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Labs Compete to Build New Nuclear Bomb
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that two labs are currently competing to design the first new nuclear bomb in twenty years. The new bomb was approved as a part of the 2006 defense spending bill. From the article: 'Proponents of the project say the U.S. would lose its so-called "strategic deterrent" unless it replaces its aging arsenal of about 6,000 bombs, which will become potentially unreliable within 15 years. A new, more reliable weapon, they say, would help the nation reduce its stockpile.'"
Yeeehaw!
nothing.can.stop.me.now
Somebody Set Up Us The Bomb?
If there were a greater investment in grammar checking programs, the article's headline would be readable.
My other sig is extremely clever...
Do as I say, not as I do. k.
Pfftt, please! Such old technology. Shouldn't we be building anti-matter bombs these days?
Life is not for the lazy.
Now All Your Base Belong to Us
It's OK though. Iran probably won't notice.
I'll build it, but I'm not going to test it....
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Did we completely forget the point of the Moscow Treaty? We're trying to REDUCE the number of nukes, and get rid of them as much as possible. The last thing we need for peace is to bring attention to nukes again. When will it stop?
That's right. Building more bombs will help reduce the stockpile. Makes perfect sense to me...
We bid these things out?? I thought Sandia or Livermore built them for the US Atomic Agency?!
If the point of the new bomb is to reduce the current stockpile... then waiting 15 years and spending exactly zero dollars will accomplish the same goal, with the added benifit that it costs no money.
Oh wait, that's not the goal, they're just lieing through their teeth. I forgot.
-
I think they meant, "Labs Compete to Built New Nuke-u-ler Bomb."
'Proponents of the project say the U.S. would lose its so-called "military superiority"...'
Fixed.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
The US being the sole superpower, I wonder who or what is the target. 6000 bombs is a lot. Its as unreasonable to build 6000 bombs as it is to build 6000,000 bombs. Whats the point? Who are you trying to scare, and by what measure?
I dont think Al Qaeda attacks would be reduced, nor would Iran, North Korea etc cease to build bombs. They'll only be encouraged. Makes me wonder whats the point.
It may be safer for the Americans to try and dismantle more of the USSR stockpile than build a new one against an unknown enemy. Maybe we're expecting lots of huge Asteroids hearding our way.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
The US is confirmed to be producing weapons of mass destruction.
Who's up for 'liberating' them?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
The thing that worries me most about building a new nuclear device is that foreign governments will be very interested in its design. Nothing like spending billions of dollars on a design so that China (for instance) can manufacture a clone for a few hundred million a pop. And it's not really likely that The Axis of Evil (whomever they might be this decade...) really need six thousand of the things - a few hundred would be enough for the human race to do enough damage that the next alpha lifeform will be a giant cockroach.
The last serious redesign of the atomic bomb produced the fusion bomb, which gave off less radiation for the same bang. It seems reasonable that another redesign would try to produce more efficient fusion bombs, which is only a good thing.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
If you have the old technology, and it was good enough, then you don't need to make a new design. Maybe delivery system, yeah. Bomb component? No.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
People need to read the article more closely. They aren't working on these new weapons to increase the US stockpile of nukes, but just to maintain it. They are trying to create safer and more stable nukes that can be kept for long periods of time without the problems we have with current nukes. Then they plan to replace, not add to, the current nuclear stockpile with these new weapons. I am not making a judgement here on whether nukes are good or bad at all, but if the only choice is between unsafe and unstable nuclear weapons and more stable ones I will take the stable ones anyday.
Java has no friends.
3 reasons I can think of.
1. To use against whichever party nukes Israel.
2. To use against China in our upcoming conflict (I'm betting 2020)
3. To use against another enemy that really isn't in our scope at this point
The design is so advanced it suspends causality.
With terrorists being the nr 1 threat against the US as a nation, isnt it counterproductive to renew such a large stockpile of WMD's? What kind of nation poses a direct threat to the US with equal capacity in nuclear arms? Woudnt this country serve itself and the world community if it REDUCED its nuclear stockpile?
Now for the nerds... I suspect part of the reason for additional nuclear research surrounds the use of the bomb as an EMP device. Light one of these things off in the air and all the planes will come down. A lot easier than using a CIWS :)
For reference, the ones dropped over Japan detonated at about 1000 feet. They need to be in the air for maximum effect.
Seriously...people put all this emphasis on how bad nukes are. They're a pretty good propaganda weapon - Iran would kind of sound like a cheap Nintendo game if it started touting it's "Botulism Bombs"
I dodally agreet with you.
Even though I don't technically live in the US, I do live in one of its "colonies", namely, Australia. We are in the process of getting similar IP laws to the US, we show ~80% US tv shows on our free-to-air TV stations and we followed the states in not signing the Kyoto treaty as well as going into Iraq.
Here is what I *think* the US is trying to do:
1) Strengthen it's military power as well as the fear and respect it generates
2) Use this military power (as well as its expertise with finance) to obtain new resources as well as improve the result of bargaining situations
3) ???
4) Profit!
Developing new weapons, especially those designed to inflict maximum civilian damage, pretty much follows the US plan. I wonder if China will actually take the bait of going into an arms race with the US, given that it will be ahead economically in a decade or less.
Oh well, since Australia is both an ally to the US and China (uranium deal), I think we will be fine...
Berserk Manga > All
A new, more reliable weapon, they say, would help the nation reduce its stockpile
I just hate this logic and I cant even begin to explain why. It should be obvious.
serenity now!
Shouldn't we focus on building cleaner, safer atomic power for civilian use? I'm shocked there was the potilical willpower to build more weapons when we can't build a CANDU electric plant or develop reprocessing or other waste reduction technology. But why fight global warming when you can start a second global arms race?
I see four possibilities:
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The guys behind this decision should, perhaps, pay a visit to Hiroshima before they decide that more nukes are a Good Thing. Does anybody really need more than a handful (one to drop, a few others to hold onto and brandish)? I understand the political uses of nukes, but "don't hit us or we'll hit you back!" doesn't work so well against terrorists. Any current or future leader of the US would have to be crazy or heartless to use nuclear weapons again, and maintaining an arsenal of such weapons as big as the one the US possesses is lunacy.
Legalize it.
... replaces its aging arsenal of about 6,000 bombs, which will become potentially unreliable within 15 years.
This leads me to two questions. Forgive me if they're stupid, but:
(1) what happens when a bomb becomes "unreliable"?
and
(2) how will the existing/"old" bombs be disposed of?
An American tradition since World War 2.
Might come in handy when the Ur-Quan hierarchy arrives...
The Chair Corp. comic(*00-12)
Why doesn't the US just buy some new designs from South Africa, Israel, India or Pakistan?
Oh well, what the hell...
I wonder if the agreement states the *minimum* power. Indeed I'll bet they are working on scalable fusion bombs that do not require a fission bomb as a detonator ( and thus are at least as powerfull as a fission bomb which is a lot )... if it is so they could potentially produce atomic bombs of any size, opening the possibility of a dangerous escalation in a conflict since there would not be any threshold to cross.
Dangerous.
\u262D = \u5350
Bottom line: much less plutonium lying around, smaller yields, cleaner designs, and reduced risk profile. They are not expanding the arsenal, just cleaning it up. Since the US is going to have nukes regardless, I do not have a problem with this.
Thank god for this really.
Nuclear bomb tech has been at a damn standstill for decades. Its time we looked back into small, clean strategic nukes. With improved technology, fallout can be reduced to near zero.
Plus, Nukes look purty when they go.
Fascism is the greatest political ideology ever conceived. Sorry.
Yay for incorrect verb conjugation!
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
Its as unreasonable to build 6000 bombs as it is to build 6000,000 bombs.
That's not true, if the U.S. built 6 million nuclear bombs, the target would obviously be Jupiter.
Because hey, they are always sooooo wanting to update their own nuclear arsenal instead of letting it die, while at the same time refusing other nation to do the same...
A more reliable weapon (defined as one that requires less periodic maintenance therefore having a higher 'uptime') means that there needs to be fewer total nukes.
You cant even spell Fascist, let alone comprehend its genius.
Fascism Forward!
~Shane Korte
American Fascist Party
Fascism is the greatest political ideology ever conceived. Sorry.
