Bush Writes to North Korean Leader

Hi. My name is George. I am the President of the United States of America. I am 61 years old...

President Bush, directly engaging the man he publicly called a “tyrant” and privately called a “pygmy,” wrote a letter to the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in which he held out the prospect of normalized relations with the United States if North Korea fully disclosed all nuclear programs and got rid of its nuclear weapons, administration officials said.

So let me guess this straight. The world's powers are now communicating in the same fashion as high-school students? That's just fantastic. Next Bush will be texting Ahmadinejad about the nuclear enrichment.

The unprecedented high-level personal letter from Mr. Bush to the leader of the country he famously placed alongside Iraq and Iran in his “axis of evil” in 2002 came as American negotiators were struggling to get the secretive Pyongyang government to fully explain and disclose the extent, use and spread of North Korea’s nuclear material and technology, while also urging other nations to maintain pressure on Iran in the wake of a new assessment that Tehran had halted nuclear weapons work in 2003.

Do you like me? Yes? No? Check one.

An administration official said Mr. Bush addressed the letter, “Dear Mr. Chairman,” and signed it by hand.

Mr. Chairman? There's no hope, there's no hope at all.