If this does not scare you, you need your head examined.
Two employees of Pakistan’s atomic energy agency have been abducted in the country’s restive north-western region abutting the Afghan border, police say.
One hopes that this was not a voluntary thing, because I’d rather have uncooperative nuclear technicians sharing a room with al Queida terrorists.
Not much of a surprise.
Considering the American record on nuclear power, the terms over budget and behind schedule come to mind, the negotiations between France and India on nuclear power should come as no surprise.
They will get the job done right, and given the direct involvement of the French government, if the contractors screw up, they won’t go running to the government to get their money, as a number of US plants built in India have (IIRC one tied to Enron).
So, Bush’s agreement with India probably won’t generate a whole bunch of business for US companies, and it makes us less safe too…lovely.
A number of former defense officials from NATO Countries, including former JCS Chairman, and son of a Waffen SS member, John Shalikashvili, have recommended that NATO should reorganize to allow it to incorporate nuclear first strikes into it’s tactics.
Calling for a major change to Nato’s approach to defending its members and their interests, the authors of the report, which has been handed to Nato and Pentagon chiefs, said the first-strike use of nuclear weapons was a “indispensable instrument”.
I’m sorry, but anyone who says, “The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction,” is simply, and deeply nuts.
The fact that this is not just laughed out of NATO and Pentagon HQ is an indication that something is truly broken about the way we think.
We are looking at somewhere around 100 dead after clashes in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
There appears to be artillery in use by the army, and militants have apparently seized a border fortress.
This is getting worse, not better.
It appears increasingly as if Pakistan, a nuclear armed nation, may be on the verge of descending into anarchy.
Remember when I mentioned that Obama’s Senate subcommittee never met? It was the Foreign Relations’ Subcommittee on Europe.
It might look at things like, I don’t know, the fact that the Russians are threatening to retarget Europe over the US Missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.
General Nikolai Solovtsov, head of strategic missile forces says that Russia might just do this if the installation is seen to, “undermine the Russian nuclear deterrent capability”.
Just because it doesn’t get a whole bunch of press doesn’t mean that it isn’t important work. John Kerry, in a similar position, was instrumental in breaking open the criminal terrorist money laundering operation known as BCCI.
We now have reports that India is accelerating production of its nuclear capable 3500 km range Agni-III missile.
Additionally, it’s working on a 6000km range missile, and if it can miniaturize its warheads, it can probably get at least 20% more range.
3500 km puts Beijing firmly in range, so we have the makings of an arms race, and Bush wants to sell them nuclear technology.
Just grand.
This is the new Russian cruise missile, the Kh-101/102. 
According to Aviation Week (paid subscription required) this is to have a roughly 5000km (3000 mi) range and a small radar cross section.
This compares favorably to the current Kh-55, a non stealthy design with a shorter range (2550 km) and smaller size (6m vs 8m).
On the bottom, about halfway down, appears to be a chin mounted air intake, though this might be some sort of EO sensor, as the -101 version is conventionally armed, and hence needs more precise targeting.
It can be carried internally on the Tu-160 Blackjack, and externally on the TU-95 Bear.
Iran shuttered its program in 2003, and it remains shut down to this day.
I’m not sure why the CIA, NSA, DIA, etc. are pushing back against Dick Cheney and rest of the war porn chicken hawks, but it’s good that they are.
I’m not sure why the DNI, who has been adamant about not releasing NIEs, chose to release this. My guess is that someone in the press got a hold of it.
The Iranians have put it very clearly, they do not consider the United States, or at least the US as led by Bush and His Evil Minions™ to be a reliable negotiating partner. I agree with them Bush cannot be trusted to enter into good faith negotiations.
What’s more, this is a reasonable, and rational position.
“We don’t trust the United States,” he told McClatchy Newspapers after the IAEA Board of Governors finished its latest round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program. “We could suspend nuclear enrichment. We did it before for two and half years. But it wasn’t enough then, and wouldn’t be enough now. We will not suspend enrichment again because there is no end to what the United States will demand.”
