President Bush has wasted no time casting his diplomacy with North Korea as a kind of mission accomplished. Today, Bush was all aglow over his foreign policy "success," though his remarks were made sans flight jacket, aircraft carrier and banner.

Bush promised today to reward North Korea after the communist state submitted a long-delayed 60-page declaration of its nuclear programs that, curiously, still omits details of its nuclear proliferation activities and uranium enrichment program.

Yes, today Bush was feeling expansive and magnanimous, as light as a Doonesbury feather, like Scrooge on Christmas morning buying the biggest turkey in the market.

Because the North Koreans managed to cobble together a report no thicker than a college term paper and submit it only seven months late, Bush said he would lift some trade restrictions against North Korea and take the regime — part of his original "Axis of Evil"— off the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.

As the NY Times points out:

But, significantly, the North’s declaration was not expected to reveal details on three critical points: the nuclear bombs the North has already produced; its alleged attempts to produce nuclear arms by secretly enriching uranium, which triggered the ongoing crisis in 2002; and accusations that the North helped Syria build a nuclear plant.

Now we all know that Syria and Iran are accused by the Bush administration of co-sponsoring terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. And if Israel felt compelled to take out Syria's North Korean-built nuclear plant just last year, maybe it's a little early to say Kim Jong-il has had a change of heart.

So how does a thin and evasive report that leaves out the really juicy, important stuff warrant removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism?

The reward wouldn't be to suggest a kind of diplomatic "mission accomplished," would it? I mean, if it serves a political purpose for Bush and  John McCain, we can't really call it appeasement. Can we?