports got picked up and repeated, and created a political issue for Churchill because the reporters labeled it a terror bombing, and after the war it was compared to Hiroshima, which was not at all accurate. Fake news was existent even then. The city today is worth a day or two if you are in Germany. The Christmas market is very good and crowded. Few in Dresden speak English because it was East Germany and English was not taught in school like it was in West Germany. It is clear from going to Dresden that the east has recovered, and the people there appear reasonably well off, and the city has been revitalized. Tons of tourists. Berlin. They really blew the opportunity to rebuild with great architecture. It is a bland place, but well worth a day or two to see the historic places and museums. Otherwise not worth it. If you go, stay at the Kempinski by the gate. It is one of the finest hotels I have ever stayed in. They do everything right, and I am very picky.
Finance
.Leaving aside Bitcoin, which is going to explode just like the tulips, in a massive collapse one day, the economy is now hitting on all cylinders. With the tax cut, GDP growth will hit 3.5% and maybe even 4% growth in 2018. You recall most pundits, the Dems, the press and many in Wall St said in late 2016, the new normal is 2%-2.5% GDP growth for the next 10 years, and the election of Trump will create bad issues. Growth under Obama, and going forward if Clinton had been elected, was and would have remained under 2.5%. Since Q2, after the election, GDP has grown over 3%, and is likely doing 3.5% now, and could potentially reach 4% in some quarters of 2018. There is nothing on the horizon other than N Korea that would get in the way of 3.5%, and if it hits 4%, the deficit probably starts to decline. Deregulation and the pro business attitude in DC has already made a huge difference. Despite the NY Times and the other press now trying to claim Trump had nothing to do with the GDP growth, his cabinet and policies have had everything to do with it. Companies now are spending on capital improvements, which finally helps productivity. It also helps keep inflation lower than otherwise since new technology keeps costs lower. Companies are now willing to start new projects since they can proceed without the regulatory burdens we had under the Dems. Tax reform, the gains in the stock market and other asset values, and increases in home values, 401K,’s, combined with the low unemployment rate, reinforces the optimistic view of consumers and companies, so that it is now in a positive loop. With every major country also now growing, world demand is higher than ever. Currencies are relatively stable for major countries and everyone is pushing trade. The negative for wages in the US, is trade is very easy now, and logistics are excellent, so most things can be produced or grown anywhere. Trump is right that the trade deals need to be reworked and that places like China and Japan use regulations and other artificial means to protect their people and we get screwed. Baring war with N Korea, I believe the stock market has another 10% ahead. If you were all equity you should end the year up around 20% for your entire portfolio. If you are partly in annuities and fixed income, or hedge funds, you left a huge amount of money on the table this year, and over the past 5 years. The real risk is missing more upside, as opposed to the downside risk. Even though I was concerned about various black swans, I was willing to go risk on, and be all equity since March, 2009, and took my opportunity to enjoy the value creation of one of the best equity and asset ownership markets in history.
The reality of NAFTA is, it has been a failure for Mexico in many ways. Mexico has nil wage growth despite all the auto plants. It has employment, but not wages, so in real terms, wages have actually declined.. There has been no fiscal stimulus. GDP growth is ½ of the developed world. Mexico is almost at the bottom of the list. Farmers have gained little. Corruption is rampant, and the drug gangs have not been crushed as they were in Columbia. In short, Mexico rages about NAFTA, but it is in need of a complete political rework, and in major need of new government policies. Canada now claims there is no trade imbalance with the US, and that is right if you look at the numbers one way, and wrong in another way. Truth seems to be, in the past there have been big issues with deficits, but now it seems to not be the problem it once was. Canada’s own numbers suggest there is an issue of imbalance in Canada’s favor, but US numbers suggest maybe not. Like everything, it depends how you count. Bottom line is NAFTA does have some major issues that need to be redone, and there has been a major loss of jobs to cheap Mexican labor due to NAFTA.