Nuke are more or less only heat. A nuke would not do much against an asteroid of good size, to change its direction, and I am pretty sure, neither would it do much good to break it up. You would have more luck sending heavy weight with a lot of propellant to play billiard with the asteroid...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
For example, one possible use for US nuclear weapons is a strike against hardened targets in North Korea. At the moment we don't really have appropriate bombs for that purpose. If North Korea started lobbing nuclear weapons, we'd want to take as many out on the ground as possible. The current arsenal is poorly suited for that purpose.
Also remember that the only way the US can credibly deter others from using nuclear weapons is to convince those others that the US is willing and able to strike back. Building new weapons is part of that plan.
For more on the aspect of prevention and counterforce, you could read The Wizards of Armageddon, which is about how such issues played out in the 50's - 80's. Building new nuclear weapons is business-as-usual rather than a radical departure.
Isn't the safest nuclear weapon the one you DON'T make?
An updated design that is cheaper to maintain sounds like a good idea to me. However, who's to know the scope of the research? I would be shocked if they didn't design some new tactical nukes as well. And frankly, tactical nukes scare me the most because we will actually consider their use (bunker busting and such).
I thought the idea behind nonproliferation was that the old ones would eventually stop working and then we'd be nuke free.
If thats not true then why would any country except the US agree to nonproliferation?
NT
Funny that you state the "only" choice as the choice between two evils. My take is if the choice is between your two options, and dismantling the unstable ones while not replenishing the stockpile, I'll take door number three any day.
LOL! I think that one was way too sublte for the /. audience.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
My money is on LANL. Go LANL Go!
That is somewhat true but it is a strawman argument. You could also easily say the safest gun is the one you don't make, but would that stop the bad guys from carrying guns. Instead of telling people they can't have guns because, "the safest gun is one you don't make" we do our best to include safety features in them.
I realize that nuclear weapons are a whole different class of weapons then any we have ever had before, but that doesn't change the fact that our current arsenal of weapons is actually deteriorating rapidly and possible prone to an attack that could detonate them. If we can replace those nukes with safer ones that don't have these problems then that is better what we currently have and while it may not be quite a step in the right direction, it isn't a step in the wrong direction either.
Java has no friends.
Nucleur Technology?
"Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes" Who will police the police?
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
Suggested tag: hypocrisy
Suggested misspelling doubling as political commentary on the US government: hypocracy
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Add to that that the US was the only nuclear armed nation that didn't have bomb manufacturing capacity in a good while. I think the previous factory was shut down due to contamination issues, and I think the LANL security fiasco hindered it as well.
I would prefer no nuclear weapons, but unfortunately, the nuclear genie is out of the bottle, I don't see any practical way out. A total global disarmament just doesn't seem likely, and is possibly hopelessly idealistic. I think history shows too many times that those without a strategic deterrence are the conquerred ones, and at times, they are are ones that get massacred.
Nuclear disarmament is like that scene in that Van Dam movie.. where they both have a gun pointed at the other's head. You'd have to be a fucking idiot to put your gun down first.
That's called "appeasement" and even a rudimentary understanding of history and human nature shows how foolish it is - not to mention cowardly. It's amazing that this is supposed to be a site of educated people and yet I read the most ridiculous stuff. Must be the gamers.
This might be just the thing that we need to invigorate the economy. For years we have needed something...a new, albeit virtual, enemy! Now that we have one, let's create an arms race to get the US economy back ontrack!
Blast! The old nukes are going to expire? Well just as with the milk, we'd better use them up before they do!
The idea of building a "new" nuke grinds my gears for 2 reasons:
One, the article mentions how they plan to do this in twenty years. In 20 years, nukes will likely dethroned as the-must-have-weapon for superpowers when new technology brings forth an even more destructive arsenal.
Second, the significant funds that are invested in the war machine are significant funds that could have been used for both foreign and domestic aid. Funds for foreign aid could be used to help to reduce world poverty, which is a precursor to desperate acts, including terrorism. Funds for domestic aid could be used for things like education and health care, which the lack of coincidently ensures an insecure and impoverished portion of the population, and therefore, an ample supply of people who support violence as a solution to problems.
1 voice in a sea of voices
"Labs Compete to Built New Nuclear Bomb"
Damn, they're fast constructors. They built it before he even finished the sentance.
Bigger bombs = less back-out room if one is used...
plus, better, reliable bomb technolgy = more likely going to war some day because some military/political people could be persuaded that "our war tech is more reliable" and hence we would be on a better footing to remove the enemy with a couple of really big bombs..
On the possible plus side, if you blow your budget on old-fashoned bombs instead of advanced nano and AI, you may not have the capability to wage nano-war in the future which means if your "enemy" had advanced nano, they may not want to risk getting flattened with big bombs (sort of weird stalemates).
You don't really want wars, they waste resources, destroy the earth etc, it makes more sense to just make and sell stuff, after all, if you waste resources building bombs and china, for instance, builds better nanotech and sells it to you, then you are the ultimate loser.
North america is going to have to be 4 times or more productive than china to compete, if you continue to fight-the-last-war (as it always is), then you lose out in the long run.
(war can be great for budding empires, but older empires like the US, its a slow downward spiral, just look at the UK's history, before WWl, they had the biggest navy), nowadays, it make more sense to promote peace because this planet is covered with a lot of screaming monkeys that like to copy the current big screaming monkey, thats why north korea and iran want the bomb, they are copying the past...if they had any brains, they would invest in nano/bio and develop the next workable life-extension technology and things like body enhancement technologies, these will be in big demand in 5 to 10 to 20 years, if you own the IP to the future biotech, then bill gates cash would look like loose change! (there are going to be two things if importance in the future to the average person, a mortgage on the house and the mortage on the every (10 year) body reguvination treatment to keep you at a permanent 20 year old body)
Does anybody know how difficult it is to safely dispose of an old, unreliable nuclear weapon?
It's funny(strange) that the two things that propel innovation in their fields are weapons and pornography.
SNAFU
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094074/
Codeala - Just another mindless drone
really needs to not have mod points... Yah, call me offtopic, but it got annoying after reading some really good posts.
Well we can have a new generation of bombs to threaten people to steal the oil, or we could ride high speed trains like the rest of the world. Which will we choose?
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Yes, i'm iranian, italian, portuguese, brazilian, australian, african, poor, thin, my boundaries are not so closed as should be, my neibourgh died of hunger yesterday, my economy sucks, and I'd love to have a nuclear weapon. Who can help? I can pay with blood.
Fusion bombs can be clean. The great misconception is that they are always clean, or even that they are desired to be clean by the military. Take a fusion bomb and wrap it with Uranium-238--under these conditions, this so-called "depleted" Uranium suddenly becomes very fissile indeed, and the resulting explosion will be many times bigger. As an added bonus, extremely intense neutron radiation is produced, enough to instantly kill anyone lucky enough to survive the blast (even those in fallout shelters, unless their shelters have many feet of lead shielding or buried very deeply underground) and generate amounts of fallout.
But it gets better. Instead of U-238, you can surround the fusion stage with "salt", a non-radioactive isotope that is transmuted into a highly radioactive isotope from the resulting neutron bombardment. The most infamous candidate is Cobalt-59. In a fission-fusion-fission bomb with the last "fission" stage omitted and a Cobalt-59 jacket substituted, the neutron flux will turn most of it into Cobalt-60 and the blast will scatter it across the land. Cobalt-60 is very unique, in that it puts out enough gamma rays to be very lethal (as in you *will* die if exposed to it for longer than a month or so. Not die as in die of cancer 20 years from now--you'll succumb to radiation poisoning), yet it has a relatively long half-life--around five years.
In another thread someone joked that nuclear weapons were passe--that we should be moving on to antimatter or something. Trust me, nuclear is quite scary enough. Depending on the wind conditions, a single bomb could quite literally destroy all life on the east coast of the USA. Make no mistake about it, if we really wanted to we could build enough Cobalt bombs to destroy all life on the planet. We take comfort in the fact that we're not crazy enough to do something like that, but I am not entirely convinced that Iran is similarly sane. MAD (Mutually Assured Distruction) worked against the relatively rational, aetheistic Soviets... but now we're up against cultures and ideologies that glorify martyrdom and kamikaze attacks to a ridiculous degree. I'm really not sure what's going to happen, but I feel most people in this country have become far to complacent, far too comfortable with the idea of nuclear weapons that everyone has but no one uses.
