Did Bush mean to escalate the rhetoric against the North Korean government? Yes, of course.

But to this degree? That is unclear. And Wednesday, foreign policy experts of both political stripes tried to parse the administration's language -- including a classic botched sentence from Bush -- to try and determine how well this bodes for the vaunted foreign policy strength of the new administration.

"They really don't have their act together," observes Joel Wit, a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and formerly a State Department official responsible for implementing a 1994 agreement with North Korea that was to have ended the country's processing of plutonium at a factory suspected to be manufacturing nuclear weapons.

North Korea has been a persistent threat for decades, building an arsenal of chemical, biological and other weapons -- apparently even nuclear weapons. As other Communist anachronisms have fallen (like the USSR) or slightly evolved (like China), North Korea continues as a beacon of oppression, militaristic lust and state-sanctioned weirdness (its state-ordered worship of its Lenin-like dead "Eternal President" is but one example of this). U.S. allies like Japan and South Korea are concerned that North Korea could launch an attack against them -- or even against the United States -- in a matter of seconds, which has provided a key argument for the United States' development of a missile defense shield.

The case study begins March 6, the day before South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung, honored with last year's Nobel Peace Prize, met with President Bush, hoping to influence the new administration's views on the region before any policy had been set in stone.

That day, Secretary of State Colin Powell, during an appearance with European Union President and Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh and others, seemed moderate in tone and tenor when he mentioned that he and Lindh had discussed, among other matters, "how to encourage North Korea to comply with its nonproliferation obligations."

"As I said previously, and especially in my confirmation hearings, we do plan to engage with North Korea to pick up where President Clinton and his administration left off," Powell said. "Some promising elements were left on the table, and we'll be examining those elements."

This enraged GOP hawks, who view Clinton's policy toward North Korea as dishonest and disingenuous, and as coddling North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as he builds up an arsenal. Clinton administration foreign policy experts praised Kim for his steps toward peace. And though Powell called Kim a "dictator" during his January confirmation hearings before the Senate, his remarks about "picking up" where Clinton left off surely raised continued fears that Powell is too moderate.

The next day, the Bush administration's position seemed completely turned around.

The less conciliatory views of the GOP base had clearly been expressed both behind closed doors and in the meeting with South Korean President Kim, views shared by Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy and a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. "There are real concerns about the absence of real change by North Korea," Gaffney says. "And with an absence of any real changes, suggestions of concessions, political legitimization and perhaps even assistance is pretty much a debatable proposition."

Right after the meeting with President Kim -- but just minutes before Presidents Bush and Kim appeared at a press conference -- Powell was trotted out to make brief comments to the press. And he presented a very different message than he had the day before. "The president forcefully made the point that we are undertaking a full review of our relationship with North Korea," Powell said. "There was some suggestion that imminent negotiations are about to begin -- that is not the case."

"The president has made it clear that he understands the nature of regime in Pyongyang and will not be fooled by the nature of that regime and will view it in a very, very realistic, realistic way," Powell said.

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