Politics and the World
While in Europe there is really only the NY Times International and CNN for US news. What I read in the Times and saw on CNN was so anti Trump, and a combination of fake news, innuendo, and bits of real news, that the picture of Trump and the US is terribly distorted. I kept getting asked by Europeans about Trump, because all they get is this mix of negative and fake news, so they are not clear on what is really happening. It hurts the US and sows confusion there. Despite the news, there are Europeans who think Trump is doing the right things. In Germany they still have no government, and will not until at least February. Merkel may have to just be a minority government. The refugee issue is at the root of the problem.
Brexit will impact a lot of what happens in Europe going forward. There could still be a hard Brexit, but unlikely. Many Brits are very angry she agreed to pay the settlement, and to allow the European court to have some jurisdiction, although it is extremely limited. The problem is the whole issue is so political, and so impactful, that the statements by all sides are so fiery, you can’t know where is reality, and what the final outcome may be. Similar to tax reform and immigration here. My guess is Brexit will get done, it will not be a disaster for the UK, there will not be a mass migration of banks and business out of London, and there will be a ramp up of pressure in some EU countries to reduce the power of Brussels, just as Macro is proposing to give Brussels far more power. The EU will be a political mess for many years now that Merkel has diminished power. This will impact the economy negatively, and has begun to do so to a small degree. The political risks are growing.
Trump did the right thing on Jerusalem. The emperor has no clothes. It has been Israel’s capital all along, the US congress has said so for 30 years, and it is a fact. The world has allowed the Arabs to intimidate everyone to believe there can be no peace if the city is declared the capital out loud. Lot of good that did. There is no peace agreement, nor is any near. Trump accomplished showing the world that Obama is gone, we will not be intimidated by anyone, and any old ways, and Israel will be supported strongly unlike happened under Obama and the Dems. It sets a new reality basis for maybe finding peace, if any is possible. I am sure some of you find that a bad opinion, but you cannot claim the old way had any validity or benefits. All it got Israel and the US was wars, terror attacks, a strengthened Iran, condemnation in the UN, and no peace. Trump was very clear he is for a 2 state agreement, and for the parties to finalize what happens with Jerusalem. The Arabs issued proforma denunciation but not really anything else. Only Turkey over reacted, and the US press. Fact is, the Sunnis need Israel to defend against Iran and the nuke deal consequences, and there will be no real bad consequences from the declaration. We already see very muted reaction in the Arab world.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2) Fracking Our Way to Mideast Peace
Low oil prices have so eroded Arab states’ power, they now see Israel as a protector.
By Walter Russell Mead
Whatever you think of President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, it points to the most important strategic reality in the Middle East: Arab power has collapsed in the face of low oil prices and competition from American frackers.
The devastating oil-price shocks of the 1970s, orchestrated by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, nearly wrecked the world economy. Ever since, the U.S. has looked for ways to break OPEC’s parasitic and rent-seeking grip on the oil market—and thereby to reduce America’s geopolitical vulnerability to events in the Middle East.
Victory did not come easily. Intense conservation efforts made the U.S. much more energy-efficient. New oil discoveries in Africa and elsewhere significantly broadened the available supply. Renewable energy sources added to the diversification. But the most decisive development was that decades of public and private research and investment unleashed an American oil-and-gas boom, leading to a revolution in energy markets that has sent geopolitical shocks through world affairs.
The consequences reverberate in the Middle East and beyond. Future oil revenues to countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Russia and Iraq will fall trillions of dollars short of what once might have been expected. The shift in energy markets will benefit consumer economies like Japan, China, India and the nations of the European Union. The U.S. and similarly situated nations, like Australia and Canada, can look forward to faster growth and greater foreign investment, since they will capture much of the oil revenue that Russia and OPEC lose.
Low energy prices already have given the EU’s struggling southern countries a chance to return to growth. They have limited Russia’s prospects and forced Vladimir Putin onto a tight budget. They have largely offset the gains Iran had hoped to make from signing the nuclear deal and escaping Western sanctions.
