Aren't you glad Bush was so focused in Iraq?

Remember when Captain Codpiece referred to an "Axis of Evil" consisting of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea? So which country did he decide to address? The one that wasn't any kind of a threat, and it is there that we are mired now in a civil war.

Iran may or may not be developing nuclear weapons, but North Korea -- the country with which the Clinton administration was mocked by the Bushistas for engaging -- has tested a nuclear weapon:

The test came just two days after the country was warned by the United Nations Security Council that the action could lead to severe consequences.

Nations across the world condemned the test today, and an emergency meeting of the Security Council was set to take up the issue this morning.

China, Pyongyang’s closet supporter, called it a “flagrant and brazen” violation of international opinion and said it “firmly opposes” North Korea’s conduct.

In Russia, which shares a short border with North Korea, officials reacted with dismay and condemnation. “Russia absolutely condemns North Korea’s nuclear test,” President Vladimir V. Putin said in televised remarks during a meeting with his senior government ministers.

Appearing with Mr. Putin, the defense minister, Sergei B. Ivanov, said that the Russian military had confirmed the test and estimated its force at somewhere between 5 and 15 kilotons much larger that estimates from South Korea.

Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) confirmed the explosion, declaring that the test was a “historic event.” It said there was no leak or danger from its test.

"The nuclear test was conducted with indigenous wisdom and technology 100 percent," the news agency said, according to Reuters. The announcement

"It marks a historic event as it greatly encouraged and pleased the KPA (Korean People’s Army) and people that have wished to have powerful self-reliant defence capability."

American officials cautioned that they had not yet received any confirmation that the test had occurred. The United States Geological Survey said it had detected a tremor of 4.2 magnitude on the Korean Peninsula.

Senior Bush administration officials said that they had little reason to doubt the announcement, and warned that the test would usher in a new era of confrontation with the isolated and unpredictable country run by President Kim Jong-il.

What form that confrontation would take was not yet clear. Last week

I'm sure that this morning, Captain Codpiece has lovely fantasies of the End of Days dancing in his head, with visions of himself riding right next to Jesus on a big white horsie, given his delusions of being God's Anointed Architect of the Battle of Armageddon. But for those of us who are NOT religious fanatics, what's almost scarier than the prospect of a nuclear North Korea led by a lunatic is the fact that we are led by someone equally crazy who's going to be making the decisions how to deal with this.

There has been some speculation in recent days that the "October Surprise" to which Karl Rove had been obliquely referring was not going to be an invasion or bombing of Iran, but rather, a confrontation with North Korea. Today it appears increasingly likely that this is the case.

Of course the inevitable spin on this indisputably sobering turn of affairs, just as it is with everything that has gone wrong with Bush Administration policy, is going to be to "blame Clinton", since right-wing outlets have been blasting the Clinton "appeasement" policy for the last six years -- a policy which resulted in a non-nuclear North Korea, while the Bush inconsistent, saber-rattling-while-doing-nothing policy has resulted in an ever-more-paranoid Kim Jong Il actually testing nukes as a response to an ever-more-bellicose United States, whose leader has been off indulging his Oedipal conflicts in Iraq -- a country which HAD no weapons of mass destruction, and was NO threat to us.

Josh Marshall has more.