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It's exactly because this isotope is stable in this extremely toxic chemical form for so long that it deserves to be singled out.

Except that stability is not rare. It isn't a reason to single something out. It's just a propaganda tool: "Toxic for 24000 years!!11!" Never mind that most other toxic elements are toxic forever.

hope of the prospect of dealing with plutonium with technology that isn't available with existing materials technology.

You do understand that it has nothing to do with materials technology and nothing to do with untested reactors. You don't even need new reactors. A variety of existing reactors can use mixed oxide fuel. As I recall the CANDU is supposed to be the most effective at destroying Plutonium of those already in commission.

The hold up on actually doing it with all existing "waste" Plutonium -- which isn't to say that it hasn't been done before -- is the proliferation concern. Supposedly if you go around transporting Plutonium to be reprocessed into reactor fuel, it gives terrorists more opportunities to steal it. Of course, that's completely nonsense because it can't be stolen once it's destroyed, but it can be if you just leave it sitting around indefinitely. (One can also imagine a trivial way to deal with this: Put the military in charge of transporting it from place to place and have them take the same precautions they do with actual nuclear weapons.)

Ingest one millionth of a gram of plutonium and it will kill you, the radiation will induce cancer in the body - they are facts.

So you're reiterating that it's toxic and saying cancer because it's scary. Now distinguish why we should care about Plutonium but not care about arsenic, mercury, cadmium, lead, vinyl chloride, polychlorinated biphenyls, benzene, cyanide, cobalt, etc. etc.

On the contrary I have cited many reasons for Plutonium to be singled out. It's precisely that we continue to make these mistakes so often that we can't afford to continue to make these mistakes with plutonium any more. It's extreme toxicity is stable for at least 25000 years despite the level of radioactivity it's gone through a process of significant concentration and neutron bombardment to achieve its form.

That isn't "many reasons." That's "it's toxic" and "irrelevant information can be scary." What does neutron bombardment have anything to do with anything? If you make the same isotope of the same element by bombarding a lower atomic weight element with neutrons as opposed to spontaneous decay from a higher atomic weight element, is the result somehow more or less dangerous?

Yes I do, to gauge your depth of consideration.

What you are attempting to engage in is known as the "ad hominem fallacy." You attack the person you're arguing with instead of the argument. If I say, "Plutonium can be destroyed by neutron bombardment," and that is a true statement of fact, it doesn't matter one iota whether it's the only thing I know about Plutonium whatsoever. It isn't made false by the lack of additional knowledge on the part of the speaker. So as you seem to have no interest in disputing the fact of the matter, please forgive me if I lack the time to answer irrelevant questions that anyone can look up on the internet and which have no bearing on the original matter in any event.

Yes it is fissionable but on an industrial scale, unlikely.

Would you care to back up your unsupported assertion with some reasoning or citations? Because I can.

The real question is are you aware of how deadly they are outside of your circle of expertise?

I'm going to ask this once more: What is your reasoning behind why these isotopes should be prohibited from the world, when I can give you a list of compounds as long as your arm that in actual fact have each caused more deaths and more cancer and yet we still use regularly in industry?

There just weren't any WMD's, and really there never were ever going to be any

I think the thousands of Kurds who died in nerve gas attacks would beg to differ, if they were alive to do so.

Yes, that's right. At one time during Saddam's long, terrible reign he actually did possess WMDs, and was shown conclusively to have used them against Iranian troops on the battlefield in contravention of international law, and eventually against Kurdish civilians at Halabja. Unfortunately the US government tried for weeks to accuse Iran of that attack, lying through their teeth at press conferences and at the UN, in order to shift the blame away from their client Saddam, whom they were backing in his attack on Iran. It was the Iranian press and ABC News Nightline that set the record straight. A few years later the CIA were saying the opposite, to boost public support for a war against Saddam and his WMDs. Few remembered by then that he had been using them with the CIA's blessing.

Who knows: if the relevant State Dept documents showing their full knowledge of what Saddam was up to had been leaked sooner, rather than waiting until they were officially declassified, the political cost of tolerating his use of nerve gas might have become too great, and the attack on the Kurdish civilians at Halabja might never have happened.

The corporate states of amerika consider Chevez the enemy. He'll never give away Venezuela's oil. The stage is being set to take Venezuela.

Conspiracy theory you say? Flashback to the eighties. Reagan's special emissary, Donald Rumsfeld, brokered a deal to sell Hussein anthrax and more pathogens. Republicans in congress loopholed the munitions export law with a Commerce act to make it legal. Then they waited to manipulate public opinion (recall the ANTHRAX terrorist(s) targeted the Democratic Senate leadership and certain liberal media outlets). Their pecker tracks were all over the biological evidence, so they stacked the deck with Nuclear and Chemical WMD.

The groundwork is being laid now to take out Chavez. So in the future when a corporate tool is POTUS and needs a boost to their failed administration, we'll see something like Operation Free the Venezuelan Oil. Of course the price of oil will double and billions of dollars in Venezuelan oil will disappear, but all you have to do is drink the kool aid and watch Faux Newz.

