Morning Note

If North Korea develops a nuclear weapon, our country could be as good as gone.

That was the dominant view among America’s political elite at this time two decades ago, as Kim Jong Il marched closer to obtaining his first nuke. 

“These bombs would threaten not just the United States, but South Korea and Japan and indirectly, China,” Clinton administration Defense Secretary William Perry said in 2003. 

“North Korea on the brink of launching a long-range ballistic missile that could strike the United States… could reach Alaska, and possibly as far as the northwest coast of the lower 48 states,” CNN reported in 2006.

There was also the idea that even if the North Koreans didn’t fire a weapon of mass destruction at Los Angeles, they would sell their new fissile material to terrorists who would. 

“The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States,” President Bush told the public the day after the…