Let me hasten to say that on the other end of the spectrum are the retards who become hysterical every time the word "radiation" or "nuclear" is mentioned (fun fact--a single coal power plant pumps more radioactive particles into our atmosphere and water supply in a year than the three mile island accident), but we shouldn't forget that in the wrong hands, these weapons have very real potential as doomsday devices.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of... Never mind.
The nuclear stockpile in the United States needs to be reduced for a whole other reason than "it's old". It needs to be reduced because there's not a single nuclear threat to the United States today that isn't kept in check by every other nation in the world, or that wouldn't be kept in check with maybe a dozen nukes, versus the number of ICBM's currently stockpiled in the USA. You can't use nukes in a war on terror (unless you're a complete idiot and decided to blow away every country that "could" harbour terrorists), and most nuclear-capable nations are either friendly or so new into the "nuclear community" that it really doesn't matter, since they don't have the capability to actually deliver the payload. The only way it could possibly happen is through black-market sales of some sort, and even then, the USA nuclear stockpile doesn't exactly deter a terrorist organization.
The United States should be more focused on fighting 'conventional' (specifically urban and desert) warfare than nuclear warfare. The fact that there is currently no superpower poised to take over the world makes these relics of the Cold War era obsolete both in technology and in practice. They simply aren't needed. If even half of the USA nuclear stockpile were to be dismantled tomorrow, there would still be more than enough deterrent to wipe out any prospective enemy that might arise in the foreseeable future. As it stands, America has the power to blow most all countries on the planet to kingdom come and have some left over for the Martians, too.
Nuclear weapons have their purpose, but to have so many is insane. Deterrence is fine; Hell, even tactical nuclear weapons are fine, but why so many? And why bother researching more into the subject? The only possible plus I can see to research into new nuclear weaponry is to reduce the amount of radioactivity left over from the blast (or to increase the rate at which it dissipates or decays). Aside from that, it's still just new technology to do the same thing.
I say that if keeping the stockpile is that important, then just dismantle the ones that are ready to fall apart, and upgrade/repair the newer ones. Saves a lot of time, effort, and money.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
Strange game.
The only winning move is not to play.
Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?
Deny everything, admit nothing, demand proof, and reject the proof.
Obviously what is really needed is a Doomsday weapon that destroys everything automatically if the US is attacked. That way the whole planet will work towards keeping the US safe. Of course it's always best with such a weapon that it is *not* kept a secret.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
I thought the idea behind nonproliferation was that the old ones would eventually stop working and then we'd be nuke free.
If thats not true then why would any country except the US agree to nonproliferation?
While I agree with the spirit of your comment (the first sentence), there are LOADS of reasons why countries would agree to 'non-proliferation' regardless of the United States' actions. Economic incentives are the first to come to mind...
Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.
Maby it's a new US bomb design in 20 years but the french were testing out at Muruoa Atoll in like 1996, not even 10 years ago (f'ing french bastards) why can't they blow shit up in their own part of the world.
This seemed apropos:
JULES Yolanda, I thought you were gonna be cool. When you yell at me, it makes me nervous. When I get nervous, I get scared. And when motherfuckers get scared, that's when motherfuckers get accidentally shot.
YOLANDA (more conversational) Just know: you hurt him, you die.
JULES That seems to be the situation. Now I don't want that and you don't want that and Ringo here don't want that. So let's see what we can do. (to Ringo) Now this is the situation. Normally both of your asses would be dead as fuckin' fried chicken. But you happened to pull this shit while I'm in a transitional period. I don't wanna kill ya, I want to help ya. But I'm afraid I can't give you the case. It don't belong to me. Besides, I went through too much shit this morning on account of this case to just hand it over to your ass.
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
For example, Iraq.
In Soviet Russia, all your bases are bombed by US.
Perhaps BSD is dying from exposure to fallout from NEW NEWCLUAR BOMBS! The new bombs are said to be no bigger than a naked and petrified statue of Natalie Portman.
These "Portman"able nuclear weapons will usher in a new age of atomic superiority for the Alliance, err, United States. Instead of being superior to everyone, like Americans are today with their current stockpile, they'll be superior to everyone including space ants that would have us toil in their underground sugar mines. I for one welcome our new nuclear bomb building overlords.
I could go on, but the absurdity of building more nuclear weapons has caused a mini-breakdown. I'll be over in the corner trying not to wet myself.
Oh You POS
I can't speak to the reliability of old rockets, but we still have a large nuclear capable bomber force consisting of Dr. Strangelove era B-52 bombers, B-2 bombers, various smaller fighter bombers such as the F/A-18, F-22, etc... (I think the F-16 can be configured to carry a B61, and I don't specifically know about the F-15 but I'd be surprised if it couldn't -- there's little reason this fairly light bomb couldn't be tacked on to just about anything that can mechanically support it), and B-1B "Lancer" supersonic bombers. To my knowledge the US no longer maintains nuclear capable cruise missiles, but I think someone could figure out how to cram a B61 back in there in a pinch (the Tomahawk existed in a nuclear variant until the early-1990s, so its conceivable they could be made nuclear capable again).
Anyway, even if most of the missiles fail, how many nuclear bombs do you really need to drop? Missiles can carry multiple warheads (the Trident II carries eight nuclear devices), and there are plenty of warheads and plenty of missiles. The Trident II missiles are still young, as they were deployed during the 1990s. The Minuteman III ground based missiles are older, having been deployed in the 1970s (last one built in the late 1970s), but they are expected to remain in service well in to the 2020s. Each Minuteman III can carry up to three warheads (although as deployed they may only have one due to arms control agreements), and there are about 500 such missiles deployed.
As for reliability of airplanes, the B-52s are already around forty years old and the Air Force anticipates it'll be flying these very same airframes until they're almost ninety years old! That doesn't speak to the reliability of missiles, but does demonstrate that proper maintenance can keep things in operational order for a really long time. The missiles, of course, don't suffer much wear-and-tear; it's not like they take them out for a spin around the stratosphere once a month to keep the nozzles lubed and batteries charged -- they're just sitting there silently waiting for George to push the big red button.
Nuke design's not physics, its COMP-SCI 'surety' !
,the nuke has multiple safety mechanisms in it :
Really.
A W87 warhead (our last and greatest warhead from 1987), is a bitch to open and reservice the tritium. That part should have been made a tad easier, but opening a warhead is MEANT to be a monumental puzzle. tritiums half life is short enough that the damned things are useless without recharge after 15 or so years.
In fact... to set off a nuke (w87) its mainly designed to mistrust rogue theft even if using really clever computer hackers.
If you DO MANAGE to get all three launching keys (15 digits total) (Class-F its called I believe) (one key is merely in-flight key, or vessel key)
it cannot be detonated by lightning, fire, or explosive shock, however it can disintegrate itself if casing compromised or tampering detected. The explosive used in the fission component of the bomb (fission-fusion design obviously) is a special newer type of explosive resistant to fire, and lightning, but before critical temperatures can be reached the bomb immolates itself to destroy most components, though the housing will rupture and the "enriched goodies" could be harvested and utilized in a new-from-scratch weapon
To detonate :
It needs to be spinning about its central axis at a specific range of RPMS to detonate.
It needs to be increasing barometric pressure to detonate (simulating descent trajectory).
It needs to sense a specific airspeed flowing past the w87 warhead.
It needs to armed (yield set, keys set, timers set) a certain amount of time to detonate.
Its casing monitor needs to not detect atmospheric oxygen within (evidence of tampering) though pure nitrogen used in drilling entry could thwart that single test.
It needs to not sense large amounts of magnetic "ferrous" material nearby (unconfirmed).
All circuitry boards (three or so, totally uncoupled) need to pass tamper checks of runtime code on firmware, and some other paltry stuff.
There are a few other clever sensors in it.
But nuke design of ultra high tech SDAMS (small micro nukes similar to w87, but with negligible fusion litium payload) is all about SURETY, not physics.
Physics was completed and reached state of the art in late 1980s.
Everything about SDAMS and generic multiple warhead ballistic W87 design is anout anti-computer hacking. ALL OF THE HARD STUFF is about how to make it impossible for even an expert from being able to hack one up and use it in a non-ballistic manner.
SDAMS are even more of a bitch as they are Abrams "tank shell" style weapons used for all manner of non ballistic purposes, including dam-busting, bunker busting, building demolition, etc.
SDAMS are slated for use in upcoming invasion of Iran to get at the enrichment centers that are all 600 feet underground (no daisy-cutter or modern MOAB can cause harm at 600 feet deep, only a SDAM or reduced yield w87.