But the greatest consequences are being felt in the Arab world, where the long-term decline in oil revenues threatens the stability of many states. It is not only the oil producers that will suffer; the prosperous Gulf economies have been a major source of opportunity for Egyptians, Pakistanis, Palestinians and many other Middle Easterners.
The shining cities that rise where the desert meets the Gulf may be in for harder times. The sheikhdoms’ glassy skyscrapers, gleaming malls and opulent apartment complexes were conceived for a world in which runaway energy demand and limited sources (remember “peak oil”?) led to inexorably rising prices. These fragile and artificial economies require hothouse conditions that a weakened OPEC can no longer provide. Now the great Gulf Bubble seems set to slowly deflate.
There’s more. The staggering affluence of the Gulf countries during the OPEC era concealed the Arab world’s failure to develop states and economies capable of competing effectively in the 21st century. As their dream of revival through oil riches fades, they are waking to a new era of weakness and dependency.
The Gulf states increasingly see Israel not as an insect to be crushed by resurgent Arab power, but as a lion that can defend them from Iran. Syria, once a citadel of Arab nationalism, now haplessly hosts Russian, American, Iranian and Turkish forces that the Assad dynasty can neither control nor evict.
Arab diplomats, lobbyists and financiers must brace for more bad news: As the declining long-term prospects of the OPEC states become apparent, their diplomatic and economic influence across the West can be expected to wane even further.
Many analysts look at the frustrations of America’s policy in the Middle East and conclude that the U.S. is in retreat and hegemonic decline. That misses the deeper truth. American diplomacy has had its share of failures, but the region is now being fundamentally reshaped by drillers in Texas, Pennsylvania, North Dakota and elsewhere.
Even with OPEC’s hold broken, the Middle East will remain a problem for American policy. Moreover, not all the consequences of OPEC’s decline are good. In the short term, Russia and Iran are likely to double down on adventurous foreign policies as a way of distracting their populations from the tough challenges ahead. Instability in America’s key Gulf allies and in Egypt could create major headaches for the U.S.
Nevertheless, reducing OPEC’s ability to capture rents, while forcing more corrupt petrostate oligarchies to contemplate reform, is likely over time to reduce both the costs and the risks of American foreign policy. This is what winning looks like.
Mr. Mead is a fellow at the Hudson Institute and a professor of foreign affairs at Bard College.
2a) Let Mueller Keep Digging
The special counsel’s team raises questions about its own fairness and impartiality.
By William McGurn
At a moment when the special counsel’s team is busy calling its own fairness and impartiality into question, why would Donald Trump even think of firing Robert Mueller ?
When the special counsel picked his team, almost half the lawyers he selected had donated to Hillary Clinton. Legally that may not be disqualifying. It was, however, highly imprudent for a man presiding over the nation’s most sensitive investigation. Not a single Mueller prosecutor had contributed to Mr. Trump.
Those donations now provide the context for more recent revelations about the partisan preferences of Team Mueller. Start with the lead FBI agent, Peter Strzok, who exchanged anti-Trump, pro-Hillary text messages with his mistress, an FBI lawyer named Lisa Page —who was then also working for Mr. Mueller. Andrew Weissmann, the lead prosecutor, not only attended Mrs. Clinton’s election-night soiree but turns out to have cheered an Obama holdover at the Justice Department, Sally Yates, for her refusal to carry out a presidential order. Meanwhile we learn that a senior Justice official, Bruce Ohr, met with both Trump dossier author Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson during the 2016 campaign—and that his wife worked for Fusion GPS.
These developments, alas, have encouraged two horrible responses from Republicans. The first is the call for Mr. Trump to sack Mr. Mueller, an idea news reports say is gaining traction inside the White House. The other is for a new special counsel to investigate the existing special counsel.
Either would make a bad situation worse. If the president fires Mr. Mueller now, it will look as though he has something to hide; if another special counsel is appointed, it will further diminish the proper investigative authority here—i.e., Congress. There are better ways forward.
