Case No 1: a genocidal, certifiably loopy dictator with a history of nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry has the potential to hand such WMDs to terrorists and wreak havoc on the West.

Case No 2: a genocidal, certifiably loopy dictator with a history of nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry has the potential to hand such WMDs to terrorists and wreak havoc on the West.

There’s a difference, though. The first hasn’t aimed such weaponry at the West, and is hemmed in by Anglo-American warplanes. The second has launched missiles aimed at the American homeland, has the potential to murder millions in a country allied with the West, has constructed concentration camps for dissidents, has starved thousands to death and is far further along in the nuclear bomb-making process. Who’s the bigger worry?

According to President George W Bush, it’s the first guy. Saddam Hussein was exponentially more dangerous in 2002 than Kim Jong-il is today. In 2002 we were told of the necessity of acting before a threat became imminent.

Speeches were given; ultimatums were delivered; the public was warned that acquiescence to Saddam’s attempt to get WMDs was not an option. “We cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” the president warned.

And yet a day after a nuclear-armed dictator fired failed missiles at Hawaii Bush had to be cornered at a doughnut shop in the middle of a motorcade trip to provide a response. The Washington Post noted that his national security meeting last week was devoted to . . . Cuba.

His spokesman told the press: “It’s been our policy all along that we do not act unilaterally . . . There are attempts to try to describe this almost in breathless world war three terms. This is not such a situation.”

Does that sound like the Bush you remember? There are, of course, differences between North Korea today and Iraq four years ago.

It was partly because Saddam did not yet have a nuclear capacity that he could be tackled militarily.

Kim is one step ahead of Saddam on that one. Saddam didn’t have the blackmail of a potentially obliterated Seoul either — and he sat precariously at the geographical nexus of radical Islamism in the Middle East. Kim is geographically and culturally about as far away from radical Islam as one can imagine.

But there are also similarities: Russia and China are content to block meaningful action against North Korea, just as they were with Saddam’s Iraq. Kim could easily team up with terrorists to attack the West. There is an “axis of evil” after all. Who coined that term again? Remind me.

You can, of course, make an argument that removing Saddam came first precisely because it was doable and he was less of a threat. You can also argue that a multilateral approach works best with North Korea, because its neighbours are far more vulnerable than the US and have a greater interest in containment.

In fact, I’d be largely persuaded by such arguments. But what you cannot do is argue as Dick Cheney and Bush have consistently argued about the WMD threat, then look at their current position on North Korea and consequently make any coherent sense at all.

The Cheney argument, as outlined in Ron Suskind’s book-length brief for the CIA, The One Percent Doctrine, is clear. It is that if there is a 1% chance that terrorists can get access to WMDs, the US, after 9/11, must treat that chance as a 100% certainty.

Under that Cheney risk-rubric, Kim is easily the gravest threat to American lives since Bush took office. He has the materials; he has the motive; all he lacks is a delivery system.

And the failure of his missile delivery system is not a cause for relief. It merely means that if he is to deliver the nuclear goods to his enemies, he has to find another way.

A suitcase? An Al-Qaeda suicide bomber? A Pakistani intelligence agent?

You think these options aren’t available to him? If you live anywhere near a western city you should be concerned. Or at least a little more concerned than a president who spent the afternoon at Dunkin’ Donuts.

Again, you see the strange, almost surreal disconnection between the president’s words and his actions. He has indeed described the current conflict between civilisation and terror masters armed with WMDs as the equivalent of the third world war.

And yet he still refuses to send two more divisions to pacify Baghdad, a critical element in stabilising Iraq. He hasn’t enlarged the size of the military, and has had to rely on part-time reservists to hold the line in hell-holes in Iraq.

He won’t raise taxes on petrol, an act that would by itself rob the terror states of the Middle East of long-term financial leverage over the United States (as well as help stimulate technology that could help stave off global warming).

He won’t confront Saudi Arabia over its continued financing of Wahhabist terror. He hasn’t captured Osama Bin Laden, and he’s content to pursue multilateral blather against a real nuclear threat from one of the vilest dictatorships on the planet.

As someone who backed the resolution and analysis of this president in the run-up to war against Saddam, and who still hopes for the best in Iraq, I can only say I feel somewhat conned.

Perhaps if the president had publicly announced that he had miscalculated the Iraq risk, had now abandoned the Cheney doctrine, and, by the sheer weight of experience, was now a Kissingerian realist, able to tolerate the risk of the unthinkable, I could adjust. But he hasn’t.

He has just behaved according to one assumption for four years and is now behaving according to another one.

It’s up to us to adjust to his incoherence. Forgive me if the adjustment is a little unnerving and bordering on, shall we say, absurd.

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