But SDAMS have no axis spin to thwart, have no barometric pressure to thwart, have no restriction on detecting ferrous metal in environment, have no airspeed safety... in fact an SDAM has so few safety mechanisms, its practically a terrorist weapon in an of itself in my opinion. and of course it fits neatly inside a classy looking anodized metallic Zero-Halberton brief case.
The fed program want surety design... not physics design. They want DRM. DRM for nuke logic boards. And Even the xbox360 was hacked in a week.
I am shocked that the posts here do not realize this fact at the time I posted this.
semi-correct - The feds merely want SURETY design of current SDAM, not the less-tahn clean w87 even when configured to lowest yield.
1 &cid=15530064
refer to this anon post :
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=18840
A really good SDAM can burn clean enough to leave very little long half life radiation behind.
Of course a N-bomb is even better (fallout wise), but useless for bunker busting.
Isn't this effectively what they went to iraq to stop?
That's some doublespeak if I've ever read it.
semi-correct - The feds merely want SURETY design of current SDAMs, not the less-than clean W87, even when configured to lowest yield.
1 &cid=15530064
refer to this anon post :
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=18840
A really good SDAM can burn clean enough to leave very little long half life radiation behind.
Of course a N-bomb is even better (fallout wise), but useless for bunker busting.
Its not physics the feds want... its 'surety' for SDAMS.
Perhaps another arms race is exactly what our economy needs.
As others have already mentioned; this effort *should* result in a net decrease of US nukes. No one is suggesting an arms race, except leftist pinkos and harmless lunatics.
barack to the future?
possible prone to an attack that could detonate them.
Thats just not possible, not for any nuclear yield anyway. Its possible to destroy them and explode the high explosive charge and spread radioactive debris around but you just cannot set one off properly without a certain sequence of events with very precise timing and order.
What if we were attacked by the country with the largest nuke arsenal? Couldn't we create massive devastation against that nation using conventional weapons? Wouldn't it make sense for us to lead the world into nuke disarmament, and thus have greater weight in forming coalitions against Iran and North Korea?
hey, let's outsource this project...
xD
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
how many people wonder if there's a satellite or two holding onto a nuke or two just in case? ours or theirs. this nuclear R&D program could cover a new standard size and make of a nuclear weapon more suited to space just as much as earth combat.
.. that one of the competing laboritories has hired interplanetary workers to cut down costs. Critics argue that this new form of offshoring could do serious damage to the future of the country, but investors were pleased to hear that initial testing has been successful.
I'm concerned also that even if it were (in some bizarre parallel universe) a good idea to build such a bomb, that it wouldn't work for the intended purpose of "bunker busting."
The physics of the task aren't in the bomb's favor. If you've got a bunker X feet underground and the US develops a bomb that can destroy it at that depth, then the solution for the enemy is to dig a very slightly deeper bunker. The relation between bomb yield and vulnerable depth isn't linear. Furthermore, if the enemy was vaguely smart and dug its bunker in solid rock, the warhead won't be able to burrow very deeply before exploding, further reducing its usefulness. (If you really want to destroy a deeply buried targed, put a drill rig on top of it, then drop the bomb down the hole. That might, however, be messy if, say, Iran objects to you drilling in to its bunker.)
The only thing that makes sense to me is that the US wants these bombs because they'll be easier to use, and that's only desirable if the US wants to use them. The public rationalizations and arguments behind these weapons don't make sense to me in any other context, and many of them don't seem to make sense at all. These weapons aren't for making the world safer; they're for starting a nuclear war.
Or they retire the old, deteriorating weapons? They replace X old weapons with Y new weapons where Y is less than X thanks to efficiency.
Um, DUH?
Slashdot gets stupider every day, and you're leading the charge.
Be glad that they're going to eventually replace those "ancient" nukes with something a little cleaner, safer, or cheaper. For some reason, flying 50 year old B52's is cool and kind of cute, but tossing around 50 year old nukes doesn't instill confidence. The USA will have nukes for generations to come, they might as well be up to date.
You know you want to...outsource the development and production.....
;)
To a low cost country.....
In the middle east.....
To win over friends.....
oooh, Iran looks promising
Will they come in a choice of colors?
exactly *who* is the bad guy ? [sarcasm]Is that the one who has more oil in the ground ?[/sarcasm]
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Let me tell you how? Australia with its stockpile of Uranium
Mods..go ahead.
That's exactly right. The OP falls into the fallacy of treating two dissimilar things the same.
There's one big difference between our two countries. They have a government that is an unaccountable, fascist theocracy. Conversely, we have a government that is. . . Oh wait.
OoO
Please do not publish outside of
Many people who do more than watch mainstream news would dissagree with you on that one. The greatest "weapon" Iran has been threatening the US with is it's plan to switch from trading it's oil in US dollars to trading in euros, something that would be disasterous for the US economy as bills printed simply to trade for oil would come flooding back to the country and need to be exchanged for actual products.
There is not only the choice between safe and non-safe nukes. There is also the choice of no nukes at all. Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually pledged that he would be happy to give up Iran's nuclear ambitions if there was a genuine commitment of all nations with nuclear weapons to disarm. Now, this is a dishonest offer, because he knows that it is not going to happen. But what better way to, literally and figuratively, disarm Iran than taking him up on it? What is the use of nuclear weapons in this world? Who are you going to nuke? "The terrorists"?
If you look at the comments in this thread, you will find that America has no moral leadership anymore whatsoever. It's gone. Note that this is an America-based forum. Don't even try to suggest any kind of moral leadership of the United States in a European context. You will quickly hear: Iraq civil war. Abu Ghraib. Secret CIA prisons. Guantanomo. Police state. Religious fanaticism. Violation of international treaties. And so on, and so forth. What's the last moral defense against an undeniably terrible regime like Iran or the PRC? Democracy? Bullshit. Hardly anybody outside the US takes this so-called democracy seriously anymore. We are talking about an electoral system which tolerates the candidate in an election running the election, legally. Third world countries have more refined democratic systems than the US.
It's time to stop using false dichotomies and poorly constructed slippery slope arguments. "We can have safe nuclear bombs, or unsafe ones!" "We can invade countries, or let terrorists kill us!" "If we let the evil homosexuals marry, goats and chickens will be next!" "We must scare teenagers so they won't have sex and get pregnant!" "We must lock up 2 million people so there won't be criminals in the streets!" What scares me the most is that there are a lot of people who actually believe that.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
High oil prices are good for wealthy American businessmen who are heavily invested in oil or its allied industries, but high oil prices are only good for the US (in any more general sense) to the degree they discourage oil consumption in the long term.
Interestingly, the people who would benefit from high oil prices are many of the same people who support (or make up) the current American administration. If the current administration weren't so utterly damned incompetent, it wouldn't be hard to argue that it chose to invade Iraq precisely to drive up oil prices. (Historically any tension or upheaval in the Middle East has driven up oil prices.) It should have been clear ahead of time that this wouldn't be a surprising outcome.
Granted, there are additional global economic effects that are also impacting the price of oil: increasing demand from emerging markets; limited supplies; and local production/delivery disruptions unrelated to the idiotic invasion of Iraq. Still, unrest in the Middle East will do more than its fair share keeping prices high.
Let's get rid of old nukes, and not build any new ones! That way, the number of nukes will be decreasing even more!
Let's play Global Thermonuclear War!
A modern thermonuclear weapon is a multistage device. Briefly, here's how one works.
There are essentially two nuclear bombs within a thermonuclear weapon. There is a fission bomb and a fusion bomb. The fission bomb is needed to detonate the fusion part.
The fission part, at one end of the bomb casing, consists of an initiator (neutron generator), a sphere of fissile material (plutonium), and a neutron reflector (IIRC, natural uranium tamper) all wrapped in a spherical set of explosive lenses. The entire fission device is a sphere. The fusion part is behind a radiation shield, and is cylindrical. Coming through this shield is an enriched uranium "spark plug" that goes from the fission bomb and up the centre of the cylinder of fusion fuel. The fusion fuel is a solid fuel - lithium deuteride.
Around this cylinder of fusion fuel is a natural uranium tamper. Then there is a layer of polystrene, and the bomb casing. So essentially you have a cylinder that consists of bomb casing, polystyrene, natural uranium tamper, lithium deuteride and the highly enriched uranium 'spark plug'.
