The crux of the Reiss-Gallucci argument is that the new 2002 intelligence justified the CIA assessment that North Korea is making uranium-based nuclear weapons. I am not willing to accept this assessment on faith, considering the ideological agenda driving administration policy and the blatant misuse of intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

In my article, I spelled out numerous specific constraints that would make it difficult for North Korea to enrich uranium to weapons grade, and numerous specific reasons why the evidence leaked by the administration in support of the 2002 assessment should not be taken at face value. None of this analysis is acknowledged or addressed by Reiss and Gallucci.

North Korea may be cooperating with Syria on some sort of nuclear facility in Syria, according to new intelligence the United States has gathered over the past six months, sources said. The evidence, said to come primarily from Israel, includes dramatic satellite imagery that led some U.S. officials to believe that the facility could be used to produce material for nuclear weapons.

U.S. officials said that Israel shared the video with the United States before the Sept. 6 bombing, after Bush administration officials expressed skepticism last spring that the facility, visible by satellite since 2001, was a nuclear reactor built with North Korea's assistance. Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal that it has never declared.

But beginning today, intelligence officials will tell members of the House and Senate intelligence, armed services and foreign relations committees that the Syrian facility was not yet fully operational and that there was no uranium for the reactor and no indication of fuel capability, according to U.S. officials and intelligence sources.

David Albright, president of Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and a former U.N. weapons inspector, said the absence of such evidence warrants skepticism that the reactor was part of an active weapons program.

"The United States and Israel have not identified any Syrian plutonium separation facilities or nuclear weaponization facilities," he said. "The lack of any such facilities gives little confidence that the reactor is part of an active nuclear weapons program. The apparent lack of fuel, either imported or indigenously produced, also is curious and lowers confidence that Syria has a nuclear weapons program."

KEDO was committed to assisting North Korea in securing a foreign supply of reactor fuel, making it unnecessary for North Korea to undertake the expensive process of domestic LEU production.

Skleenar --
Uranium enrichment did go against the Agreed Framework.

III.2. The DPRK will consistently take steps to implement the North-South Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, whose 3rd point indicated "The South and the North shall not possess nuclear reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities".

The Agreed Framework also (IV.1) reaffirmed NPT and the associated Safeguards Agreement, which requires disclosure by the DPRK of nuclear activities.