I agree with Matthew Yglesias’s assesment, that it makes no sense to try to appease religious fanatics, so any confidence building measure is meaningless when the current US government simply cannot be trusted.
As I’ve said before, Musharraf is not a reliable partner on terrorism, choosing instead to spend US aid on Military Bling, and now Benazir Bhutto is calling on him to resign.
I see real echoes of the fall of the Shah of Iran, only this time, there is a nuclear arsenal involved.
Heckuva job Bushie.
The FAS has a has obtained new nuclear strike guidelines developed by the Bush administration:
The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and White House guidance issued in response to the terrorist attacks against the United States in September 2001 led to the creation of new nuclear strike options against regional states seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction, according to a military planning document obtained by the Federation of American Scientists.
It should be noted that this is not about one or two nukes, it’s about a massive nuclear strike on the country targeted.
The creation of a “target base” indicates that the planning went further than simple retaliatory punishment with one or a few weapons, but envisioned actual nuclear warfighting intended to annihilate a wide range of facilities in order to deprive the states the ability to launch and fight with WMD. The new plan formally broadened strategic nuclear targeting from two adversaries (Russia and China) to a total of seven.
The second draft from March 2005 listed five scenarios where use of nuclear weapons might be requested:
(emphasis mine)
Let’s be clear about this, the last line basically says that we will engage in a massive nuclear first strike as an exercise in dick swinging. Basically, it allows for nuclear strikes to show that we are willing to make nuclear strikes.
If you are not terrified by Bush and his Rapture driven nuclear policies, I want whatever it is that you are smoking.
While we are trying to cut a sweet deal for Westinghouse and the rest of the moribund nuclear power industry, India continues to advance their military nuclear arsenal, this time with a test-fiuring of the Agni-1 missile.
Truth be told, I believe India’s nuclear arsenal to be reasonably secure. The problem is that as they develop this arsenal, Pakistan feels compelled to develop their nuclear arsenal, and I think that the whole of Pakistan is insecure.
Chen Shui-bian has promised not to develop nuclear weapons.
There is some interesting history and law here. The history is that they did have an active nuclear weapons program in the 1970s, but Jimmy Carter shut it down.
The law is that the NNPT applies to nations, and not governments, so a strict reading would say that Taiwan, official name Republic of China, could be considered to have the right to develop and deploy weapons, as it is, according to the UN, China.
On a more pragmatic side, if Taiwan were developing nukes, and China found out, all hell would break loose, though if Taiwan actually had deployed nukes on delivery vehicles before it became known, it would stabilize the situation by forestalling potential PRC invasions.
Generally, I subscribe to the old adage, no nukes is good nukes.
The BJP is literally the only significant Fascist left on the planet. Its origins go back to the Fascist parties of the 1930s, and there is a direct line back to the man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi.
A breakthrough in the India-US nuclear deal
India’s nuclear deal with the US might be saved. After weeks of bad news, with the Indian government failing to get its Communist-led parliamentary allies on side, the ground is at last shifting and it looks as if the Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s main opposition which has been objecting to the deal, might save the day.
It is of course too early to be sure, but I’d put money on a parliamentary debate quite soon where the Left gets isolated and there is a consensus – or maybe even a vote – in favor of going ahead. That would enable the deal to proceed via the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and meet the January deadline that the US is aiming for.
So what’s happened to lift the pall of gloom that was falling last week over the deal and over India-US relations? Basically, US diplomats in Delhi – plus former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who is visiting the city – have been calling in favors from old contacts in the BJP who they have been nurturing for years. The US has always felt more comfortable with the right-wing Hindu-nationalist BJP than with the Congress Party, which leads the current government. The BJP, which started defense and nuclear talks with the US when it was in power from 1998-2004, has traditionally been seen as more pro-business than Congress, which comes from a Socialist background and built India’s Cold War alliance with the former Soviet Union.
The US has also seen the BJP, with its base among India’s majority Hindu population, as a bulwark against Islam. So for years American diplomats have been courting young aspiring BJP politicians, as well as their leaders. Now, as I said, is the time to call in favors – and the calls are beginning to yield results.