The sequence of events in detonation is that the explosive lenses are detonated around the fission first stage. This causes the contents of the spherical fission stage to implode - increasing the density of the fission bomb. When it is assembled into a critical mass, the initiator is fired, which fires neutrons into this highly compressed mass of plutonium. It starts to fission. The goal of the design is to keep this mass assembled for as long as possible - the longer you can keep the critical mass assemble before the nuclear reaction blows it apart, the better the efficiency.
The fission bomb is now emitting a significant amount of prompt radiation. Most of this won't reach the fusion part just yet because of the radiation shield. However, X-rays are now vaporizing the polystyrene wrapping the cylinder of fusion fuel. This enormously compresses the tamper, the lithium deuteride and the spark plug into a tiny fraction of its original volume. At the same time, the spark plug starts fissioning. Basically, a bomb the size of the Nagasaki bomb is being used to crush this cylinder of fusion fuel. The fusion reaction starts taking place. Again, the bomb is designed to keep all this stuff assembled for long enough that a significant fusion reaction can occur - and this time is measured in tens of nanoseconds. Finally, the fusion reaction's energy starts the natural uranium tamper fissioning - the third stage - adding yet more power to the explosion.
All this has to be exquisitely timed or you just spread some radioactive material around rather than start a nuclear reaction. If one of the explosive lenses in the fission device explodes a couple of nanoseconds late, the bomb won't go off.
Eventually (eventually, as I said, is measured in nanoseconds) the energy liberated starts to disassemble the bomb, and the reaction completes. By the time the bomb casing has started to break apart, the nuclear reaction has finished.
As you can see, there are several stages to this reaction. Any fault in the bomb will mean it either won't detonate at all or will "fizzle" (in this instance, a "fizzle" means only enough energy to blow up, say, Long Island). Various components in the bomb degrade - the electronics, the explosives and the plastics. If any degrade sufficiently it's likely the bomb simply won't go off at all.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
First new nuclear bomb design in 20 years? You mean WinNuke isn't a nuclear bomb? No wonder people haven't taken my threats seriously...
http://outcampaign.org/
Hehehe, 'safe nukes'. That's a contradiction in terms if I ever saw one.
What they're doing is exploiting a loophole in their treaties by reducing the number of nukes, but making each new one more powerful so in the end they actually GAIN firepower.
But even keeping the current count of nukes is bad. The US currently pushes Iran not to build the bomb because of a treaty they violate themself by just _keeping_ the same number of bombs, not to mention building new ones to keep this level. The US signed into reducing their own stockpile of atomic weapons in exchange for everyone else outside the atomic club not building them in the first place.
Every time I play "rock, scissors, paper, gun" it always ends in a stalemate!
-- thinkyhead software and media
the correct quote from the Marquis de Sade is that fetishism is when you use the chicken.
So, instead of weapons with planned obsolence and a high maintenance costs you want planetary killers that last forever?
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
I do wish there was a +3 Damn Right moderation setting.
Try this match-the-answers puzzle:
Nation A has: no oil, working nukes
Nation B has: oil, no working nukes
Take a wild guess at which one got invaded. And yes, of course this is an oversimplification. In the modern era of soundbite education that's the only way to get anyone to understand what you're saying. It's an oversimplification, but it's also true in every clause.
~cHrisHey, j. a. rogers, that's way too much common sense for a slashdot topic related to US foreign policy. Get with the program!
A new, more reliable weapon, they say, would help the nation reduce its stockpile.
Because nothing helps you reduce the number of atomic weapons you have like building more of them.
I find this really sick.. Saying to others they can't build nuclear weapons, but keep on making those weapons yourself.. Unless the U.S.A. themselves stop making those weapons they can't say to other countries to stop making them (in this case Iran, a while back it was north korea)..
I'm not for anyone creating nuclear weapons, but if the U.S.A. builds/keeps them any other country is also allowed to create/have them..
At the moment the biggest threat to the world is the U.S.A., and that's sad, as the U.S.A. is a very beautifull country, only to be run by complete morrons who only thing about themselves (and with that I mean really themselves, not their people)...
Isn't a (nuclear) weapon unsafe to begin with?
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
The problem is that we need to think like they do. Economic sanctions against a communist dictatorship have little effect, because the citizens are already poor and there's no way we can keep out enough to make those in control realy, really feel the pai they should. Plus, it makes it REALLY easy for them to paint us as the bad guys. What we need is to hit the dictators where it hurts. If eliminating them directly isn't an option (often it isn't) then cut off things ike arms shipments. Trade them commodities for their everyday men, women, and children - food, medicines, even relatively expensive things like TVs or, heck, budget automobiles - instead of Western currency that the dictators can use for anything, anywhere in the world.
Remember the effects of propaganda: citizens of enemy countries will be raised to see you as enemies. This will be a blind, unreasoned, deeply-entrenched belief that will be VERY hard to root out, even if there is no logical or emotional reason for it. You can try counteracting this propaganda, though the odds are against you. Just don't pretend you're goig to see "mass defections" just because America is so much better; these people honestly think you're demon worshippers who have come to rape their children (or something similar). It is terrifyingly easy to for a dictator with control over the media to demonize somebody that the first sight of them you have is their combat uniforms and belts of machine gun ammo marching into town next to tanks that blow up your house because it's in the way, or because a suspected terrorist has taken cover inside. It might inspire some fear in the dictators, but to their people it simply breeds the very terrorists you think you're suppressing.
In other words, if you must use force, use it very carefully, against training camps and the like (not homes of suspicious individuals). Occupations breed insurgencies; if you don't want those, don't try enforcing policies with a big block of troops inside their borders.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
... it should be brought before the UN Security Council with a possible Chapter VII response .... yeah right, pigs might fly and American politicians might turn honest.
600 feet is a sweet spot Iran used for much of its placement of enrichment program.
l la.jpg
600 feet is indeed hard to penetrate even with a low yield configured w87 or a SDAM, and only devastated by a genuine 1 Mt EPW.
Heat increases 5 degrees Fahrenheit every hundred feet in most mining.
600 feet could be as hot as 30 degree warmer than topside.... barely tolerable heat on equipment (capacitors on circuit boards) and human personell, but such situations are airconditioned.
a crater is formed if the fireball is within 1/10th of its radius above ground. No need to penetrate the earth, though effectivity does increase dramatically if as close as possible, and infact if a few meters into the earth. Our current earth-penetrating weapon (EPW) is a W83 warhead in a modern EPW delivery mechanism that can burrow a few meters into the ground before it explodes. In fact, the physical effect is astonishing. Penetration of a few meters increases the underground destructive effects by more than a factor of twenty.
2,000 % more destructive yield.
Amusingly... a 1.2 megaton B83 in its EPW delivery shell can crush underground bunkers to a depth of about 1000 feet.
Notice that a 1.2 megaton burst obviously does very little to military grade extreme depth bunkers!
A micro nuke SDAM is 1Kt to 8 kt and designed to burn clean.
Here is a photo of the fury of a mere 8 kiloton explosion (placed below waterlevel)
http://www.vce.com/cgi-bin/Images/AtomicArt/umbre
stunning... eh?
but 8kt would barely cause true damage to properly designed installation 600 feet below surface.
But any yield can be configured. Any yield is possible in hbombs, is all based on how much lithium-6 deuteride is placed at the other end of the foam spacer-shaper on the side opposing the fission core primer..
Imagin a yield of 64.0 kt per kg of lithium-6 deuteride !!!
fission of ANY material known is less than 17.8 kt per kg. Fusion is pretty sweet! For tinier masses, dusion of pure deuterium yields 82.2 kt/kg, but costs more for the materials.
Imagine.. a true SDAM is possible to be in briefcase configured with up to 400 kt yield... but never is designed for that or configured as such, nor trusted in a human ported format.
For all the fury and power of "small nukes" in pretty explosive photos such as the link i provided above of a 0.008 megaton blast... 0.008 megatons would rock a bunker but not devastate the hardware within.
The amount of heat-exchange for air conditioning (typically using covert heat exchange coils buried close to surface) would be huge if tunneling deeper than 600 feet.
The side of a granite mountain reduces the heat issue of regular mining depth, but increases creation costs greatly too.
600 feet is actually infuriating... its a pesky "Ha Ha Ha" to anyone who wants to attack it.
But Iran WILL eventually be dealt with. Despite it being 10 times mightier than Iraq. The reason... the USA is foolishly on Israels side of this unwinnable Jihad.