Unfortunately, an Osmium ring will make for a relatively short marriage - and/or a visit from Homeland Security!

http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/040413.htm

It is not civil nuclear power per se which is being opposed for Iran, but the centrifuge technology they have been developing. It is dual-use technology which can work either to make low-enriched uranium for power or high-enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. The IAEA has wanted to inspect the centrifuges to see if they have traces of high-enriched uranium, but Iran persistently refuses inspections which does not make others trust their intentions more for sure. Iran also has the required missile technology to deliver nuclear warheads, and continues to do saber rattling towards Israel and the USA.

> This story is complete horseshit. [blahblah] http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/histind/ASAT/F15ASAT.ht ml

Sure it is. Now. See also http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/asat.htm

22 years ago it wasn't. Solwind was still downlinking data when it poofed. http://www.patricksaviation.com/wiki/F-15_ASAT I got the story from Astronomy magazine at the time.

It was taking a lot of work to keep it synched, but USAF (its original owner) had not shut it down. http://franksblog.hoferfamily.org/2004/01/21/

Usually very complete with their data, Vought is rather mute about it, naming the sat only by its designator. http://www.voughtaircraft.com/heritage/products/ht ml/asat.html

Makes you wish they'd get their horse shit straight.

I was wrong about one thing. The debris from Solwind was tracked and the data made available. 250 pieces. One almost hit ISS 8 years ago. http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/070124.htm So if the US says pieces of the Chinese test might hit ISS, we can assume they're correct because they have experience in these things.

So? The recent nuclear test proves otherwise. They achieved a nuclear 'event', but no-where near what's required to produce a nuclear bomb. It was a fizzle. And the article wasn't talking about nuclear weapons. It was spreading unsubstantiated crap about chemical and biological weapons, and then neglecting to put these allegations in the context of the US's chemical and biological weapons programs.

So, what's the plan? Do we hold off on diplomatically confronting them until North Korea has a nuclear weapon small enough to fit on their missile platforms or until a "nuclear fizzle" happens on Seoul?

Welcome to the world of diplomacy. As I argued in my original post, this is required by North Korea, to fend of continual threats from the US. They are merely reacting. Do you expect them to sit and take it?

So, we aren't supposed to believe North Korea's statements when it comes to their illegal nuclear weapons program and explicit threats against South Korea, but we are supposed to believe their ridiculous claims that U.S. aggression is the cause of... their nuclear weapons program, that we aren't supposed to believe exists. Right...

But back to the facts: there was NO chance that the United States was going to do any aggressive military action in the immediate future against the DPRK when it decided to do its nuclear test. NONE. So why did they do it knowing the international condemnation that would surely follow?

This line that the United States is the bully that's left the poor DPRK no choice but to respond needs to stop. It's utter bullshit. If North Korea were truly trying to prevent conflict, why would they make provocative statements and aggressive actions at times when they are being, by and large, diplomatically ignored--not threated--by the US?

More bullshit. North Korea is threatening no-one. They have no expansionist agenda, unlike the US. When is the last time North Korea invaded someone? And when was the last time the US invaded someone? North Korea's weapons are a joke compared to their neighbours', hence the current push to get nuclear weapons. They are seeking weapons as deterrence. ... You need to get some context into your analysis.

If you're going to try to play the DPRK's champion, you should at least abandon your willful ignorance of their country first.

North Korea has the fifth largest military in the world in an area slightly smaller than Mississippi. It spends about 25% of its GNP on its military, by proportion, the most in the world. It has a standing army of just over one million men, most of whom are, incidentally, black-belts in TaeKwonDo.

Quoth a military assessment of the North Korean situation: "Seoul, the South Korean capitol, lies within range of North Korean long-range artillery. Five hundred 170mm Koksan guns and 200 multiple-launch rocket systems could hit Seoul with artillery shells and chemical weapons, causing panic and massive civilian casualties. North Korea has between 500 and 600 Scud missiles that could strike targets throughout South Korea with conventional warheads or chemical weapons. North Korea could hit Japan with its 100 No-dong missiles. Seventy percent of North Korean army ground units are located within 100 miles of the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea, positioned to undertake offensive ground operations. These units could fire up to 500,000 artillery rounds per hour against South Korean defenses for several hours." In short: they not to be fucked with. [Source, Source, Source]

Those facts say nothing, of course, about their well-documented kidnapping campaign against South Koreans and the innumerable paramil

In October 2003, Indian Air Chief S. Krishnaswamy stated that India had started development of an operations command station for an eventual space platform for nuclear weapons.[10] However, he retracted the statement within days, under pressure from India's civilian leaders.[11] India: Military Programs

According to a senior U.S. Air Force official, Brazil is one of a group of countries "seriously involved in using space assets for military purposes."[1] Indeed, when Brazil became a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) in 1995, it was allowed to keep its space launch program, despite the potential for military applications.[2] Brazil: Military Programs

Japan's Liberal Democratic Party has drafted a bill to allow Japan's into space. The calls for the military to venture into space within the parameters of self-defense rights. That would be a drastic change from the current civilian-based limitations that Japan has placed on space ventures. Japanese Military Going Into Space

