Thursday, February 10, 2005

Anybody Want A Nuclear Bomb?

That is what North Korea said today.

The North Korean regime is known at "Missiles Are Us" and they've sold missiles to Iran.

In 2002, President Bush threatened Iraq, Iran and North Korea. After seeing what we did in Iraq, apparently North Korea does not want to be next. This is the insurance policy that we have forced them to buy. It buys us a dangerous future.

This is a foreign policy disaster. A dramatic failure. We are now less safe with a nuclear North Korea. Of course they will embark on exporting their new industry. Any buyers? Osama bin Laden perhaps? How about Iran? I'm going out on a limb here and I'll say that Iran will pay big money for a nuke.

The remaining two countries in the "axis-of-evil" are now natural allies.

The president's bellicose language and military adventurism has earned us a nuclear foe.

Stupid.

7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Erick, North Korea's nukes are Bush's fault? The hardest part about making a nuke is getting the fissionable materials (that is why the Tons of Yellow cake taken out of Iraq was such a big deal, to anyone who understands basic physics)
Clinton (you know of Monica's Blue Dress) and Madeline Albright GAVE North Korea the fissionable materials. Now they have a bomb it is Bush's fault.......

You never took Physics and you got a D in your other science courses.

Ed R-
Ex-Physics Professor,

February 10, 2005 at 10:01 PM  
Blogger dillon said...

Hi Ed,

Thanks for posting. I enjoy a civil free exchange of ideas.

Now before I reply to your point, such as it is, you mentioned Iraq and yellowcake in the same sentence.

That is one of my favorite Bush lies regarding nuclear material. In fact, it is one of my favorite Bush lies period.

But at least the president admitted that yellow cake and Iraq was a lie in his infamous SOTU.

Now on to President Clinton "giving" the DPRK fissionable materials.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) recognizes the "inalienable right" of all signatories to "the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information" related to the "use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes."

That means that Iran has the "inalienable right" to acquire nuclear reactors or uranium-enrichment centrifuges from Russia.

On the other hand – thanks to Bush-Cheney-Bolton – the Democratic Republic of North Korea (DPRK) is no-longer a NPT signatory, and hence, has no such "inalienable right."

Each no-nuke signatory agrees to conclude with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) a Safeguards agreement. All "source" and "special fissionable materials" as well as any activities involving them are to be made subject to the IAEA Safeguards agreement. The IAEA is thereafter responsible for preventing their "diversion."

That means that Iran is required to subject to IAEA Safeguards all uranium, plutonium and thorium – in whatever form and however obtained – as well as all activities wherein safeguarded materials are transformed, produced or processed.

On the other hand, – thanks to Bush-Cheney-Bolton – the DPRK has no such requirement.

Under Article II, each no-nuke signatory agrees "not to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons."

Iran, in agreeing to an Additional Protocol to their Safeguards Agreement, has essentially given the IAEA the authority to police that agreement.

But – thanks to Bush-Cheney-Bolton – the DPRK is no longer subject to the NPT and can now develop, test, manufacture and sell nukes.

Alas, until more no-nuke signatories follow the DPRK example and withdraw from the NPT, the Koreans will just have terrorists as customers for their nukes.

Candidate Kerry castigated President Bush last week, arguing that his preoccupation with Iraq had allowed the current DPRK nuke mess to develop. He claimed Bush had "pulled the rug out from under Kim Dae Jung," then president of South Korea, by refusing to endorse the Clinton-Kim policy of engagement with the DPRK.

The basis for the Clinton-Kim policy had been the U.S.-IAEA-DPRK Agreed Framework of 1994.

In 1992, the IAEA had essentially accused DPRK of having a clandestine nuke program.

The DPRK denied that it did, but agreed under the Agreed Framework to "freeze" all its nuclear programs, including abandoning the construction of additional Russian-supplied reactors from whose spent-fuel weapons-grade plutonium could be recovered, and make them subject to IAEA Safeguards. In return, an international consortium – led by South Korea – would construct in the DPRK two free conventional nuclear power plants.

In the interim, Clinton had agreed to provide 500,000 tons of free fuel oil, annually, to the DPRK.

Say what? Provide a half-million tons of free fuel oil every year for at least five more years to a Commie country that – technically – we have been at war with since 1950?

What to do?

How about this? In the Agreed Framework we promised on a stack of Bibles that we wouldn't attack them with nukes so long as they remained a no-nuke NPT-signatory. Why not provoke them into withdrawing from the NPT?

Why not?

First, tell South Korea's Kim in March 2001 that President Bush and Secretary Powell would not continue the talks with North Korea representatives begun the year before by President Clinton and Secretary Albright.

Next, have Bush say this about DPRK in his 2002 State of the Union Address:

"Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September the 11th. But we know their true nature. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens

"States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world."

Finally, in October 2002, have some anonymous State Department munchkin tell a few media sycophants that some anonymous DPRK official admitted to him at a cocktail party that they had a clandestine uranium-nuke program.

Never mind that the DPRK vehemently denies to this day having any such program. Never mind that to this day our intelligence community hasn't got the foggiest notion where this clandestine uranium-nuke program may be hiding. Cancel the free fuel-oil to DPRK.

And launch a preemptive attack at the other end of the axis of evil.

Well, that did it. DPRK withdrew from the NPT and has since recovered enough weapons-grade plutonium from its frozen spent fuel to make a half-dozen nukes.

You know, Kerry may have a point.

Ya think?

February 11, 2005 at 9:04 AM  
Blogger dillon said...

Note: I linked to anti-war but it didn't work for some reason. -

February 11, 2005 at 9:10 AM  
Blogger oldwhitelady said...

You never took Physics and you got a D in your other science courses.

Ed R-
Ex-Physics Professor,

10:01 PM
Can't you sue this guy for posting your grade on the internet?
Maybe Bush didn't have a hand in supplying the nukes (however, thinking about all the weapons and countries supplying same to Iraq, there is no way to say Bush didn't) but I wonder if this is a ghastly plan to get all the countries to buy black Halliburton market weaponry. I say this tongue in cheek, but I would bet that people selling weaponry under the table are making a killing, in more ways than one.

February 11, 2005 at 12:28 PM  
Blogger nascarblue said...

Ed R. a physics professor? Then Mr. Physics let me ask you something... If you're so smart and don't have the nerve to even post your real reply address, what do you make of the aluminum coke cans Iraq bought for that yellow cake? Or was it bundt cake? I would think if you were going to throw a party bundt cake would go better, don't you? HAHAHA. The fact that you even bring up the Yellow Cake, whether out of the forged Mossad Nigerian doc's or what the US might have sold Saddam over the span of a number of years, is beyond me. Most be one of the misunderestimate kind of things?

February 14, 2005 at 5:44 AM  
Blogger nascarblue said...

Oh, and to the above post about Halliburton? let's not forget Bechtel and Carlyle either. Billions, if not trillions. And that doesn't include the massive heroin trade they've got now. If you see a huge upswing in China White heroin compared to the last 30 years of predominate Mexican Black Tar, you can thank your CIA local chapter. No wonder Gary Webb shot himself twice. If he did at all.

February 14, 2005 at 5:48 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dillon Your cut and paste skills are getting very good. I bet all the sophmore girls are soooo impressed. Too bad you didn't have an original thought....

Ed R-

February 15, 2005 at 1:50 AM  

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