More experts

Good god, for a moment I thought Judy Miller was back at The Times.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 — Officially, the Bush administration is “pleased” — as President Bush put it on Wednesday — that North Korea has agreed to resume talks on nuclear disarmament. But behind closed doors at the White House and the State Department, some are less happy, saying the country’s nuclear test should be answered with isolation.

When it comes to North Korea, the Bush administration has always found itself pulled in two directions — confrontation versus engagement — and has generally settled on a middle course that was neither. To persuade North Korea to return to the bargaining table, President Bush agreed last week to a slight softening of his stance against direct talks with North Korea, a concession that made clear that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in charge of the policy, at least for now.

But Ms. Rice is coming under increased fire inside and outside the administration from officials and experts who are skeptical about what diplomacy can achieve in this case, and who argue that there is no chance a new round of nuclear talks with North Korea will succeed.

“What’s a good description? Fantasy? Dreamworld?” said Nicholas Eberstadt, a North Korea expert with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “All we’re doing with these hapless efforts at conference diplomacy is continuing to talk while North Korea continues to build nuclear weapons.”

A senior Bush administration official was equally pointed in criticizing the new initiative. “In the past, the one thing we could never be criticized for was whether our tough talk meant something,” said the official, who has participated in internal debates and would speak only on condition of anonymity about his dissenting views. “When we gave a stick, they knew we were serious. We’ve lost that credibility.”

[...]

There is “zero chance” that the talks will persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program, said John Tkacik, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former State Department diplomat. “My Machiavellian mind tells me that the Chinese have worked out a deal with the Russians and the North Koreans that if North Korea comes back to the six-party talks, the main issue will not be denuclearization, it will be counterfeiting.”

American negotiators continue to maintain the financial restrictions will remain unless North Korea stops counterfeiting United States currency. “They have to get out of the illicit-activities business and get out of the counterfeiting business,” Mr. Hill said in an interview Tuesday.

It's great that Helene Cooper has all these "experts" from AEI and the Heritage Foundation in her Roledex, ready to speak for the Neocons.

This story has all the earmarkings of The Times brilliant support for the run-up to Iraq. The "experts" whose political leanings and baggage go unremarked, the "senior administration official" who sneers at the State Dept.'s efforts at multilateralism, and the unexpected feint -- it's not just nuclear weapons, it's our very monetary system that's at stake.