In October 2003, Indian Air Chief S. Krishnaswamy stated that India had started development of an operations command station for an eventual space platform for nuclear weapons.[10] However, he retracted the statement within days, under pressure from India's civilian leaders.[11] India: Military Programs

According to a senior U.S. Air Force official, Brazil is one of a group of countries "seriously involved in using space assets for military purposes."[1] Indeed, when Brazil became a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) in 1995, it was allowed to keep its space launch program, despite the potential for military applications.[2] Brazil: Military Programs

Japan's Liberal Democratic Party has drafted a bill to allow Japan's into space. The calls for the military to venture into space within the parameters of self-defense rights. That would be a drastic change from the current civilian-based limitations that Japan has placed on space ventures. Japanese Military Going Into Space

Your ignorance is astounding:

"India: While striving to achieve independence from foreign suppliers, India's ballistic missile programs still benefited from the acquisition of foreign equipment and technology. India sought items for these programs during the reporting period primarily from Russia and Western Europe. New Delhi successfully flight-tested its newest MRBM, the Agni-2, in April 1999 after months of preparations and continued apace with its SRBM program. India continues to pursue the development of nuclear weapons, and its underground nuclear tests in May 1998 were a significant milestone. The acquisition of foreign equipment could benefit New Delhi in its efforts to develop and produce more sophisticated nuclear weapons. India obtained some foreign nuclear-related assistance during the second half of 1999 from a variety of sources worldwide, including in Russia and Western Europe." - "Unclassified Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions, July 1 Through December 31, 1999," Report released by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), August 9, 2000."

India and WMD

India uses similar delivery systems for its (indigenously developed) Space Program, which have actually been pretty successful (eg. GSLV).

Chronology of Indian Missile Development
From almost 20 years ago

So, you would rather people in the US die of starvation, malnutrition, and lack of medication?

There's nothing wrong with social programs - just how they're implemented, politicized, and administrated. Social Security, for exmaple, was never meant to be a retirement fund. When it was enacted as part of the New Deal during the great depression, it was designed to bribe old people out of their jobs to free them up for younger, unemployed workers. It was also designed as a security blanket in case you outlived your retirement savings- the retirement age was 65 in the 50s, and the average life expectancy for men was 65.6

Problems occur when the primary purpose of a program is transformed from a Good Thing (helping the impoverished elderly) to a Bad Thing (another pork win for a politician to gloat over.) Soon (how soon depends on who you ask), social security is doomed to become insolvent, with the only solutions raising taxes to excessively high levels or cutting the benefits leveraged up by every politician in the history of ever who wanted political points.

Alexis de Tocqueville warned about the dangers inherent in American democracy when politicians realized they could bribe the public with its own money. Right now, the program is flawed - the government takes money from you that you should be ferreting away for your retirement fund, takes out the salaries of the takers, and places it in a trust fund. Sadly, much of the trust fund is looted by congressmen and replaced with government bonds - i.e., the government is writing I.O.U. notes to itself with your retirement.

Instead, those with incomes should be able to save for their own retirement. Barring the unemployed (who don't pay social security taxes anyway), everyone is capable of doing this. If we truly wanted to help the impoverished elderly, we would scrap the program as it is now, and replace it with something that would actually help them.

Oh yeah, and let the elderly who are no longer able to work die on the streets. You'd rather spend it on killing people over waepons of mass destruction. Oh, except they didn't exist

Yea, about that. They did exist. Saddam gassed cities of his own people to death, and his weapons programs are well-known, funded, supplied, and trained by nations around the world.

>Oh, but North Korea is next, right?

No, it'll be Iran if anyone.

N. Korea is effectively inviolate because any military action would result in about a zillion artillery rounds landing on Seoul. 10+ million people live in Seoul. The mass carnage would never be tolerated and evacuation of the city is unfeasible.

Whether or not you agree with the war in Iraq, the fact that the US does have a powerful military is a big deterrent to dictators who'd like to do various international mischief. China can't invade Taiwan primarily because the US Navy is there. North Korea can't invade its southern neighbor because the US would take action; even though the UN was the official body that countered the north's first attack, the vast majority of non-Korean troops in the UN force came from the US. There are many other similar examples.

This sounds a lot like an altruistic argument to me. The libertarian response is, "So what if China invades Taiwan? So what if NK invades SK?" I wouldn't personally posit that argument, but I also don't see the sense in spending something like six times (last time I checked) more than any other nation on the planet for defence. It strikes me as beyond paranoid. If we want to be world police, we can do it without maintaining a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and researching new ones. Don't even get me started on missile defence. At any rate, I'd say feeding the hungry and providing AIDS medicine to Africa are both much higher "international altruism" priorities than sticking our fingers into every foreign situation we feel like meddling in.

I'm just saying that Europe can have a smaller military because the US has a bigger one.

So if the US slashed its defence budget in half, do you really think the EU would beef theirs up a proportional amount to compensate?

As far as social programs go, most of these programs are designed to make up for a lack of financial planning and/or discipline on the part of individuals. For example, if everyone was wise enough to invest their money in a retirement account, Social Security would be unnecessary.

Good example. Since you imply that everyone is clearly not wise enough, I'd say you just provided the justification for Social Security.

