Could It Be.... Oil?

"Diplomacy must be given a chance to work."

"It's my view that the best way to solve this problem diplomatically is for there to be more than one nation speaking to North Korea, more than America voicing our opinions."

"I view this as an opportunity to remind the international community that we must work together to continue to work hard to convince the North Korean leader to give up any weapons program."

Now that North Korea has launched seven -- SEVEN! -- test missiles, these are the responses our White House has come up with.

Check out this chronology of North Korea's nuclear testing. Frankly, it seems to me that they've been up to this for years.

So let me get this straight: North Korea has some capacity to launch weapons into some of its neighboring countries, though not the U.S. or its territories. It looks like they can wage devastating effects in parts of East Asia. Our response? "You shouldn't do that, North Korea! Bad Kim Jong-Il! Bad!"

Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Even if it did, it's unclear that their weapons would have made it all the way to the States or its territories. Our response? We went in and invaded without international support or even concrete evidence of imminent harm.

Oh sure, our goal in Iraq has shifted. Where it was "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" once, now it's "we had to bring democracy to these people." But that mushroom cloud was a boogeyman in the closet; the North Korean one seems much more imminent. And yet now we act with restraint. With diplomacy. With a desire for international concensus.

Iraq seems more and more like the biggest, costliest lie in recent history.