Despite the best efforts of Dick Cheney and John Bolton, who have always wanted war with North Korea, it looks like an agreement has been forged, as the DPRK has demolished the cooling tower at their Yongbyon reactor.
The things that they are asking for, formal recognition, trade, and some aid are much cheaper than war.
These appear to be the crown jewels of Pakistani nukes, with warheads small enough to fit on missiles.
Profoundly disturbing, and according to the story above, it’s freaking out the Pakistanis too.
Syria will be allowing the IAEA to inspect the site bombed by the Israelis in late June.
I’m not sure if this means that they think that they can fool the inspectors, if they have decided that coming clean is the best way to cut their losses, or if the site wasn’t a nuclear power plant in the first place.
I await the report from the inspectors.
While this is a refreshing change from the Bush administration’s policy of nukes forever, it’s also loaded with caveats and absent any real specifics, so it won’t go anywhere.
The IAEA is saying that Iran is not coming clean on its nuclear weapons research program that it terminated a few years back.
I’m beginning to wonder if the Mullahs want a US attack, because it would secure their position for the next 20 years.
Given the range, and location, of these missiles, my guess is that they are primarily directed toward India, with whom China has had border disputes for some time.
North Korea has 18,822 pages in 314 volumes regarding its nuclear program, and for once the US envoy is saying something positive.
The largest stumbling block in negotiations with the DPRK has not been the paranoid and secretive rulers in North Korea. It has been the batsh&% insane folks at the top of the Bush administration, who think that peacefully settling disputes is capitulation.
India has tested a nuclear capable ballistic missile with a range in excess of 300km, which puts much of China firmly in range, and Pakistan test fired a nuclear capable cruise missile with a 350 km range.
While I understand the threat that al Queida in the region poses, the fact that we have two nuclear armed powers who might actually pull the trigger on each other seems to me to be far more pressing, particularly since it could not involve the Chinese.
The Chinese appear to aggressively moving towards some sort of submarine based deterrent according to this report by the Federation of American Scientists.
They have a satellite picture (commercial resolution) of one of the boomers at a dock:
There appears to be significant development at the Yulin naval base to accommodate this, including tunnels and a demagnetization facility.
The reports that the island is very near the edge of the continental shelf, which means that the subs could get into deep water quickly, which is typically where you want a boomer, except, of course for the fact that US boats have been doing deep water for the past 50 years.
If China gets a meaningful SSBN deterrent, it represents a threat to US military power, though it is probably a stabalizing factor, because it prevents a nut like Lynne Cheney from going postal on a nuclear level on them with nuclear weapons.
Sounds familiar *Cough* Iraq *Cough*? Don’t worry, we have video taped evidence, so there can be no question that…what????
Oh, we don’t have a video tape. We have a video presentation of a PowerPoint presentation, so what we have is something that is very close to Colin Powell’s infamous UN presentation (full disclosure, I know people who were involved int he technical end of the production):
A US official, requesting anonymity, told AFP: “There are still photographs of the facility as part of the video, but it’s a video presentation, like a Powerpoint presentation. It’s not a video of the facility.”
Just to remind everyone, we have no credibility on this:
Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha yesterday angrily denounced the U.S. and Israeli assertions. ‘If they show a video, remember that the U.S. went to the U.N. Security Council and displayed evidence and images about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I hope the American people will not be as gullible this time around,’ he said.
From your mouth to God’s ear.
Damn. They are installing 6000 centerfuges in Natanz. This is in addition to the 3,000 already there.
It’s like they are in some dick swinging contest with George W. Bush.
It appears that the USAF is looking to change its draw down on B-52s, with 76, as opposed to 56.
Their justification is that they want some of the B-52s dedicated to nuclear strike, as opposed to swapping squadrons in and out of the service, on the theory that they won’t do stupid stuff like sending detonators to Taiwan, or flying live missiles by mistake.
Once again, the BUFF (Big Ugly Fat F&^%er) is being tasked to pull the Air Force brass’s ass out of a fire.
It appears that batteries were mistaken for missile fuses.
Well that cinches it for me, Homer Simpson and George W. Bush are the same people.
Think about it. You’ve never seen them together at the same place and the same time.
Also, look at the Simpsons episode with George H.W. Bush….That hatred is Oedipal.
This is something that we should be doing too. Sarkosy has announced that the French nuclear arsenal will be cut to less than 300, about half of what it was at its peak.
This is a good step for everyone. Currently, according to the wiki, “[the USA] maintains a current arsenal of around 9,960 intact warheads, of which 5,735 are considered active or operational”.
I see no reason that we could not drop down to below 1000 operational warheads.
Dan Froomkin notes that Bush just stated that the Iranian government, “declared they want to have a nuclear weapon to destroy people.”
You know, when no such thing was said, and quite honestly it never would be said, because even by that clown Achmedinijad.
I hope that he’s lying, because if he believes it, then we have an insane man in the White House, and a congress unwilling to remove him.
Well, it looks like Judith Miller style neocon warmongering is not dead at the New York Times. Yes, we now have new members of the Leonard Pinth-Garnell school of journalism, William Broad and David Sanger.
Short version of the story, is that the NIE saying that Iran had halted nuke weapons work is bunk, and they may have a nuke by next year.
This, along with Fallon’s firing, is a pretty good indicator that Bush and His Evil Minions™ want to bomb Iran before Jan 21 2009.
This is why the two Democratic nominees need to say specifically that any order to attack Iran in the absence of a congressional authorization would be an illegal order, and that, if elected, they would prosecute soldiers who obey illegal orders.
Those nuclear warheads that were “misplaced” a few months back were not “misplaced” it was an attempt to stage them for a nuclear first strike.
Thanks to Digby for the catch.
So, the US is now demanding some sort of “clear signal” in order for negotiations to proceed.
The problem here is that there are people in political positions, who I won’t name for fear that they will get drunk and shoot me in the face, who believe that negotiations of any sort are a victory for North Korea, and a defeat for the US, so the directives come down to keep erecting road blocks.
The North Koreans are not crazy. They are secretive, in many ways criminal, largely uncaring about the wellbeing of their population, and paranoid, but they are not crazy.
They honestly believe, and have believed for the last 50 years, that the US is planning a sneak attack against them in the hope of decapitating their regime and taking over their country.
Every time there is progress in discussions, and then the US creates another stupid hoop to jump through, it reinforces that belief.
This is well and truly stupid.
Since 2006, the Chinese nuclear arsenal has increased by 1/3.
When one considers the strategic needs of China, they would generally be geared towards protecting supply lanes for oil and other strategic materials, but we see a buildup here that is largely ICBMs and nuclear cruise missiles, which are useless in this scenario:
In fact, the only realistic use for these weapons is to deter the US from using their weapons as a threat to forestall specific Chinese actions **cough** Taiwan **cough**.
Were this simply a modernization, I don’t think that you would see an increase in warheads, because the older liquid fueled missiles would be decommissioned, and they have not been.
India is to conduct a test of a submarine launched ballistic missile, the K-15, which is nuclear capable, and has a 700 km range.
It is intended to be installed at some point on a nuclear submarine that India is building.
Yet more evidence that the arms race between India and Pakistan is continuing unabated.
In exercises they launches a Hatf III (Ghaznavi) missile, with a range of about 180 miles.