Start with the president. If it’s true that there is no obstruction or Russian collusion, his overriding interest lies in full transparency. In a recent piece for National Review, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy asks why Mr. Trump doesn’t just order the declassification of material such as the FBI’s application for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants to wiretap Trump associates, so Americans can see for themselves whether the FBI used or misused information from the infamous Steele dossier. Good question
My colleague Kim Strassel has suggested the president might create a temporary position at Justice for an appointee whose only job would be to ensure Justice and FBI compliance with congressional oversight. Again, a good idea. But even without a point man, Mr. Trump as president has the authority to declassify documents and have information made public.
Here Donald Sr. might follow the example of Donald Jr. Back in July, amid reports that he met with a Russian after being offered dirt on Mrs. Clinton, the first son released his email exchanges. He was similarly forthcoming last month, releasing his direct-message exchanges with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after news broke they had been in touch.
Then there’s Congress, which has been rightly frustrated to find the Trump Justice Department as obstructionist as the Obama Justice Department. In testimony last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray advanced the extraordinary claim he can hold back information from the elected representatives of the American people on the grounds that it is classified or that he’s waiting for an inspector general’s report and so, presumably, should they.
The message for Congress is this: Why should an FBI director take you seriously when you don’t take yourselves seriously? During the IRS scandal, Lois Lerner rode off into the sunset without testifying because Congress allowed the Obama Justice Department to determine her fate. Ditto for John Koskinen, the IRS commissioner who happily served out his time when Congress should have impeached him for his falsehoods and obstructionism.
In its 1821 decision affirming the right of the House to hold people in contempt and jail them, the Supreme Court noted that depriving Congress of this authority would mean “the total annihilation of the power of the House of Representatives” to prevent people from just flipping it the bird. Isn’t that just what government officials from Ms. Lerner to Mr. Wray have been doing?
If executive branch officials continue to play games with subpoenas, Congress needs to give them a taste of the legislature’s powers, whether by cutting agency budgets, impeaching directors or holding uncooperative officials in contempt. In this regard it’s good to know Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is still pursuing contempt citations for Mr. Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. A contempt vote by the full House would of course depend on Speaker Paul Ryan, who complained in October about FBI “stonewalling.”
So forget firings and new special prosecutors. Let the president use his executive authority to make public the evidence that would tell the American people what really happened. And let Congress start acting like the coequal branch of government the Founders intended—and get to the bottom of a story that involves the legitimacy of the presidency, the 2016 election and our federal institutions.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3) Iranian Terror. Argentinian Cover Up. Justice at Last?
By Mark Dubowitz, Toby Dershowitz
3) Iranian Terror. Argentinian Cover Up. Justice at Last?
By Mark Dubowitz, Toby Dershowitz
One morning last week, Argentines woke up to a political earthquake: A judge had charged a former president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, with “treason against the homeland,” punishable by up to 25 years in prison. Her crime? Nothing less than covering up Iran’s role in one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in the Americas before Sept. 11.
On July 18, 1994, Ibrahim Hussein Berro, an operative of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, drove a van filled with 606 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and fuel oil into the Buenos Aires Jewish community center, known as AMIA. More than 300 Argentines were wounded; 85 were murdered. It remains the bloodiest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history.
From 2004 until 2015, our friend, the prosecutor Alberto Nisman, tirelessly pursued the truth behind this crime. He knew from his investigation that the attack was an Iranian-planned operation. And he determined that Ms. Kirchner was behind a cover-up designed to whitewash Iran’s role.
What drove Ms. Kirchner? Argentina faced deep economic problems at the time, and the financial benefits of closer relations with Iran might have tempted her. Her government also had populist ties to Iran and the Bolivarian bloc of nations led by Venezuela. Whatever the reason, never has Ms. Kirchner been formally charged in the crime. Until now.