In fact 911 was 100% caused only due to us hardware (US helicopters flown by israel) used in weekly mass murders in paestine in July and August of 2001. There would have been no war if we were not pals with Israel, or at a minimum... gave them money to buy non-USA military hardware.
Just what we need more nukes wooohooo!
1. Breakdown of Iran's Religions:
Shi'a Muslim 89%, Sunni Muslim 9%, Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian, and Baha'i 2%
2. Breakdown of USA's Religions:
Protestant 52%, Roman Catholic 24%, Mormon 2%, Jewish 1%, Muslim 1%, other 10%, none 10% (2002 est.)
3. I would hardly say that the replacment of Iraq's then-current government and military could be considered wiping the country off the map. In contrast, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's made statements that Israel is a stain in the Islamic world and should be wiped off the map. Mahmoud was also a known torturer during his days with the OSU. The last time I checked, the most torturous thing Bush did was share his bad grammar with the world.
I can't believe this was modded insightful.
d ing.htm for the numbers in 2004. US spending has only increased since then.)
Sure, the states need a military to defend itself from 'rival nations marching in'. However, does the US expect half the world to come marching in? Because last I checked, the US military budget is half of the annual spendings on defense worldwide. Yes, that's right folks, the US spends half of all the money spent on defense. Also, 80% of the increase in military spending was due to the US last year. ( see for instance http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spen
I hate to break the news to you, but the US does not have a defensive army. You have a mostly offensive army which is basically strong enough to take on the rest of the world.
"Remember, there are no world police."
Yes there is. It's the states. Although police implies a force controlled by some agreed upon laws, and without it's own interests. This is not the case. The police here is governend by _your_ laws, and guided by _your_ interests, with a guiding principle of fear, feeded by _your_ government because some fscking Saudi Arab made up some so-called global terrorist group which is _absolutely_ no threat to the imperialist empire the states have become.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
While it wont slow down the idiot terrorists since they dont care if they die for their cause, it will have an effect on large hostile countries like China. If they know can melt them at will, they will think twice before attacking first. Worked well between us and the Russians, so it will work again.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Excuse me if I'm cynical, but couldnt this just be another way of keeping the bomb-builders employed and busy? Isnt there something more useful they could be doing, like fusion research?
A new, more reliable weapon, they say, would help the nation reduce its stockpile.'"
If I remember Dr. Strangelove correctly, you really only need _one_ Doomsday bomb.
... for you US taxpayers that your taxmoney is being used on initiatives started by the influence of weapon industry lobbyists instead of being used for your own good.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Wouldn't it be better to develop defence instead of offence?
At the moment the theory is "If they attack us, we'll be fucked. But in about half an hour they'll be fucked too"
If there was effective defence it wouldn't matter what has hurled at a country. It would render nukes useless and the need for stockpiling would be gone.
Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the US is required to ~"pursue plans to reduce and liquidate their stockpiles"
Now I know this is not likely to happen, but it does gall me to see the US (And the UK for that matter) ignoring their treaty obligations, and then getting righteous over how Iran may be failing it's Non-Proliferation duties.
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
When the USA and USSR agreed to decommission stockpiles, much of what was decommissioned was due for end-of-life anyway. Many fuel systems and payload setups have limited shelf lives, we are talking about some pretty nasty chemical propelants here. In the arms treaties, both sides got rid of their older stuff. It was a good move politically, but it didn't do much strategically.
What was it that Martin Luther King said? Something like "We have smart bombs but dumb leaders".
I think this could apply here.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
America is the only country to use nuclear weapons, inflicting total misery on hundreds of thousands of people. The same country to invade another looking for nuclear weapons that aren't there. The same nation that chastises, to the point of threatening war, other countries for enriching uranium... and now they publically anounce they are working on a new and improved life annihilating weapon of their own.
Now you can't argue with the totally fscking absurd, but you can argue that the world is alot less safe with America in it.
Reccommended reading.
The US still has nukes because the US is likely to need them in the future as a deterrent. Europe has NOT picked up the mantel of world leadership that the US held since after World War II. It was the US has badgered Europe into going into Korea and Serbia. The US is the titan the plops down on occasion trying to fix the worlds wrongs. Now, I am not going to argue that every time the US juggernaut stomps its foot it is doing right. I am arguing that no one else has bothered to do so. There IS a need in this world for a nation or group of nations that is willing to show up around the world with guns to stop unprovoked assaults, such as in Korea, or genocides, such as in Serbia.
Answer me this. If China was to launch an assault on Taiwan tomorrow, would Europe run to the defense of a fellow democracy? Of course not. The only friend Taiwan could expect to come to its aid would be the big evil US. The US would park a battle fleet off the coat of Taiwan, drop a few thousand marines on the shore, and start sinking anything that tried to cross the channel despite the fact that it would be rumbling with the most populace nation in the world off of its own coast.
Europe has merrily thrown the defense of democracies to the wind and has actually tried to sell China weapons for which it could use to attack Taiwan despite pleading from the US not to. Europe has not entered into any sort of defense pact to defend Taiwan as the US has. Europe has put their economic prosperity and safety above defending fellow democracies.
When Europe can unite and show a willingness to strap on their boots and go kick some ass for democracy, I would be more then happy to see the US put down its arms and call it a centaury. I don't see that happening. The only time Europe comes out guns blazing is when it has to do with one of their former colonies or the US is leading the charge and carrying over half of the load. As long as the US is the only nation swinging its weight, you can expect the US to have a hefty supply of nukes to keep the people it pisses off at bay.
Personally, I think that the South Park guys sum up the argument for the good that the US provides to the world pretty eloquently in Team America, World's Police.
We're dicks! We're reckless, arrogant, stupid dicks. And the Film Actors Guild are pussies. And Kim Jong Il is an asshole. Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes: assholes that just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is: they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate - and it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes, pussies can be so full of shit that they become assholes themselves... because pussies are an inch and half away from ass holes. I don't know much about this crazy, crazy world, but I do know this: If you don't let us fuck this asshole, we're going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit!
.. then they should do away with the propulsion system. This way, when some guy decides to push the button after all, you'll save the energy to fly the thing across the planet, be a lot safer because the engine can't fail, and also make the same savings for the folkes at the receiving end. They can then also detonate their own nuke locally, again reaping the benefits of saving.
Last but not least, you also save the 1 hour waiting time before total destruction...
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
El presidente Bush presiona para que Iran no desarrolle enriquecimiento de uranio porque tiene miedo y sale a publicar sus desarrollos nucleares. YMF!
..with an aging stockpile; in the absence of periodic full-on testing we have no way to be sure that if the weapons are ever needed they will work. Given the amount of money we spend on figuring out ways to test them without setting them off, new designs might actually be a fiscally sensible idea.
Personally, I'm ambivalent - I agree "the safest nuke is no nuke", but practically that's just not in the cards, so we might as well at least do it right.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
To foreigners, a Yankee is an American.
To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.
To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander.
To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.
And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
The ayatollahs have decried the use of nuclear arms as anti-islamic (and, if you had read the Koran, you would know why) The only people who have a reason to be scared of being turned into radioactive vapor in the name of God are the Iranians.
because the first one was such a terrific idea, wasn't it?
It's an oversimplification, but it's also true in every clause.
Ok - I'll play.
So by "Nation A", you would mean America, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, probably Israel, and possibly North Korea.
And by "Nation B", you would mean Saudi Arabia, Norway, Iran, Venuzuela, UAE, Kuwait, Nigeria, Mexico.
Russia doesn't fit into either (it's a large oil exporter and has nukes).
I think you might have oversimplified this to a point where it loses all validity.
I was just about to post a long tirade about how the parent is a worthless douche bag, but I see you've taken care of that.
:)
Thanks!
This sig rocks the casbah.
Those that say the U.S. is not practicing what it preaches, in regard to Iran and proliferation, need to remember that Iran is not like the U.S.
Think of it as Columbine.
The other students that may or may not have tormented Dylan and Klebold had access to weapons just as D&K. However, they had the a modicum of thought, maturity, ability to control themselves against shooting others, where D&K did not. Combine that with D&K's persecution complex and their woes, real and imagined, then give D&K access to firearms.
The U.S., Britain, Russia, and France, and to a lesser degree, India and China, all have a certain level of checks and balances and mature statecraft that will prevent them from using the nukes. The same cannot be said about the likes of North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and any other government in flux.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
"Is there anyone left on Earth who trusts anything the US Government has to say? You're more likely to get the truth from a damp sock. And usually more intelligent reasoning."