Frankly, I find it somewhat ridiculous that we spend half of our tax dollars on taking care of people who could take care of themselves.

Well, this is a pretty fundamental disagreement, as I've had this argument many times. I have two mostly independent responses.

First, asserting that the poor ought to just "do better", and "not be poor" (which is what you're asserting when you say they "could" take care of themselves) is such an obvious dead-end to me that I have trouble understanding the popularity of the meme in America (and it's a very American attitude). Is it so they can feel better about all the wise decisions they've made to avoid poverty? Maybe it's because while I was growing up in a trailer park, I noticed this phenomenon: the worst trailer trash raised the worst kids. Pretty simple, huh? What do you get when someone was either poor from the start or made bad decisions and became poor? Oftentimes you get an abusive drunk who raises a disadvantaged child. Who will be poor. Ad nauseum. Admonishing people to not be poor doesn't change who they are, who they know, the life they know, and the way they were raised. However, providing them with a decent standard of living can make all the difference for their children. With such huge correlations between income and all sorts of negative behavior, I'd think giving money away to improve future social conditions is a no-brainer. A lot of sociologists agree with this, but we're talking about society here, what do they know?

Your point about people failing to plan for their future is completely missing the forest for the trees. You can yell at people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps until the cows come home, but until you provide them with boots in the first place, there's not much that can be done. If virtually everyone you knew growing up turned to dealing drugs for money, and you had a lousy education with no prospects, how likely are you to be a productive member of society? I don't

You grossly overstate the general population's opinion (confusing a vocal minority with the mainstream),

I do no such thing. I know you weren't paying attention to the international press at the time, but what the heck do you need, a poll in our closest ally? ("three out of every five Britons think the UK and US governments have failed to prove their case that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction" - Feb 12, 2003). Need more? There were plenty. The European populace was extremely skeptical of the claims - even in the countries of our allies (the German population, for example, was even more skeptical than the British)

as evidenced by a lead anti-war spokesperson and one of Sadaam's "defenders" (in UN SC context) and business partners, Vladimir Putin:

Hold on a second here: since when is Putin "the general public"? And since when was he a "lead anti-war spokesman"? Of the people in the antiwar community that I've talked to about Putin, none of them have liked him, because while he opposed the Iraq war, he's engaged in the equally brutal conflict in Chechnya. There has been some support for Chirac, and good support for Schroeder, but the biggest support has been for statemen like Cook and Galloway, inspectors like Ritter, and such.

"Russian President Putin said on February 9, 2003, that the main task facing the international community was ascertaining whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), not a regime change in Iraq"
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/030217.htm [miis.edu]

Like I've stated previously. Russia wanted the inspectors there doing verification and validation (and this is the language he chose when speaking to an international audience, at that!). I've already ref'ed the views of their intelligence services, which weren't bound as such.

"Perhaps their plan is to transfer these weapons to terrorist organisations," he said. "We simply do not know. Until we get answers to these questions we cannot feel safe and secure.""

Heh, talk about cherry picking. If you had been willing to add in the context, he prefaced it with:

"The question is, where is Saddam? Where are his arsenals of weapons of mass destruction?" the Russian president asked.

Perhaps Saddam is still hiding somewhere underground, sitting on cases of weapons of mass destruction, preparing to blow the whole thing up and kill hundreds of thousands of people. We do not know what the situation is."

The conference was when the US and Britain were trying to get the sanctions dropped, and Russia wanted them to remain in place. The only way to keep the sanctions up was to cast into question whether there were any WMDs. Yet, even still, Putin didn't use any Bush-style "our intelligence says they have them" language - he simply posited a "Perhaps ..." situation. The reason, quite frankly, is because Russian intelligence said that Iraq didn't have anything nuclear and that it was doubtful that they had anything chemical.

Pre-war there were merely doubts as to an operation chemical delivery system.

Oh come on! The article says, and I quote:

---

"They argued before the Iraq war that the drones were never meant to spread toxins but to fly unarmed reconnaissance missions. "

---

"What the Bush administration did not reveal until recently was that the government organization most knowledgeable about the United States' UAV program -- the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center -- had sharply disputed the notion that Iraq's UAVs were being designed as attack weapons."

---

""What we were thinking was: Why would you purposefully design a vehicle to be an inefficient delivery means?" Boyd said. "Wouldn't it make more sense that they were purposefully designing it to be a decent reconnaissance UAV?"

In addi

The general belief in *America* and its allied *governments*. Not among the American antiwar populace nor the European general populace. If you had kept up on the European press at the time, you'd be bloody well aware of this simple fact.

