Informed Speculation

Including some whose take is a bit more positive than mine:

“The Taepodong obviously was a failure — that tells you something about capabilities,” Stephen Hadley, President Bush’s national security adviser, told reporters in a phone call on Tuesday evening in Washington. But other officials warned that even a failed launching was of some use to the North Koreans, because it will help them diagnose what went wrong with the liquid-fueled rocket.

The missiles have been the source of considerable diplomatic tension in recent weeks, because of North Korea’s declarations that it already possesses nuclear weapons. American intelligence agencies have told President Bush they believe that North Korea has the fuel for such weapons.

However, the country is not believed to have developed a warhead small enough to fit atop one of its missiles, and it has never conducted a nuclear test, to the knowledge of American officials.

The other missiles that the North fired appeared to be a mix of short-range Scud-C missiles and intermediate-range Rodong missiles, of the kind that the North has sold to Iran, Pakistan and other nations. Those missiles also landed in the Sea of Japan.

None of the launchings were announced in advance. But the first came just minutes after the space shuttle Discovery lifted off in Florida — an event the North Koreans could monitor on television. Administration officials said they could only speculate as to whether the missile launching had been timed to coincide with the shuttle launching, or with Independence Day, but outside analysts had little doubt.

“It’s very in your face to do it on the Fourth of July,” said Ashton B. Carter, a Harvard professor who, with former defense secretary William J. Perry, had urged the Bush administration to destroy the Taepodong missile on the launching pad, advice the administration rejected.”Hooray if it failed,” Mr. Carter said.

While the test itself was a sign of North Korea’s defiance of the United States, for the administration, the outcome was as favorable as officials could have hoped for: the North’s capacity was called into question, and the North’s enigmatic leader, Kim Jong Il, has now put himself at odds with the two countries that have provided him aid, China and South Korea. “Our hope is that the Chinese are going to be furious,” said one senior American official, who declined to be identified.

I took quite a bit of heat from certain dreamers from the left who like to think North Korea is not in the nuclear club – note the section well about its fuel capabilities. This is why the test has such significance; designing a working weaponized bomb, then launching it, may be still beyond Kim’s grasp, but for how long?…