A United Nations panel released a report on the human rights travesty of North Korea, noting that the brutality and inhumanity of its treatment of its citizens "does not have any parallel in the contemporary world."
Reports of unthinkable atrocities and horrible suffering inflicted on the North Koreans are hardly new, but they now have been documented in detail, and the question is whether the UN will be willing and capable of doing anything but becoming "very, very angry" with North Korea's leader.
As an aside, note the mealy-mouthed denunciation emanating from Wendy Sherman, the fourth-highest official in the Obama State Department -- who was a top official on North Korea during the Clinton administration:
We know a whole generation of children is growing up (in North Korea) with stunted growth and stunted intellect . . . As I have always said North Korea is not a place any of us would want to live in, and I give the United Nations credit for highlighting the horrible human rights abuses that are going on in North Korea.
Really? That's the best she's got -- it's "not a place any of us would want to live in"?! Perhaps it's not surprising from the woman who characterized Kim Jong-il -- who put in place many of the terrifying policies continued by his son, the current leader -- as "smart, engaged, knowledgeable, self-confident, sort of the master-director of all he surveyed."
Sherman is now in charge of the nuclear negotiations with Iran, whom she's praising for keeping its commitments. Feel safer?