You grossly overstate the general population's opinion (confusing a vocal minority with the mainstream), as evidenced by a lead anti-war spokesperson and one of Sadaam's "defenders" (in UN SC context) and business partners, Vladimir Putin:

"Russian President Putin said on February 9, 2003, that the main task facing the international community was ascertaining whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), not a regime change in Iraq"
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/030217.htm

"Mr Putin said it was impossible to know whether the people who possessed weapons of mass destruction had been killed or whether they had just gone into hiding. "Perhaps their plan is to transfer these weapons to terrorist organisations," he said. "We simply do not know. Until we get answers to these questions we cannot feel safe and secure.""
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2F

Look, if you're not going to read, don't bother to reply and waste my time. The article was about what the Air Force told the CIA before the bloody war

Actually the article was very illustrative of your cherry picking of "evidence" and tendencies to overstate. Pre-war there were merely doubts as to an operation chemical delivery system. Post-invasion there was confirmation that the adapted jets were configured for recon. I guess this leads us to your other tendancy, misrepresentaion. My point was always that he had far more capable aircraft than the one you fixated on, I was never limited to chem/bio. You attempt to rebut a point no one was making. Furthermore common sense would show that a well designed chem/bio delivery system is not really required. While a special purpose design would be more effective improvisation is still quite deadly, as Japan demonstrated in WW2. Using your illogic one would have to dismiss improvised suicide attack aircraft (convention fighters and such) and only focus on the special purpose designs. Things are far more complicated than you suggest. The special purpose design may be needed to attack troops in the field but an improvised solution (regular jet packed with chem/bio materials) would not have much trouble hitting a town or large scale encampment and wreaking havoc.

I've noticed something: throughout your posts, you keep mixing up the concepts of "unlikely existance" and "certain in the absense of". European governements, European populace, and much of the American antiwar populace seriously doubted the existance of such weapons. That's why we wanted the inspections: to *verify* and *certify* Iraq as WMD-free.

I'll ignore your misrepresentation of my position and try to simplify it for you. At the time the general belief was that he is probably hiding something not that he probably rid himself of his WMD. For example, Putin's comments do not support your "seriously doubted" assertion:

"Russian President Putin said on February 9, 2003, that the main task facing the international community was ascertaining whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), not a regime change in Iraq" http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/030217.htm [miis.edu]

"Mr Putin said it was impossible to know whether the people who possessed weapons of mass destruction had been killed or whether they had just gone into hiding. "Perhaps their plan is to transfer these weapons to terrorist organisations," he said. "We simply do not know. Until we get answers to these questions we cannot feel safe and secure."" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2F news%2F2003%2F04%2F30%2Fwput30.xml [telegraph.co.uk]

Did you not bloody well read the links that I gave you that I prepared *BEFORE THE WAR*? How can you call something that I prepared before the war "revisionist"?

The focus on the absense of WMD and the downplaying of concerns that most people shared prior to the invasion is part of a revisionist movement. Whether or not you held these beliefs before or after the invasion is not relevant. Those beliefs have a widely used label, get used to the label.

I've probably read more pages of IAEA, UNSCOM, and UNMOVIC documents in the past four years than you've read newspaper pages.

You cherry pick citations, for example your post just focused on nuclear where conveniently a large infrastructure is required, and ignore the overall WMD concerns. The Putin quote above clearly demonstrates the overall concern of the time. This is why your position is not one of thorough analysis. You can't start with a belief and go looking for evidence that supports it and ignore evidence that does not. Well, in science you can't, it politics it is standard procedure.

According to Robert Boyd (mirror), The Air Force's senior intelligence analyst:

Odd that you would provide a link that proves my point, that the modest aircraft you described was not the whole of the Iraqi aerial drone program, that there was evidence of the adaptation of jets. The article also reinforces my overall argument by relying heavily on post-invasion information.

Look, I've provided two links from reputable sources on what the Russian intelligence agencies thought. The count is 2 me, 0 you. Time for you to catch up, instead of saying "I saw Putin say..."

It may have only been an offhand comment on TV, but I saw it.

Your own citations prove my point that at the time of the invasion no one knew whether or not Sadaam had WMD:
"Russian President Putin said on February 9, 2003, that the main task facing the international community was ascertaining whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), not a regime change in Iraq"
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/030217.htm

Also proving my point that no one knew Iraq was WMD-free until long after the invasion, including Russia:
"Mr Putin said it was impossible to know whether the people who possessed weapons of mass destruction had been killed or whether they had just gone into hiding. "Perhaps their plan is to transfer these weapons to terrorist organisations," he said. "We simply do not know. Until we get answers to these questions we cannot feel safe and secure.""
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2F news%2F2003%2F04%2F30%2Fwput30.xml

While googling I found this interesting little bit:
"After Sept. 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, the Russian special services, the intelligence service, received information that officials from Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States and outside it against the U.S. military and other interests," Putin said, according to RIA Novosti, the Russian news agency.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A530 96-2004Jun18.html

The US and British were falsely accused of this Falsely? Time after time they spouted bogus information, and were told by the rest of the world that it was nonsense.

Again, you use creative editing to misrepresent what I said, you conveniently omit "intelligence was under pressure to conform their analysis to current political positions". The false accusation was not, as you misrepresent, that US and UK intel was wrong. The false accusation was that US and UK intel falsified reports to serve their political masters. US and UK investigations, 3 in the UK, have debunked that myth.

How the heck can you possibly claim that I'm revising my own beliefs, when you don't even know me?

