Take Away the Nukes or We're Not Giving You an iPod!!!

The Bush administration wants North Korea's attention, so like a scolding parent, it's trying to make it tougher for that country's eccentric leader to buy iPods, plasma televisions and Segway electric scooters. The U.S. government's first-ever effort to use trade sanctions to personally aggravate a foreign president expressly targets items believed to be favored by Kim Jong Il or presented by him as gifts to the roughly 600 loyalist families who run his communist nation. Kim, who engineered a secret nuclear weapons program, has other options for obtaining the high-end consumer electronics and other items he wants. But the list of proposed luxury sanctions, obtained by The Associated Press, aims to make Kim's swanky life harder: No more cognac, Rolex watches, cigarettes, artwork, expensive cars, Harley Davidson motorcycles or even personal watercraft, such as Jet Skis. The new ban would extend even to music and sports equipment. The 5-foot-3 Kim is an enthusiastic basketball fan; then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright presented him with a ball signed by Michael Jordan during a rare diplomatic trip in 2000. Experts said the effort, being coordinated under the United Nations, would be the first ever to curtail a specific category of goods not associated with military buildups or weapons designs. U.S. officials acknowledge that enforcing the ban on black-market trading would be difficult. [source]

Seriously, so then why do it? What are we proving? Call me crazy but if the man can engineer a secret nuclear weapons program, he could get a black market ipod and some booze in 2.3 seconds. It not like the scolding-parent approach works with 13 year old kids from Idaho less than a crazy short man who is on his very own mission for world dominance and is already in control of his very own country in east Asia.