Reply #2: They mean they're close to setting another timeline.

[Igel]

In exchange for all kinds of promises from the non-N.Korean side, the N. Koreans were to have shut it down months ago, no ifs, ands, or buts.

But then N. Korea decided that something *not* in the treaty was a deal breaker, and they unilaterally decided to hold out for more. What money the US said it would unfreeze was the original terms of the side agreement that was more important than the main agreement. But it had problems finding some back willing to sent the money to N. Korea. So, in the meanwhile, the money that the US wasn't willing to freeze became an issue, and *it* had to be unfrozen as well.

Then, a month after the money's in Korea, N. Korea decides that maybe his word isn't a pile of dung. And everybody agrees because "diplomacy"--given N. Korea lots more than originally agreed, just for a promise of doing something in the future, worked.

When the nuclear plant is shut down, *then* you can crow that dipomacy works, but then be sure to add up all the extortion money paid to N. Korea, not just the last installment. After all, it's the plant that diplomacy guaranteed would never be built, and the one that diplomacy guaranteed would be shut down in the late '90s and freely inspected, *forever*. Somehow all the real payments for those fake promises are, well, meaningless. We so want to believe--like a shaman believing that he's walked in the spirit world, like the Xian fundie who goes to a mountaintop to await Christ--that we do stupid things, and show N. Korea exactly how stupid we are.