My claim is that the notions that you advance are revisionist. If you were certain Iraq had no WMD prior to the invasion then you were pretty much alone, even anti-war states like Russia were not so sure. You would seem to be merely be a closed minded individual who turned out to be correct not through analysis but by luck, a fluke of history. Unless of course you had better intel resources in Iraq than the Russians.

"Adapting an old Mig, with the aid of duct tape"
No, no, no. Not "adapting an old Mig"

Again misrepresentation of my point. Sure the one aircraft you offer may not be impressive but that was not Sadaams entire inventory. I recall in-flight video of a drone that was not the aircraft you describe, the aircraft was clearly jet powered. My point that drones can be easily created from obsolete aircraft stands. That said, your redicule of wooden wings and a wooden propeller strongly suggests that you are way out of your league. I suggest you do a little research on aircraft such as the British Mosquito of the 1940s.

Germany, the country who tried to warn the US that Curveball was a proven liar, and were angry that Powell not only included it in his presentation, but called it a "solid source" as if nobody had questioned it? The country that led the assault on the bogus aluminum tubes claim (and would know what Iraq's centrifuges would need, as Iraq had experience in building a 1960s german design)? That Germany? You're probably referring to the report that the BND leaked before the new Iraq resolution to pressure Iraq into complying with it (mostly commenting on dual-use potential)? You'll note that after that report, Germany grew only critical of the US information - often harshly. They even attempted to retract parts of their report as inspections continued - for example, the aforementioned "Curveball" mobile-labs information.

Russia? Heck, don't take my word that they found the intelligence extremely subject - take theirs. Dozens of cites in that first link, by the way.

Check your chronology there, G Money. This website indicates otherwise. Looks like France gets the blue ribbon. And as for chemical attacks specifically targeted against civilian populations, the winner is glorious enlightened Great Britain.

Here's a choice bit by Winston Churchill on the practice of dropping gas bombs on Kurds: "I do not understand this sqeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes." Go Winnie and Saddam!

Interesting article, thanks! According to this Army site, though, neither the US nor the Soviets signed it. I wonder how legally binding it is..

The Center for Nonproliferation Studies confirm this by mentioning that the treaty is ineffective, but it does not list who the 5 signatories are either, unfortunately.

I always that thought that it was "not producing any more bio weapons. According to this table, US (and UK, for that matter) are both declared as the "former programme" status. Which means that they could still have some around.

NASA calculated that that servicing mission,whether robotic or shuttle, would cost over one billion dollars US. The only "market" that could pick up that kind of tab (or anything close to it) would be the Japanese or European space agencies. Private companies have a hard time just getting a sattelite into orbit. The Russians might have the technology, but they could not realistically fund the mission.

According to This source, the total annual budget for the ESA is 2.7 billion Euros. The Japanese budget according to This source was around 1.3 billion US Dollars in 1998. So we are talking about asking them to take on a project that would cost them between 30% to 80% of their total annual space budget.

The probability of success of a robotics mission is IMHO extremely low. You would be hard pressed to build a robot that could service hubble if it was sitting on the ground, much less orbiting in zero G in the cold of space.

Assuming the Japanese and Europeans decided they wanted to pool resources and take on this relatively huge project, then farm it out to the Russians for the launch platform and manned mission (because they are the only ones that have that technology), what would be the end result? Another 5 years or so of science. (remember, we have a new telescope that will be online 5 years or so after Hubble goes dark.) The rewards just don't seem to be worth the effort.

I love the science as much as anyone, but for the most part, the great view of the universe from space isn't going away. It will still be there in 5 years, or 10 years, or however long it takes us to get the next great telescope into space.

Im very surprised that noone has replied to you yet on this matter, but the gas and bio weapons Saddam used in 1991/1992 against the Kurds was purchased from the US and the UK in the 1980s, including the ability to produce more of them. Yes, the vast majority of WMD that we are looking for in Iraq are tehre because we sold them to Iraq. It is true that Germany and France also took part, as did Russia and China, but for the 1980s WMD were commonly traded arms, and the US was one of the biggest traders in them.

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That's really swell for Isreal, but what about North Korea raining down fiery death from above with ballistic missiles that can hit Alaska? Also, I'd like to know how the laser would operate in more realistic conditions, like say, with multiple rockets... what's the firing rate? The way our money's being spent, we'll all be eating dog in a couple of years...

The main thing I'm thinking is that you need to be able to send lots of people at once. What's the crew capabilities on the Seawolf? I didn't check.

(I'm quoting this fact file.)

The Seawolf has a crew complement of 12 officers and 121 enlisted personnel for a total of 133 crew members. She's certainly no slouch. :-)

I suppose if we're just talking about a passenger shuttle craft, it doesn't have to be as big as all that in order to carry lots of people. The reason the shuttle has to carry so much 'dead weight' is because it has to support the crew for awhile when it gets up there, but if it could just go straight to orbit and dump its payload of passengers, it can probably be a bit smaller and still carry plenty of people.

Actually, a large portion of the shuttle's weight is allocated to its cargo. I've been in one of the shuttle mock ups and they have MASSIVE cargo bays (about the size of a school bus). According to one source they can carry up to 8,605 kg (18,970 pounds) of mass to the space station when the bay is pressurized. Assuming an average weight of 200 lbs. per person, plus another 3 tons for a special passenger module for the cargo bay, you could carry about 64 people per flight. Throw in a little extra weight for various incidentals and you could probably arrive at a reasonable figure of 50 passengers per flight.

