Defense weenie/wonk gasps at gaffe.

I don't know why I find stories like this interesting.

Ok, yes I do. This idiot has some power and once had a lot more. And people pay to hear what he thinks.

Former Democratic House staffer and current political consultant and newsletter editor Chris Nelson mistakenly distributed an e-mail copy of a special report he prepared for the South Korean Embassy on the "players" in the United States on North Korea policy issues.

Mr. Nelson is viewed by conservatives in the Bush administration and on Capitol Hill as the voice of the liberal foreign-policy establishment, and his special report shows why. He harshly criticizes "hardliners" in the Bush administration, including the president, vice president, secretary of state and defense secretary, for what he calls a failed North Korea policy.

Mr. Nelson stated that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld makes all the decisions on North Korea issues at what is called "the big table" of senior aides. It was here that the Pentagon recently decided to send 15 F-117 stealth fighters to South Korea, he said.

I am not stupid enough to contradict Bill Gertz on defense matters, but the F-117A is really an strike/attack aircraft, despite the "F" designation. To my (admittedly limited) knowledge it has no air-to-air combat capabilities.

A second "little table" of Rumsfeld advisers works on the specifics of policy issues that are then presented to the big-table advisers.

The big-table team includes the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and key undersecretaries and assistant secretaries.

Mr. Nelson said Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita sits at both the big table and the little table.

The report noted that all the Pentagon key players "indulge, from time to time, with attempts to influence the press, particularly working through David Sanger of the New York Times, and Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post."

Mr. Nelson revealed that his Pentagon source for the Nelson Report, his weekly newsletter, is Bob Scher, a policy staffer who was "assigned to answer our questions."

Oops! No more free lunches at The Capital Grille for old Bobby Scher.

Mr. Nelson also criticized several reporters, including co-author of this column, Bill Gertz, who is described as "exceptionally dangerous" because he is anti-communist.

Uh, Chris? Yeah, the commies are the bad guys.

After the report was sent out, Mr. Nelson sent a second e-mail calling the mistake "the worst of my professional life."

"In a single moment of technical stupidity I have hurt and betrayed many who have tried so generously to help, and who share my deepest fears about Korea policy."

The apology e-mail helps explain why liberals tend to "blame America first," as former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick once put it. Mr. Nelson did not fault North Koreans for failing to resolve the nuclear issues. Instead, he said "a major contributor has been the inability of the [South Korean] and U.S. governments to communicate in full frankness and sympathy."
(Thanks to The Washington Times and Inside the Ring.)