A year ago, President Bush was searching for a rationale for applying his newly promulgated Bush Doctrine in the War Against Terror.

Now, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il had already provided such a rationale. He had just torn up the Clinton-Carter Agreed Framework, had announced he was withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and had told International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors – who had been verifying compliance with both the Agreed Framework and the NPT – to get out of North Korea and never return.

A year ago, Iraq, Iran and North Korea were all NPT signatories and were, therefore, subject to the IAEA-NPT Safeguards and Physical Security regime.

In return for a promise to not develop nukes, NPT signatories have a right to import all sorts of "nuclear" materials and technologies. Materials that can be used to produce nukes – such as highly enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium – and the facilities capable of producing such materials, have to be "declared" by NPT signatories and made subject to the IAEA-NPT regime.

In the aftermath of the Gulf War, the IAEA discovered that Iraq had "gamed the system." In Iraq's 1996 classified report to the IAEA, Iraq had admitted it bought items from Germany, Britain, the United States, Switzerland, France, Japan, Italy, Sweden and Brazil that ought to have been "declared," but weren't. Hence, the IAEA had no way of determining that these undeclared items were employed during the 1980s in a program intended to produce nuke-useable highly enriched uranium.

There already existed a 40-member Nuclear Suppliers Group – which included no-nuke states such as Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Italy, Sweden and Brazil – which was originally formed to control the export by NSG members of items that clearly could be used in a clandestine nuke-development program.

In 1996, the NSG decided to henceforth control items that were not-so-clearly of use in a nuke-development program. Furthermore, NSG members began to require the recipient nation – NPT signatory or not – to subject all such NSG imports to the IAEA-NPT regime.

In effect, since 1996, the NSG has become the export "enforcer" and the IAEA the import "enforcer" for preventing nuke proliferation, transcending the NPT, itself.

The United Nations Security Council can impose sanctions for NPT violations and may – if it can be shown that the violations result in an immediate threat to other nations – even authorize the use of force to remove the threat.

The U.N. Security Council had merely imposed economic sanctions on Iraq in 1991 for NPT violations and ordered Iraq to destroy what was left of its clandestine – but unsuccessful – uranium-enrichment program. However, if Iraq had been discovered in 2003 to have resumed its nuke-development program, the Security Council might well have authorized application of the Bush Doctrine to Iraq.

As we now know, Saddam had not even attempted to resume nuke development.

Of course, if the U.N. Security Council determines that any nation's activities constitute an immediate threat to other nations, it can authorize the use of force to remove that threat, irrespective of whether that nation is an NPT signatory or not.

A decade ago, North Korea already had a gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor – ostensibly to produce 5 megawatts of electricity – and was building larger plants, all capable of producing weapons-useable plutonium. Ominously, North Korea had also built and was operating a plant to recover that plutonium.

All of these facilities and plutonium produced had been subjected to the IAEA-NPT regime back in 1992. However, there had been a dispute about how much plutonium ought to have been "declared." Enter Clinton-Carter and their 1994 Agreed Framework: In return for two free nuclear power plants, North Korea agreed to "freeze" all its other nuclear activities – the freeze to be verified by on-site IAEA inspectors.

Then, last year, we accused North Korea of violating the Agreed Framework. So, North Korea announced it was withdrawing from the NPT and unfreezing its nuke-development program.

Most Americans agree that preventing nuke terrorism justifies the preemptive use of force. But as the IAEA reported a year ago, it was Kim Jong-Il who had nukes or the makings, thereof – not Saddam Hussein. North Korea seceded from the NPT, not Iraq.

Seceding from the NPT was, of course, North Korea's right. But seceding from the Union was South Carolina's right, too.

So, even though Kim fired the first shot, Bush retaliated by invading and occupying Iraq. That's a bit like Lincoln retaliating for Fort Sumter by invading and occupying Canada.

Who knows? Maybe he should have.