When you watch a White House press conference (or that rarest of birds, a Presidential press conference), you'll notice that tough questions are increasingly being asked as journalists feel emboldened by Bush's low approval ratings. But there is still a line that many refuse to cross, a moratorium on real self-examination about our foregin policy.<br />
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For all the pointed questions, the American press has one inviolable premise–American exceptionalism. Here are some questions we should really be asking the administration about North Korea.<br />

<ol><li>North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty twenty-one days after the Administration invaded the named "Axis-of-Evil" member Iraq. On the other hand, we violated the NPT earlier this year to provide India with nuclear technology. Is North Korea abiding by the rules more than we are?</li><br />

<li>Will we arm any of North Korea's neighbors with nuclear technology in violation of the NPT, the way we did for India?</li><br />

<li>Is there cause for concern that an embargo of North Korea will lead them to leverage their nuclear technology for sale on the international black market, as South Africa did to Israel (and possibly other nuclear aspirants) during its embargo?</li><br />

<li>The Clinton adminstration's Agreed Framework enacted an eight-year freeze on nuclear weapons from 1994-2002. Is it reasonable to assume that North Korea only resumed the enrichment of plutonium after the expiration of that "carrot-based" approach, as Tony Snow called these negotiations?</li><br />

<li>Did the US pressuring banks to freeze North Korean assets and the halting of energy supplies cause North Korea to resume nuclear weapons programs after it had already agreed to stop in May 2005, during the Six Party talks?</li><br />

<li>With regard to a missile defense system, which the administration touts as the difference between Republican and Democratic approaches to defense against the North Korean threat, wouldn't interception of a nuclear-tipped Taepodong en route to a West Coast target mean the irradiation of the Pacific Ocean, and eventually, all the oceans of the world through the ocean current system?</li><br />

<li>How will our diplomatic efforts to secure nuclear disarmament be different than our evidently failed approaches since the expiration of the Agreed Framework, or our approach to Iran's nuclear aspirations?</li><br />

<li>Given that our military forces are currently embroiled in two missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we have either been unable to meet or have severely curtailed our recruiting goals in the last few years, will the U.S. military be forced to consider a draft in order to make the threat of force against North Korea more credible? </li><br />

<li>North Korea is still officially at war with South Korea and the United States. Is it ever in the interests of any country with nuclear weapons to disarm during wartime?</li><br />

<li>Would we disarm if the United Nations threatened sanctions?</li><br />
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