Yet another reason to be thankful that the Clinton Administration is no longer the administration. The oddly misnamed Madeleine Albright channels the Euroweenies.

"First of all they (Iran, Iraq and North Korea) are very different from each other," said Albright, who was Secretary of State in the Clinton administration.

Of course they are, but their similarities are much greater than their differences, and those similarities are more than sufficient to justify Bush's characterization of them.

In the case of Iraq, Albright said the United States had been trying to contain President Saddam Hussein since 1991 and strong action was necessary. However, the situation with Iran was more complicated and the United States needed Tehran's help in dealing with Afghanistan.

You mean help, as in not undermining the new government? They don't seem interested in offering that kind of help. Perhaps a new government in Tehran would be an improvement?

Looking at North Korea, Albright said it was a mistake to walk away from that communist state. The United States has attempted to hold talks with North Korea about its weapons program but that process has gone nowhere.

No kidding.

I wonder why. Could it be because the folks who run the place are duplicitous Stalinist monsters, with no interest except their own power, and are only marginally sane? Nawww.

"When we left office, we left the potential of a verifiable agreement to stop the export of missile technology abroad on the table. I think it's a mistake to walk away from that. We know that North Korea is dangerous but lumping those three countries together is dangerous," she said.

In what way, Maddie? Just because we lump them together rhetorically doesn't mean that we have to follow exactly similar policies toward them. I know it's hard for you to understand, but it's actually possible to deal with them together rhetorically, while still handling them separately, in an appropriate time and manner for each.

Anyway, I'm not sure why anyone in the current administration should be interested in your opinions on this, or any other matter. They're kind of busy right now, cleaning up the mess that you left them.

Rand, you do a MUCH better job of the Take-Down than I do, but I still prefer to go for the jugular with satire. You might like my Albright take. But since I'm too HTML-impared to do direct links, you'll just have to scroll down.

Can't miss the headline -- it's the one with Christopher Warren and a Halston dress.

Don't ask.

First of all, NK was thrown in for effect. We have no plans to do jack to North Korea, they are destroying their own country just fine.
These countries, however, do not constitute an "axis of evil", although all of them desire WMD capability. All of them are, in some sense, evil, as well, or at least have sponsored and promoted evil. One pertinent point, however, is that two of them HATE EACH OTHER, possibly more than us, and the other one is on the other side of the physical and metaphoric world (has NK ever sponsored terrorism? I honestly don't know, although it is certainly possible). In any event, our strategies in dealing with the three are probably not connected to each other, and it was just a rhetorical device, judging by the level of backpedalling done this week.

While they're not an "axis" in the WWII ally sense, they are indeed all evil, and all similar in that they wish us harm, and will do whatever is within their power, however feeble, to accomplish it. And yes, the DPRK has sponsored terrorism. They killed some members of the ROK government in a Thailand bombing a few years ago, IIRC, and they fund Red terrorist groups in Japan.

And, yes, it was a rhetorical device, and judging by the reaction, an effective one. See Andrew Hofer's comments about game theory. There's no point in getting people to love us, or even like us--they're never going to do that, but there's a lot of value in getting them to respect, and fear us. Their contempt for us led to what happened on September 11.

I tend to believe that the main point of grouping them together was to peel off wobbly allies, e.g. the Riyadh-Baghdad-Tehran triad that has been developing re Palestinian policy.

The differences between Iran, Iraq, and North Korea interest me more.

- Can I call North Korea a paleo-dictatorship? I assume it is brutal, but it is also poor. North Korean technology scares me more than their terrorists.

- Iraq is different from North Korea in that it has an independent source of income (oil). It is also a newer sort of dictatorship, a more dynamic type of dictatorship. IMO, North Korea builds better weapons while Iraq finds better ways to use existing weapons.

- Iran is the most hopeful dictatorship. Because of the Shah, Iranian society has a more modern way of life. Their youths chanted "America, condolences" in the wake of 9/11 and expressed admiration for the Shah's son without knowing who he was. The Iranian government actually threw a soccer match to keep down the rioting.

= The contrast is most striking in the best way to approach them. With North Korea, we should just go in and take them down. With Iraq, we need to care for the oil wells. With Iran, we are better able to rely on Iranians. In each case, done right, we can expect their citizens to welcome us as their liberators.

Alan M. Robertson