Libya has given up their nuclear ambitions in return for assurances and lifted sanctions from the U.S. By your reasoning they should have been going full-bore with a nukes program. But instead they sat down at the bargaining table and worked out an agreement.
The fact is many nations have aborted their nuclear ambitions through talks with the U.S. Brazil and Argentina are two that come to mind off the top of my head. Why? Because having nuclear weapons does not actually solve any problems, and it creates a whole new host of them. Libya came to understand this. Heck we now know that Saddam himself came to understand this--he dismantled his WMD programs in the late 90's.
Iran will hopefully come to understand this too. Because if they have nuclear weapons it does not avert a showdown with the U.S. over the future of the Middle East, it simply raises the stakes to much more dangerous level. You could think of Iran like a bullied kid who thinks bringing a gun to school will solve his problems. We all know it does not, in fact it multiplies them.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
So is the USA.
When was the last time a US citizen was put to death for practicing the wrong religion? Your tendency toward relativism and moral equivalence have clouded your judgement.
They just threatened. The USA actually attacked Iraq.
Do you believe the US is not trying to rebuild Iraq and institute stable, lawful government in Iraq? Do you contend that the US is systematically plundering that country? Ahmadinejad's comments are pure malice, the fantasy of a homicidal madman who wants to kill Jews because they are Jews. If I were a Jew I would take the threat deadly seriously. Why Persian's are so obscessed by an Arab/Jewish conflict is hard to say. My guess is it distracts from the utter failure and depravity of Iran's mullahcracy.
an ill wind that blows no good
This is totally wrong. The uranium tamper whould reduce the neutron radiation. Some neutrons are produced in fission but a lot more in fusion. A neutron bomb lacks any tamper. It is a fusion bomb disigned to leak as many neutrons as possible. In the standard 3-stage fission-fusion-fission bomb, the fusion neutrons do not escape. They trigger fission in the uranium tamper greatly increasing yield but reducing neutron radiation. 3-stage thermonulear weapons have basically no prompt radiation killing potential. Because the yield is so high, anyone within the deadly radiation radius would be virtually vaporized. The neutrons are scattered by air and the neutron radiation intensity reduces much faster than quadratically while thermal radiation intensity decreases quadratically.
It is true, though, that third stage fission contributes greatly to fallout. But there are no "clean" nuclear weapons. It can be reduced by larger ratio of fusion but never completely.
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
"Iran would be crazy NOT to develop nuclear weapons, assuming they look after their own best interests."
It takes years to develop a nuclear weapon; the U.S. has shown that it can attack and defeat an Iran-sized military in months.
I'm a U.S. citizen and did not support the invasion of Iraq because I thought it was clear they did not have a sizable WMD program (the UN inspectors found NOTHING for years) and so did not pose an immediate threat to the U.S.
A nuclear-armed Iran is different. If I knew Iran was on the verge of developing an atomic bomb for the express purpose of threatening the U.S., I would fully support war against them. And be assured that the U.S. would win that war faster than Iran could threaten the U.S. with nukes.
"We need a HUGE carrot or a gigantic stick to stop them."
We have both but they are not interested. Like a kid fascinated with his dad's gun safe, they are fixated on nuclear capability beyond logical reason.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Rummy said, "That's too bad. I have five confessions down at Gitmo."
Substitute WMD for bike, Stalin for Bush, Beria for Rummy.
What's new?
Glad to see it. Besides the obvious welfare-for-smart-people angle, it will bolster the credibility of American deterrence. There's still China out there, and they might think they could win a nuclear war over Taiwan someday. Not to mention a Russia that could become resurgent and continue down the path of despotism.
The genie cannot be confined back in its bottle, therefore if there's going to be nukes, America should have the most and the best.
No doubt about that, but an invasion did not help in Iraq. People were killed before, now they are still killed--only now it's more like random violence. In addition, the country became a gigantic terrorist training ground, so if peace were to come to Iraq we would have a few thousands terrorists on the loose. Want to do it over in Iran?
Also... Iran's second biggest consumer and largest investor of its oil is China.
If we invaded Iran, China would most likley see this as a direct threat or an attack on its iterests. Perhaps this would convince them that they too no longer have to abide by international laws when it comes to invading countries...
Say... Taiwan.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Five bucks says these new nukes will have DRM. Doesn't everything these days?
So is that meant that instead of killing thousands and wounding thousands more, it will just kill everyone in one hit? I mean, its a bomb, a really big bomb. How can it be more reliable? Did the old ones not explode? Did someone have to go down there and kick it a few times for the timer to start? [[OFFTOPIC]] Why does everyone's post get a rating of 5? You guys need to fix the karma bonus.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Wasn't the whole point of the non-proliferation treaty for non-nuclear states to remain that way, and in exchange the nuclear states would dispose of their nuclear arsenals over time?
The policy of developing new nukular weapons seems an outright betrayal of that treaty. If one signatory openly disregards the treaty, how can we in good conscience criticize another nation for threatening to withdraw from the treaty.
I'm just saying...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
1993
David Koresh felt it necessary to turn a gun on the policeman who came to his door investigating credible alligations of sexual abuse of minors.
He herded his followers deep into his compound before he set it ablaze with pre-rigged incendiaries.
Some followers who sought to escape from the compound were shot by Koresh's militant partners when they tried to escape.
David Koresh committed suicide and murdered his followers at the same time.
Do you really think that the Koresh cult suicide is a religious freedom issue with the same substance as persecution of non-Muslims in the middle east?
an ill wind that blows no good
Of course they can. Carbon Nanotubes can apparently do everything else, so of course they can do it. They'll be used to bring us free fusion (the engery of the future, and always will be) and we can just fly our car down to fusion-r-us and plug one of these little antimatter watchamacallits in and charge it up like cheap cell phone. Badabing, all set.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
>Nuclear disarmament is like that scene in that Van Dam movie.. where they both have a gun pointed at the other's head. You'd have to be a fucking idiot to put your gun down first. The only difference here, is not only are they holding a gun to your head, they are holding a gun to the head of everyone you have ever met. And of course you are doing the same thing. Not to mention if you pull the trigger, they will pull the trigger too. Suddenly it seems more crazy not to start makeing consesions...
-Todd
Put down the sig, and step away from the computer.
I don't think the stability issue is a safety issue. As far as accidentally blowing up your own stock pile. I think that it is more of an issue of "we dropped it on the city but nothing happened?". Some one with more knowledge, please correct me if I am wrong.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
What I see is that the old bombs will be dismantled and the new bomb will be designed as a single modular bomb design that can be used in three ways:
1. A single yield 200 kT warhead that will replace the W80 used on our air-launched cruise missiles.
2. A single yield 200 kT warhead that is integrated into re-entry vehicles used on our Minuteman III and Trident II missiles.
3. A variable-yield (5-200 kT) warhead encased in a stealthy bomb casing that will replace our B61 and possibly B83 gravity bombs.
It's a dishonest offer because he's an Islamist nutjob who wants to annihilate the Great Satan (also known as Modern Civilization) because of some divine inspiration that he received from the Quran, or from his ass. Nuclear weapons are very much needed in this world, and I don't see how the situation will ever change. If nobody stops Iran from acquiring nuclear capability, then somebody is going to get nuked.
I'm pretty sure the single largest producer of oil is the US. It's just that our appetite is so large we must import quite a bit as well.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Switzerland is democratic, Christian/secular, very rich, self-satisfied, socially quite conservative, but have started allowing women to vote and move up in the workplace, assume equality with men, etc.
Switzerland also has big businesses that have done some rather bad things 60 years ago, probably aren't much more moral/ethical now than then.
Nevertheless, they don't have the world constantly critiquing the, nor a problem with fanatics attacking them. Thus, the simple explanations wrt Moslem fanatics (far from the only kind, and still a minority of the suicide bombers -- Hindus are ahead) don't account for the disparity. Switzerland is one of many countries that DO NOT have such problems.
One major difference between the US and Switzerland is that Sw runs a neutral foreign policy.
Do you suppose that is it?
Switzerland doesn't go around committing or supporting massive injustice, the single largest factor in producing terrorists.
Lew
"The Constitution, the WHOLE Constitution, and nothing but the CONSTITUTION."