The Seawolf is actually pretty small compared to a deep-space vehicle, I think, because of that one small thing. Sure, you could stick some ion drive units on there powered by the nuclear plant, but how fast would it go, then? How long would it take to accelerate? That's the real question. :)

Small? At 353x35x40 feet, she'd be plenty large for a space born vehicle. In comparison, a two bedroom camper with kitchen and toliet is 40 feet long and about the width of a conversion van. Since a peaceful space vehicle wouldn't need so many crew (no battlestations), it would be as good as a luxury liner.

As for thrust, the Prometheus for the JIMO mission thrusts about 1 newton per second (one kilogram of acceleration per second) on a 10 megawatt reactor. According to the navy's specs the PWR/S6W reactor on the Seawolf can put out 220 megawatts of power. Assuming a linear increase in power, that would give our fictional Spacewolf a thrust of 22 Newtons.

Of course, I doubt that the military would be happy with 22 newtons of thrust. They'd probably want a more powerful fission drive. Options include NERVA, GCNR (Gas Core Nuclear), Nuclear Salt Water, and Orion drives. All of those have a very high thrust in exchange for a lower Isp than Ion drives. However, their Isp is still significantly higher than today's chemical rockets, and yet they can produce comperable thrust.

I'm curious enough about this that I'd be interested in seeing a breakdown of how much each component and system of the Seawolf-class sub weighs. I don't want anything classified, of course, but if someone can give this information I'd really be interested in seeing it.

I seriously doubt you'd get anywhere near those specs. However, if you strip out the weapons, the ballast tanks, the screws, the reactor rotors, the sonar and reduce the crew, you'll probably be able to save yourself a good fraction of the weight. Space versions of some of the above would have to be installed in orbit, but you're probably still saving yourself a bundle.

Of course, all of this is just facts and figures. None of this means that launching a Seawolf into orbit is a good idea, bu

There's also a slim chance, researchers say, that the scabs could yield live smallpox virus -- believed to reside in only two laboratories in the world

Only the naive believe that live smallpox exists in only two labs in the world. A more accurate statement in the article would have been "only legally allowed in two labs in the world."

There is strong reason to believe that North Korea has the virus. France is also believed to have it. Iraq may have had it up until recently, as it was endemic in the region in the late sixties, and just a few scabs in a refrigerator would have been enough. It used to be common practice for scientists and doctors to keep a bit of smallpox in the fridge when they gathered it from patients. Hence there could be samples, possibly not even labelled or known to the owners, in a number of places in the world.

One reason that the plan to destroy all stocks at the CDC and the official Russian lab was the realization that rogue countries probably had the virus, and hence destroying it would damage future defense attempts.

Furthermore, the USSR and later Russia maintained stockpiles of 20 tons of weaponized smallpox in the eighties (authorized by Gorbachev) and probably to the present, and loaded it into missile warheads. Furthermore, a number of their scientists have since emigrated to other countries. In 1994 a number visited North Korea for unknown reasons. One former Soviet BW officieal entered into a deal with Iraq to sell 5000 liter fermenters.

And then we have accidental discoveries like these scabs. Smallpox can survive in scabs for a long time, although >100 years is stretching it.

If it were discovered that North Korea, Iran, Syria or any country not currently "in" with the US was performing such research, they'd have been bombed, denounced and had their land divided up and sold to the highest bidder by now.

What do you mean "if it were discovered" ?

Your "cynicism" seems to be based upon appalling ignorance and a lack of understanding about the world. Here is a clue to help you along: Just because a country signs a treaty banning biological weapons doesn't mean that they aren't still making them. President Reagan had it right: trust, but verify. Oh, and FWIW, the treaties we have signed allow defensive research, which in essence this is.

Here are some links to help keep this discussion a bit closer to the facts:

Follow this link to the FAS site, then follow the individual country links to get to the listings of the individual county's programs. As you will see, there are more than a few countries with more than just research programs.

Putting "In Soviet Russia" jokes aside, here is a link to an article about a specific Soviet facility built in the 1970s which was building weapons and conducting research long after the Biological Weapons treaties went into effect.

No, actually, it is Israel.
The old USSR _used_ to be No 2. But since the mid 1990's, Israel has had the honour.
See here, here and here for details.
Note that although they are being outdone in nuclear weapons, their large arsenal of chemical and biological weapons more than makes up for it...

Brits still have the courage and the right to criticize their PM for being a liar about WMD but Americans can hardly be bothered.

