Would you buy a used reactor from this man?

[thatcrazycajun]

Reuters reports here that North Korea is agreeing to shut down its nuclear program in exchange for fuel oil and other valuable considerations from the US and its allies. Stipulated that a nuclear-armed North Korea is an unacceptable proposition. However, given that nuclear power plants take a lot of time and money and effort to build and get online; and given that North Korea is run by well-known megalomaniac Kim Jong-Il; and given our utter failure to find WMDs in Saddam Hussein's Iraq when everybody and his dog in the intel community was saying he had them (and a few still insist he did and had them removed before the invasion)...am I the only one who wonders why on Earth or any other planet we should trust such promises from this particular rogue state? They went to so much trouble and expense to build the things; is it really that easy to persuade them to just junk the whole magillah?

Comments

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

Nobody in their right mind actually trusts the regime. However, in pragmatic terms, it looks like this (trading an end to the program for a whole bunch of foreign aid) was the purpose of the exercise in the first place.

The two catches are 1)the whole issue of whether to reward that scheme and 2)verifying that they actually did dismantle the program.