The idea that the US has been consciously meddling in Indian politics this way is troubling. The BJP has an absolutely reprehensible policy toward religious minorities that has stoked the separatist fires in this nuclear armed nation is very counterproductive.
As to India’s “alliance with the former Soviet Union”, this really was a policy of neutrality, and a willingness of the USSR to supply weapons, because they both had a common foe, China.
As to the nuclear issue, the Indian government already knows how to make nuclear power plants, this deal, for them, is about getting an implied approval of their nuclear weapons program from the US, and Bush and His Evil Minions™ are merely interested in generating business for campaign contributors, in this case the moribund US nuclear power industry.
The deal is corrupt, and dangerous.
Disciplinary actions have been taken against over 50 military personnel as a result of the nuclear warheads flying to Barksdale from Minot.
I still find it hard to believe that this was not intentional, perhaps a bit of patriotic insubordination from someone who saw that the nukes were being pre positioned to launch a nuclear strike on Iran.
See the opening paragraph of the New York Times article on the recent political upheval.
The scenes of carnage in Pakistan this week conjured what one senior administration official on Friday called “the nightmare scenario” for President Bush’s last 15 months in office: Political meltdown in the one country where Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and nuclear weapons are all in play.
In Augues, I referred to Pakistan as an almost failed state. Significant portions of the country are not under government control, the place is lousy with automatic weapons, and there is a significant Islamist movement there.
Pakistan is not fully cooperating because it cannot. It would destabilize the already fragile country, and then its nuclear arsenal would be up for grabs.
Some analysis on GlobalSecurity.org and Phoenix Woman’s blog do a pretty good job of evicerating the claims of nuclear weapons activity.
So, if it’s not nukes, what did Israel hit? It hit weapons destined to Hamas in Lebanon.
Why would they do this? To regain credibility after the debacle in Lebanon.
On to the debunking.
First, my analysis:
Syria is not even close to have the basic nuclear infrastructure that could begin to construct nuclear weapons infrastructure. They have little in the way of Uranium, no smelting facilities, no enrichment or other purification facilities, and very little of the human capital necessary.
Second, Phoenix Woman:
A 5 MW reactor is big. From the satellite photo, once can see that the Yongbyon site is 4500 x 2500 m, or roughly 2.5 mi x 1.5 mi. The reactor building is very roughly 250 x 450 m. It consumes massive amounts of fuel: 110 tons of spent fuel per year. John Pike’s GlocalSecurity thinks that the satellite imagery of a uranium enrichment facility might be missed. In my opinion, the large amount of ore required would not be, especially considering that Syria doesn’t have good ore sources (it does have a site which extracts uranium from phosphate at Homs, but the uranium is a contaminant; see Glocal Security below).
In other words, it’s just too damn big to hide from the very earliest stages of site preparation.
Third, GlobalSecurity.org:
“dramatic satellite imagery” – the types of activity associated with nuclear weapons development, particularly at the early stages of the program, are precisely the sorts of things that are not going to produce dramatic satellite imagery, which is why North Korea’s uranium program is so vexing for the United States.
“primarily from Israel” – the reliance on such liasion sourced intelligence that could not be independently verified was one of the central problems with the Iraq WMD intelligence failure, and either evidence is “primarily from Israel” [ie, HUMINT] or it is independtly knowable by the United States based on “dramatic satellite imagery” but it is difficult to comprehend how both statements could be true.
“restricted to a few senior officials” – this part of the story is designed to explain to other reporters why their sources are unable to confirm any of the details of this report
“arrival at the Syrian port of Tartus” – this is not a large facility, and this news story would have us believe that Israeli intelligence has intimate knowledge of unloading activities at this port, a collection capability that was willingly compromised here
“labeled as cement” — cement is normally transported as a bulk powder, and less frequently in recent decades in bags — neither form of transport would usefully conceal nuclear related components, and labeling some other means of transport [eg, standard 40-foot containters] as cement would be so patently false as to immediately draw suspicion to the shipment.
“on the Euphrates River, close to the Turkish border” — the implication, though not over assertion, is that over the course of three days Israeli intelligence was able to track the shipment as it travelled half-way across Syria, or that Israeli surveillance of Syria is so comprehensive that the shipment was detected upon arrival — either of which is very impressive and hard to believe.