Well, I suppose it *is* admirable that Brits can criticize their leaders erroneously. I mean, why bother to find out *why* Blair and Bush said what they did; since you didn't like it, they must obviously be lying.
I have a question for you, pigfucker. (may I call you pigfucker?)
Pigfucker, why aren't you calling out the UN on this too? In case you blind UN backers didn't notice, THE FREAKING UN HAS BEEN SAYNG IRAQ HAS WMD FOR YEARS. Why do you think they passed so many resolutions? Just for fun? When Clinton comes out talking about Iraq's WMD, everyone cheers him. When the UN talks about Iraq's WMD, everyone is gung ho (until it becomes clear that saddam does not care about diplomacy and is not going to change his ways). When the UN took itself out of the picture by failing to back its own resolutions, it stopped talking about Iraq's WMD. That left Blair and Bush saying the SAME thing the UN did, from the SAME sources, and they're suddenly big liars. I love how something can be both the truth *and* a lie, depending on what political bias the person saying it has, or what country they're from.
What a shining example you set for knee-jerk morons everywhere.
Link, for what it's worth.

Like this one, for instance? No wait a minute, the US refuses to sign that treaty, perhaps this one? Or maybe that'll end up the same place the anti-ballistic missile treaty did about a year ago.

They tried diplomatic pressure and other means with America alongside. It didn't work.

But it did work, in the end there were results and that's why a lot of countries wanted the weapons inspectors to go on with their work. If there is proof, that the Iraq has a significant number of B- or C-weapons the USA never presented it. In the end the Iraq was complying (though grudgingly) with the demands layed down by the UN. In the meantime north Korea more or less publicly announced their intention to produce nuclear bombs, so shouldn't Bush et al. strike at north Korea before going for the Iraq?

So when Bush couldn't convince the world that Iraq was threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction he switched rhetorics and talked about having to free the Iraq of that evil dictator Saddam. Now Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator, but that's none of the USAs business, as it hasn't been for the past 20 years (like when the USA even supported the current Iraqi regime). The last demand that Saddam now leave the country within 48 hours is not an ultimatum, it's a joke. Everyone can imagine that that'd be suicide for Saddam.

This war isn't about terrorism either, it's easier to construct a link from Osama bin Laden to Bush than to Saddam Hussein, and war isn't a means to get at terrorists who're probably not even in the attacked country. As a result of the war even more terrorist attacks are expected in the US and the threat level is raised.

So the war isn't about chemical weapons or terrorists, neither is it an idealistic mission to free the Iraq people from their evil dictator (or do the USA now intend to attack any country where the government isn't to their liking?). Many people (even inside the US) see it that way and that's how they arrive at the conclusion that the war isn't justified but is just about oil and distracting the american people from their problems at home.

This war is also a very bad precedent, as it shows that the USAs government doesn't care what the UN have to say on the issue, they do what they damn well please anyway. So now whenever any country wants to start a war all they need are some unsupportable and made up reasons and then they can go ahead? Or is that only right for the USA but noone else?

Also the arrogant way the USA dealt with the UN and other nations (and also opposition at home) has weakened the UN and hurt diplomatic relationships worldwide. More and more the USA is percieved

Where do you think the seed stock for that anthrax came from?

ATCC, a Washington non-profit

They even got special permission from the US government - as you would, if you wanted to export that kind of thing.

"Damn" is right!

Okay, I'll grant you that a bunch of them will have them soon, it was my weakest point. You still haven't explained why any of them would actually launch against the US; witness the "giant flaming return address" theory.

China already has 20 or so nukes pointed at the US

Which they haven't changed in years; they've maintained pretty much the same nuclear stockpile for at least a decade. Despite not being a member, they agreed to the MTCR guidelines in 1991 and 1994. They've been static because they know those 20 missiles are sufficient deterrent since we wont' risk losing a city.

Now, on the other hand, they've promised to escalate a new arms race if we build the NMD, because NMD threatens the deterrent factor of those 20 missiles. They need more to overwhelm it.

Suitcase nukes are hard to make, and harder to smuggle than you might think (please see my other post for details).

See my other post for a response to that theory. I'm not suggesting they make one - suitcase bombs already exist and 80+ became unaccounted for in the collapse of the USSR and the deterioration of their military. And while it may not be all that easy to smuggle one in, it's still easier than building a multimillion-dollar ICBM and doesn't carry anywhere near the liability or accountability.

And it is easy anyway. Thousands of Mexican civilians make it across the border undetected every year. You think a couple of trained terrorists couldn't do it with a 150lb suitcase?

Ever heard of the Maginot line? The NMD is the Maginot line, except that this time it's actually cheaper and easier for the enemy to go around it. Suitcase bomb or no, a wacko that wants to nuke us is going to find a way with or without the NMD. It's just a big honking waste of money that is guaranteed to piss off the rest of the world.

According to articles here, here and here, it doesn't sound like the Chinese will be knocking on our door (with nuclear warheads or troops) any time soon. Given the current Chinese disputes with Russia, Japan, Malaysia and the Philippines (over islands) as well as mounting tensions with Taiwan, China is in no mood (or ability) to go to war. There will be plently of posturing, but this dispute is purely politics.

China has a lot to sort out internally before they are any sort of major military threat. That doesn't mean that there couldn't be regional conflicts that escalate (after all, that is how WW I got started), it only means that conflict between our two nations is unlikely. Do a little reading at Janes or other sites before rattling sabres. China has a long history of spying and tough talk (like the USSR, USA, et. al.), but they currently pose little threat.

If you want something to really worry about, start paying more attention to the escalation in the Middle East.