When the federal judge Claudio Bonadio handed down the 491-page indictment against Ms. Kirchner; her foreign minister, Hector Timerman; her handpicked intelligence chief; her top legal adviser; two pro-Iran activists; and 10 others, he didn’t mince words. He called the attack on the Jewish community center an “act of war” by Iran and accused Ms. Kirchner of covering up the role of senior Iranian leaders and their Hezbollah proxies in exchange for a trade deal.
If only Alberto Nisman were alive to see justice finally being pursued.
Three years ago, Mr. Nisman was set to testify to the country’s Congress on Ms. Kirchner’s role in the cover up. The day before his testimony, on Jan. 18, 2015, he was found dead in his apartment in Buenos Aires, with a bullet in his head. This, despite the fact that he had a 10-man security detail paid to protect him.
Within hours, Ms. Kirchner announced that Mr. Nisman had committed suicide. In the days that followed, she strangely claimed his death was part of a lovers’ spat. Finally, she changed her story once more: His death may have been the result of rogue intelligence operatives.
When we heard the news of Mr. Nisman’s death and of Ms. Kirchner’s suspected cover-up, we were horrified, but not entirely shocked. Anyone who had followed Mr. Nisman’s pursuit of this case knew that he was assuming grave risks by taking on both a terrorist state and his own government. Through a decade of investigation, Mr. Nisman received death threats against not only him but his children as well. One email he told us about had a picture of bloodied and brutalized bodies lying on the ground, with a note saying this would be the fate of his young daughters if he did not cease his investigation.
None of it stopped him. Fearless and resolute, Mr. Nisman and his team had determined that former Iranian and Hezbollah officials planned the AMIA attack. He was able to show definitively that the plan included no less than Iran’s former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani; its minister of intelligence; its foreign minister; the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; the head of the corps’ elite Quds force; the Iranian cultural attaché in Argentina; and the third secretary at Iran’s Embassy in Buenos Aires, as well as the former head of Hezbollah’s external security. His investigation led Interpol to issue red notices — akin to international arrest warrants — against six of the perpetrators. Argentina itself issued arrest warrants for Mr. Rafsanjani and Ali Akbar Velayati, then foreign minister, which Iran predictably disregarded.
But Mr. Nisman did not stop there.
In May 2013, he released a 500-page indictment outlining how Iran had penetrated not just Argentina, but also Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Guyana, Paraguay, Trinidad, Tobago and Suriname, and how it used mosques, social service organizations and its own embassies to radicalize and recruit terrorists. Mr. Nisman also shared information that helped American authorities determine that Mohsen Rabbani, the Iranian embassy cultural attaché and one of the AMIA bombing masterminds, helped four men, including his disciple, a Guyanese official named Abdul Kadir, plot to blow up the fuel lines at Kennedy International Airport in New York. Mr. Kadir is serving a life sentence in the United States for the foiled plot, which could have led to the loss of countless lives.
In a normal democracy, investigating the murder of a man like Alberto Nisman would be a top priority. But Ms. Kirchner and her allies assured that justice for Mr. Nisman’s murder was stymied for years.
That changed three months ago, when, under Argentina’s new president, Mauricio Macri, a fresh investigation by the Argentine national police found that Mr. Nisman had been drugged with Ketamine, a drug used to sedate animals, then brutally beaten before he was shot in the head.
The case against Ms. Kirchner is based on more than 40,000 legal wiretaps and other evidence, much of it collected by Mr. Nisman, which reveals a secret backchannel between her government and Iran. On Ms. Kirchner’s personal orders, she and her associates used the backchannel to negotiate a public memorandum of understanding that would purportedly have the two countries establish a “truth commission” to jointly identify the culprits of the bombing. Mr. Nisman believed it was designed to expunge the Interpol red notices against the plot’s perpetrators.
One thing is entirely clear: Ms. Kirchner and her allies went to great lengths to establish this backchannel. For example, in 2011, Mr. Timerman, Ms. Kirchner’s foreign minister, made a secret trip to Syria to iron out the plan with Ali Akbar Salehi, then Iran’s foreign minister. This trip was revealed earlier this year by a former Argentine ambassador to Syria in court testimony. Further implicating Ms. Kirchner and Mr. Timerman is a voice recording of him acknowledging Iran’s responsibility in the bombing.