“using it to extract uranium from phosphates” – Syria has a phosphate industry, which supports the production of fertilizer and phosphoric acid. Between 1996 and 2001 Syria operated a pilot plant at Homs for the purification of phosphoric acid, in order to remove the uranium contanmination so that the phosphoric acid could be used for food processing. This project was financed by the UN Developement Program, supported by the IAEA, and not bombed by Israel.
And if that is not enough, we have John “The Mustache of Doom” Bolton as one of the sources for the press.
On 16 September 2007 former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton said “it will be very unusual for Israel to conduct such a military operation inside Syria other (than) for a very high value target and certainly a Syrian effort in nuclear weapon area will qualify. … I think this is a clear message not only to Syria, this is a clear message to Iran as well that its continued efforts to acquire nuclear weapons are not going to go unanswered…” Bolton never claims direct knowledge of the facts of the matter, only that a strike against Syrian nuclear capabilities would be in the interest of Israel.
John Bolton has never let the truth stop him from making baseless accusations, but even HE is not willing to claim that there is a nuke facility.
As a result of a breakdown in diplomatic relations between Russia and the US, Russia is threatening to leave the INF missile treaty.
Not a big surprise, you locate a missile defense site that is clearly targeted against Russia, and they don’t trust us. Go figure.
The original treaty only happened because we had missiles in Europe that could hit their homeland. This time, if the Russians do breakout from the treaty, there will be no US Pershings of Tomohawks. Public opinion in Europe will not allow it.
Putin knows the score, and as Lowermanhattanite says at the group news blog, never confuse a poseur (Bush, Cheney, Rice) with the real gangsta (Putin, former KGB, Clinton called him the “Coldest SOB I’ve ever Met”).
Thank God!
The US-India civilian nuclear deal was supported by Bush and His Evil Minions™ because it was a big wet kiss (and no small subsidy to) the American civilian nuclear industry.
It cemented India’s position as a nuclear power, and in so doing stoked the fire of the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan, and as I’ve said before, (see also here), this accellerates Pakistan’s program, and makes the loss of one or more weapons during civil unrest (Pakistan is in some ways bordering on being a failed state) to lord knows who.
Thank you to the Indian Communist party* for apparrently killing this deal. Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister has apparently killed the deal for now.
*One of the joys of the Bush and His Evil Minions™ is that on at least a weekly basis I am saying things, at least to myself, that I would never have thought possible.
OK, this has gone back and forth about half a dozen times now, but this is the current flavor of the day.
According to “U.S. and foreign officials who had access to the analysts’ intelligence reports”, the reactor was very similar to the DPRK’s graphite moderated reactor at Yongbyon.
Here are the two most significant quotes from the article:
Information on the raid has been under under tight wraps in both Washington and Israel, the newspaper said, restricted to a handful of officials, and Israeli media have been barred from publishing information about it.
But a senior Israeli official said the attack was meant to “re-establish the credibility of our deterrent power,” the Times said. Several U.S. officials told the paper the strike may also have been intended for the attention of Iran and its nuclear program.
I read this as saying that it was primarily intended to be a warning to Iran, but there is an unspoken subtext, that the Olmert government might have been motivated to make the strike, at least to a degree, for political considerations.
The proof will be in whether or not Olmert calls for snap elections soon.
The newspaper also reported that Vice President Dick Cheney and other hawkish members of the administration contended that the same intelligence that prompted Israel’s attack on the reactor strengthened the case for U.S. reconsideration of negotiations with North Korea over ending its nuclear program, as well as Washington’s diplomatic posture with Syria.
This means that the usual suspects among the Neocons are using this as an excuse to agitate for war with Syria (and possibly Iran) and to overturn the current deals with the DRPK.
One should recall that vb before building the reactor at Yongbyon, the DPRK had already located Uranium mines, begun mining, and had manufactured fuel, both unenriched and enriched. The presence of a reactor in Syria does not constitute a competent and self-sufficient nuclear program on its own.