Iran, North Korea. Can you blame them?
I have no love whatsoever for the regimes in either Iran or North Korea. But, seriously, how can anyone blame them from trying to develop a nuclear defence?
If I was the tin-pot dictator or mediaeval voodoo peddlar in charge of one of these countries and was looking around the world at what's been happening to the neighbours the US has decided it doesn't like the look of [HINT: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria... ], I'd be cracking the whip across my nuclear scientists' backs as well, and ordering them to build me a nuclear deterrent as quick as they can.
The really sad thing is that there are people so monumentally gullible that, when a US politician describes these activities as "sinister plots to attack the USA", rather than as frantic attempts to shore up your own defences before Uncle Sam decides to come a-calling and bringing 'regime change' they actually believe it.
PS: Shame on El Reg's usually cynical journos for swallowing the 'official line' too.
HINT 2: As well as regime mismanagement of the economy, the reason North Korea's people are starving might also have something to do with the fact that the US has forbidden any of its lackeys from trading with the country. It's another standard American tactic:
**UNCLE SAM:** We don't like Country X, so we're going to impose crippling economic sanctions on them and also insist all our lickspittle 'friends' do too.
[Time passes]
**UNCLE SAM** Look at the state of Country X's economy. They can't even feed their own people!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
