Nicholas Kristof has a long attention span. I am grateful anytime he moves on to a subject of great import because I find him informative. His recent articles on nuclear terrorism are must reads. For entertainment, I, of course, enjoyed these lines:

The Nunn-Lugar program to safeguard the material is one of the best schemes we have to protect ourselves, and it's bipartisan, championed above all by Senator Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican. Yet President Bush has, incredibly, at various times even proposed cutting funds for it. He seems bored by this security effort, perhaps because it doesn't involve blowing anything up.

The best hope for stopping Iran and North Korea (and it's a bleak one) is to negotiate a grand bargain in which they give up nuclear aspirations for trade benefits. Mr. Bush's current policy - fist-shaking - feels good but accomplishes nothing.

President Clinton's approach to North Korea wasn't a great success, but at least North Korea didn't add to its nuclear arsenal during his watch. In just the last two years, North Korea appears to have gone to eight nuclear weapons from about two.