North Korea Tests Nuke, While Troops Die in Country That Was no Threat

In the wake of today's news that North Korea has announced a successful underground detonation of a nuclear weapon, we find that three Marines were killed in action in Iraq's Anbar Province on Sunday, bringing to 32 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq in just the first eight days of October.

What more grim reminder could Americans possibly get of the dangerous toll of having an incompetent ideologue like George W. Bush in the White House and a rubber-stamp Republican Congress showing no oversight over his catastrophic rule? We have as proof today the news that a true danger to America in North Korea has gone ignored and unchecked by the Bush administration, while we continue to hemorrhage blood and money in a war of choice, against a country that posed no danger whatsoever to us.

What we can expect to unfold with sickening predictability, will be Bush and the Republican party citing North Korea's action as a reason they should be allowed to stay in power -- you know, when in doubt, try to scare the American people.

Democrats need to forcefully point out that just the opposite is true -- that North Korea has become such a hazard to the world because of Bush and the do-nothing Republican Congress's reign of error and that our country has been undeniably weakened because of their total incompetence and corruption.

My erudite blogging colleague, Sean-Paul Kelley, at the Agonist, who called this episode "a massive, unmitigated Bush Administration foreign policy failure," sums it up quite well in his piece today:

"North Korea would not have gone nuclear had the Bush Administration not arrogantly brushed aside the previous agreement with North Korea and embraced a hardline against them upon assuming office in 2001. All of this was preventable. Since 2001 They have done nothing but ignore the North Koreans, ignored their nuclear program and ignored our interests in the region. That's all that needs to be said about this event. It could have been prevented and was not."

That about says it all. While it may turn out that some secondary reports saying that the test was a dud are true, that's not really the point, is it? North Korea is knocking on the nuclear door and it's another brick in the wall of shame that is the Bush administration.

And, again, while this has been allowed to develop, we are closing in on 2,800 brave men and women lost in a war about nothing.