Ramón Allan Bogado, who claims to be a one-time Argentine intelligence agent and is one of those recently indicted, testified last month that the backchannel included an arrangement for Argentina to provide Iran with nuclear technology, with front companies in Argentina and Uruguay to conduct the transactions. He alleged that officials at the highest levels of Argentina’s government were aware of the scheme. If true, this would be even worse than Mr. Nisman had uncovered and may provide a further explanation about why someone wanted him dead.
The judge in the case has asked the Argentine Congress, where Ms. Kirchner serves as a recently elected senator, to strip her of immunity so that she can be arrested and tried. But regardless of what happens to her, Argentina is on track to make amends for more than two decades of gross injustice. President Macri has abandoned Ms. Kirchner’s revisionist history of the 1994 bombing, and he supports an independent investigation that would finally identify who ordered Alberto Nisman’s death.
But President Macri has more challenges ahead. As Mr. Nisman documented, Iran and Hezbollah have penetrated Latin America, and still pose a grave threat to the security of Argentina, the region and the United States.
Mr. Dubowitz is the chief executive officer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow Mark on Twitter @mdubowitz.
Toby Dershowitz is senior vice president for government relations and strategy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. You can follow Toby on Twitter @TobyDersh.
Follow the Foundation for Defense of Democracies on Twitter @FDD
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
4) There’s a deadly new threat from North Korea
NORTH KOREA has already provided plenty of evidence that the dynastic regime led by Kim Jong Un threatens the world and its own people. He has developed and tested nuclear weapons; built intercontinental ballistic missiles; brewed chemical weapons such as VX (a nerve agent reportedly used to kill his own half brother) and forced untold thousands of people into concentration camps. Now comes news that he is collecting the capabilities and know-how for biological weapons that could be used for germ warfare.
The Post’s Joby Warrick reports that North Korea has been acquiring the essential machinery and seeking the know-how to produce large amounts of germ-warfare agents rather quickly. So far, Mr. Kim has not deployed germs into weapons. But U.S. officials are alarmed at signs that technology, barred by sanctions, has been identified within the country, while at the same time Pyongyang has exhibited an interest in genetic engineering and other biotechnology disciplines.
By its very nature, biological technology is dual-use; the machines needed to create lifesaving treatments or pesticides can also be used to create lethal agents to be delivered in wartime. A fermenter not connected to any pipes, vents or ductwork could be an innocent start to manufacturing medicines, or signify that Mr. Kim is getting ready for something darker. In the case of the largest biological weapons program ever attempted, in the Soviet Union from 1975 to 1991, much of the industrial base was created first, capable of producing anthrax by the ton, to be ready if and when the orders came to mobilize for war.
Biological weapons are tricky from a military point of view. They can be more easily hidden than nuclear missiles or conventional forces. Attacking them preemptively could risk unwanted dispersal of the germs. They are difficult to handle and store for long periods. If dispersed in the air for an attack, germs can shift with winds and weather, endangering troops and civilians, friend and foe alike. But tests in the 1950s and 1960s carried out by the United States and Britain showed that in some conditions, biological weapons can also be deadly over wide swaths of territory. The United States gave up biological weapons in 1969, and an international treaty banning them took effect in 1975. North Korea joined the treaty in 1987,but the treaty’s verification requirements are weak. Despite serious obstacles at home, North Korea has demonstrated an ability to evade sanctions and scale up military industrial plants when it wants to.
If Mr. Kim is creating the foundations for a biological weapons program, it should serve as one more warning of the escalating threat he poses. Preemptive war could risk millions of casualties. But his malign intent cannot be tolerated forever. Through sanctions, diplomatic pressure and other means, the burden of Mr. Kim’s despotic and reckless reign must be brought to an end.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
