Today, U.S. intelligence officials will give closed-door briefings to members of Congress about North Korea’s role in building a reactor in Syria. (Israel, it’s been confirmed, destroyed that nuclear facility with their air-strikes last September.)

Why are the briefings taking place now? This morning the New York Times’s David Sanger speculated that Vice President Cheney is trying to scuttle the six-party disarmament talks by highlighting Pyongyang’s proliferant behavior. Others have floated more intriguing theories. For example, Jon Wolfsthal, an analyst from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, thinks the Bush administration is releasing the information at this time to rescue its tentative deal with the North Koreans by letting them off the hook. “If it turns out we have them dead to rights -- that we have enough information on our own -- then we can eliminate this as a point of contention,” he says. “Maybe we don’t need to negotiate transparency with North Korea because we already know enough.” 

She doesn't support missile defense or the war on terror. But Hillary Clinton pledges to defend Israel with nukes. In a tight race for the presidency, she's learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.

As we've repeatedly noted, Sen. Clinton has vigorously opposed development of defensive systems that would let us shoot down Iranian missiles before they reach their targets. She has voted to slash budget requests for missile defense and has slammed Bush for "focusing obsessively on expensive and unproven missile defense technology."

If we were to attack Iran as Clinton pledges, wouldn't it be better to do it pre-emptively, using conventional weapons, as Israel did when it sent a squadron of F-16s to destroy Iraq's French-built Osirak nuclear reactor before it could go live and begin producing weapons-grade nuclear material? Wouldn't it be better to do so before Iran has the capability to launch nuclear-tipped Shahab missiles in the direction of Tel Aviv and Haifa?

Shouldn't it be before Iran has the ability to strike European and American targets? That's what Bush's plan for missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic are designed to defend against.

Republicans mean to win in 2008, they will have to separate themselves, gently but unmistakably, from the Bush Doctrine. While honoring the president and all that he has achieved in the overall war on terrorism, candidates would be well advised to find new language in which to cast the war against the jihadists. The truth is that the punitive and preventive war components of the Bush Doctrine remain vital to national security and eminently defensible before the voters. But so identified is the Doctrine with democratization and the war in Iraq that it is doubtful whether Republican candidates could persuade the electorate to discriminate neatly between the Doctrine's parts. Within its global campaign for democracy there are reasonable, modest initiatives that might be preserved, too, but so wrapped up are these with the overall discredited tone of idealism that it will probably be hard, once again, to distinguish them publicly.

Might it be possible to endorse the whole Bush Doctrine but promise to interpret it in a less militant and more cautious way? The paradox -- interpreting it more moderately than its author did -- would prove awkward. And does any candidate want to keep reminding the voters of his connection, his dependence on George W. Bus

NATO endorses President Bush's plan for missile defense in Europe despite Russia's objections. A nervous Europe goes along. For Moscow, this is a case of deja vu all over again. If you saw the headline, "Russia to U.S.: Drop Missile Defense," you'd be forgiven if you thought someone had left a 1986 newspaper laying around. That's what former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev said to President Ronald Reagan when they met in Reykjavik, Iceland in October 1986. Gorbachev, like Putin today, demanded we drop SDI. Reagan refused.

Bush, even hampered by a Democratic Congress, is making missile defense a reality. We shudder at the prospect of a President Obama scrapping Reagan's dream in favor of his "aggressive personal diplomacy" with Tehran and Moscow. A President Obama would have supported the nuclear freeze and lost the Cold War.

A President McCain, however, would carry on Reagan's grand strategy in dealing with America's enemies -- we win, they lose. 

For those who believe that the clerics who rule Iran must never have an arsenal of nuclear weapons, the United States’ course of action ought to be clear: The Bush administration should advocate direct, unconditional talks between Washington and Tehran. Strategically, politically and morally, such meetings will help us think more clearly. Foreign-policy hawks ought to see such discussions as essential preparation for possible military strikes against clerical Iran’s nuclear facilities.