There are mushroom clouds in North Korea
Lucky this didn't happen in Iraq, or we would have had to invade or something.

From the A.P.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the United States did not know what caused a mysterious huge blast in North Korea last week, but it was not a nuclear test.

[He knows all the tell-tale signs, too. Remember his presentation in front of the U.N. in 2003? He really knows his stuff.]

According to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, a huge explosion rocked North Korea's northern inland province of Ryanggang last week, triggering a mushroom-shaped cloud near a secret underground military base. [No worries there.]

Powell also commented on a report in the New York Times that US officials had received conflicting intelligence reports in recent days indicating North Korea may be preparing to conduct its first nuclear weapon test.

"With respect to reports in the paper this morning that there is activity going on at a potential nuclear test site, we are monitoring this," Powell said.

"We have been watching it. We can't tell whether it's normal maintenance activity or something more. So it's inconclusive at this moment, but we continue to monitor these things very carefully," he said.

[Something tells me if there were an oil well anywhere around we'd be launching B-52s right now.]

Now, here is a voice you can trust:

[She's all about the mushroom clouds.]

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said the United States was seeking "further analysis" of what occurred in North Korea. [Wish we had done that in Iraq.]

"There are all kinds of reports and there are all kinds of assessments that are going on, maybe it was a fire of some kind, a forest fire (?) of some kind," she said. [A forest fire? Looks like they need the president's "healthy forest" initiative really bad.] "But we don't believe at this point that it was a nuclear event."

[All kinds of reports. Reports, reports, reports. She's always reading reports, like the one that said "Bin Laden determined to attack in America." Remember that one Condi?]