Bush steps back from "Axis of Evil" to reward North Korea.

For a man who has never previously expressed any belief in rehabilitation, it was a remarkable turnaround. George Bush has decided that North Korea is no longer "evil".

And it's happened in the strangest fashion.

Clinton had North Korea pretty much in a box when Bush, Cheney et al decided that this was pandering to a dictator state and pretty much tore up Clinton's carefully constructed plan to contain them.

Having been rejected by the Bush regime, North Korea then went on to build a nuclear bomb and, when they did this, Bush, Cheney et al suddenly wanted to talk to them again.

And now, for having agreed to dismantle the bomb that Clinton's plan would never have allowed them to build in the first place, Bush has decided that Kim Jong-il - the man he once described as a "pygmy" - is no longer a pygmy at all. Indeed, he now joins such luminaries as Gaddafi of Libya, as people who used to be "evil" but became good again through destroying their weapons arsenals, even though many of us question whether Gaddafi ever had any WMD at all... but I digress.

So now Bush is removing North Korea from the US's list of states that sponsor terror and lifting sanctions on Kim Jong-il.

"This can be a moment of opportunity for North Korea," said President Bush, "If it continues to make the right choices it can repair its relationship with the international community."

By "international community" Bush is, of course, referring to himself. In this case, he is the international community.

But, just along the corridor of the White House, this is going down like a cup of cold sick in Dick Cheney's office.

Two days ago, during an off-the-record session with a group of foreign policy experts, Vice President Dick Cheney got a question he did not want to answer. “Mr. Vice President,” asked one of them, “I understand that on Wednesday or Thursday, we are going to de-list North Korea from the terrorism blacklist. Could you please set the context for this decision?”

Mr. Cheney froze, according to four participants at the Old Executive Office Building meeting. For more than 30 minutes he had been taking and answering questions, without missing a beat. But now, for several long seconds, he stared, unsmilingly, at his questioner, Steven Clemons of the New America Foundation, a public policy institution. Finally, he spoke:

“I’m not going to be the one to announce this decision,” the other participants recalled Mr. Cheney saying, pointing at himself. “You need to address your interest in this to the State Department.” He then declared that he was done taking questions, and left the room.

I am suspecting that Dick Cheney is not a fan of rehabilitation and that that minx, Condi Rice, is off his Christmas card list.

It's strange though that we should have such acts of symbolism at the very end of the Bush presidency.

And in a sign of its good faith, to be carried live on television, it will today demolish the cooling tower of the already disabled Yongbyon nuclear reactor, 60 miles from the capital, Pyongyang. Diplomats and TV networks from the US, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia will witness the largely symbolic act.

But the real symbolism here isn't in the destruction of the cooling tower; it's the fact that Bush is, in his final days, being forced to accept the limitations of presidential power.

The world would be a much better place had he been forced to realise this much, much earlier.

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Tags: Kim Jong-il, North Korea, Bush, Cheney, Axis of Evil, Rice, neo-cons