PERFECTLY FINE WORDS - AT 6:48 P.M. ET:  President Obama, with the president of South Korea at his side, has issued some perfectly fine words about the conflict with North Korea:

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama said Tuesday that a nuclear-armed North Korea poses a "grave threat" to the world and vowed to end a cycle of allowing Pyongyang to create a crisis and then be rewarded with incentives to back down.

"This is a pattern they've come to expect," Obama said. "We are going to break that pattern."

With South Korean President Lee Myung-bak at his side in the White House Rose Garden, Obama said they agreed that a new U.N. resolution seeking to halt North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles must be fully enforced. The U.N. did not authorize military force to enforce the measures.

Lee said he and Obama agreed that "under no circumstance are we going to allow North Korea to possess nuclear weapons.

COMMENT:  That's a perfectly fine statement, but this president often makes perfectly fine statements, then never backs them up.  Will we actually enforce that UN resolution, or just have "discussions" with our allies?  Will we go back to the UN for "clarifications"?  The whole world is watching, including the Iranian government.

June 16, 2009