Though the US and Russia are "friends" as far as it goes, Russia is still a worrysome nation. They are not free over there. Freedom House ranks tham as a 6 and 5 in political rights and civil liberties on a scale of 7, 1 being the most free. The current government has done some major consoladation of executive power and while they are more free than the Soviet days, it's not a lot. Well, that does create a concern as to nuclear weapons usage. If there's one guy who can make the decision to launched almost unchecked, then there's a concern.
However it's not a big concern at this point since the US has their arsenal. Russia knows that nuclear weapons aren't a realistic option because of that.
I've always thought a good follow-on to the now disintegrating NPT would be for all the nuclear powers to agree to make a wasteland of any area that lobbed a nuke onto a non-nuclear power.
That would remove the incentive to become a nuclear power.
But, it would require giving up the option of using nukes on non-nuclear states and any leverage that such a threat provides currently. And, it assumes that something going off is traceable back to sender.
I'm afraid it will take a case of actual use for people to wake up to the dangers of proliferation.
I like today's quote at the bottom of the page:
;-)
"One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day."
Are these context sensitive?
I suppose that explains how a newspaper from Denmark can get people all riled up despite having absolutely nothing to do with foreign policy. The entire Middle East needs to be bombed and paved over.
The most well thought-out comment I've read so far on /.!
No, but it will most likely mean they will be replaced by politicians who are touchy feely and believe we shouldnt' do anything to stand up to militant Islam. Well, unless you think lobbing cruise missles into baby food factories is something.
I take it you consider kicking over a country and turning into a hotbed of terrorism over aluminum rocket tubes, a forged purchase letter "signed" by a dead man, and mobile weather balloon stations to be doing something more substantial, then?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Every culture, every country, needs someone to demonize. Most of the world has picked the USA to fill that role. The only unusual thing here is that most Americans have picked their own government to play that role for them.
The problem is that we've given them an excuse to do so, and that's our problem to fix. If the French aren't upset with their government about killing Africans, that's the French's lack of enlightened patriotism, but if Americans aren't upset with troops killing Iraqis, then that's our problem.
What I don't like is people who treat any criticism of our country's behavior as unpatriotic. It's the opposite. Not holding your country to the highest standard possible is unpatriotic. People who think that pride in our flag is more important than pride in our principles like to call people who try to make us stick to those pricniples "Blame America Firsters."
D: Hasn't the torture at Abu Ghraib lost us the war for hearts and minds?
R: That's just the hate speech of "Blame America Firsters."
D: How about Red Cross reports on torture and reports of repeated detainee suicide attempts at Guantanimo Bay?
R: More "Blame America Firsters."
D: Massacres in US military operations?
R: "Blame America First," again.
D: Corruption in military contracts leading to Iraqi unres-?
R: "Blame America First!" Don't you get it. We've done nothing wrong! NOTHING! And the French did it first anyway, so there!
D: Who cares about the French. This is about us living up to the standards of our fore-
R: LA LA LA LA LA! OH SAY CAN YOU SEEEE!
And it just degenerates from there. Maybe I'm paraphrasing a little.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I read that as Shouldn't we focus on building cleaner, safer atomic weapons for civilian use?
O_o
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
>build a CANDU electric plant
Anyone who can buy natural uranium can skip the whole slow and fabuously expensive enrichment process, stuff it into a CANDU, and breed plutonium which can be extracted chemically. Though the design does have many nice safety features.
The rational objections to U.S. policy with regard to Iran are not bourn from a desire to see a 'fair' distribution of nuclear weapons. The rational objection to U.S. policy with regard to Iran is that ALL the social awareness sculpting through the media and the actions of the government are designed to start another war in the Middle East. Period. ANY semi-logical sounding argument for doing so will be employed to trick the public into going along with this desire. It is easy to come up with good sounding arguments for even the dumbest ideas.
War is profitable. Chaos is profitable. That is the bottom line. (Well, that and speeding along the Christian cultic agenda toward the apocalypse. But that's another story). --Priming the U.S. population for war with Iran has nothing to do with any of the reasons you suggest. Bush and his people are not interested in any philosophy which does not seek to maintain imbalance, chaos and a steady flow of public funds into their pockets through third party companies, (oil, defense, etc.).
They fooled the world once with WMD's in Iraq. They're doing it again with this nonsense about uranium plants in Iran. It's all propaganda and social programming.
-FL
What's made it into the unclassified literature says that the old generation were designed to be as light as possible, designed to wring everylast milliton of yield out of something that would get off the ground. Design for one thing, and you sacrifice others: they were never expected to stay in inventory this long, and the tiny operating margins mean that you have to get everything just right. The new design, supposedly, would be overbuilt enough to not need babying.
>Thus, the simple explanations wrt Moslem fanatics (far from the only kind, and still a minority of the suicide bombers -- Hindus are ahead) don't account for the disparity. Switzerland is one of many countries that DO NOT have such problems.
I've never heard of a Hindu suicide bomber. Please let me know when this has happened, as far as I'm aware there is no reward of for Martrs (sp) in the Vedic scripts. There has been bombings yes, but I never knew about this.
An aging plutonium based nuclear weapon has a lot of plutonium in it. Plutonium decays. When it does it makes helium. This helium makes bubbles in the plutonium. A lot of computational power is being used by DoE to find out if a nuclear bomb with holey plutonium can still explode. It's anincreadably difficult problem. You know that BlueGene/L machine at LLNL, they run this simulation on half the nodes (63k processors) and it take for ever. Maybe they just found out that after 40 years, your plutonium isn't what it used to be, and needs to be replaced. They simulate what happens to a block of holey plutonium when it gets compressed (nearly) instananiously (like when you make a bomb go off). I heard about this at the supercomputing conference last November here in Seattle. Sounds like an interesting problem, with some neat challenges.
887321 = 337*2633
Bob Woodward got surpisingly straight answers about the runup to war in his book, "Plan of Attack".
The administration was afraid sanctions would (continue to) unravel, were afraid of an incident in the no-fly zone if the Iraqis, after hundreds of failed attempts, shot down an American pilot, and the administration took a terrifyingly uninhibited interpretation of the previous administration's "regime change" policy. A few people articulating a vision of a domino theory of democracy to reshape the Middle East.
The war was not about WMD.
Wolfowitz let this slip in July 2003: '"I'm not concerned about weapons of mass destruction," Wolfowitz told a group of reporters traveling with him. "I'm concerned about getting Iraq on its feet. I didn't come (to Iraq) on a search for weapons of mass destruction." ' and ' "the decision to highlight weapons of mass destruction as the main justification for going to war in Iraq was taken for bureaucratic reasons...." '
The mindshare taken up by debate over WMD keeps people's eyes off the ball.
The amount of people threatening, suggesting and suggesting the enjoyment of genocide on slashdot and elsewhere on the american frequented internet sites these days is terrifying. I hope this isn't some sort of a sign. :S
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Actually, denmark had people in iraq, which would make you incorrect. However, you sir are totally ignorant if you think that denmark has no foreign policy.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
They were already our enemys, now they are openly our enemys. That is an improvement. When they are dead enemys that is a further improvment.
By the time we leave Iraq we will be deeply entrenched in Afghanastan. Yes nobody has held Afghanastan forever. The brits held as much of it as they cared to for as long as they wanted to.
Iran will be watching that border for American aircraft for the foreseeable future. Let them worry.
BTW watch for an 'industrial accident' at the Iranian nuke plant.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Think of it as Columbine.
No. How about we think of it as it is.
Iran was growing into a powerful democratic state with high social values; women allowed to go to University and live without the veil, etc. However, one of several problems the West had with Iran's growth was that it also wanted to keep and manage it's own crude oil reserves. For this reason, (among others), the CIA succeeded in de-stabilizing the government by arming crazy religious fundamentalists who eventually took over the government. Iran fell into repression, and set itself up neatly as another Fall Guy for the U.S. war machine.
So if we want to equate current relations between the U.S. and Iran to a schoolyard bullying metaphor, it might be more accurate to say that bully, (the U.S.) simply wants to finish the job of crushing another nation into the ground for its own sick benefit, and is using a lie to do it.
Keep in mind, all the 'credible' evidence that Iran is working to build bombs comes from sources like Fox News and CNN, both of which do none of their investigative reporting with regard to war preferring to quote un-filtered press releases from the Pentagon, (the same Pentagon which assured us that Iraq had WMDs.) The U.S. has a long and well established history of lying and war-mongering for money. It would be wise to consider this while developing one's personal beliefs on the subject of world politics.
-FL
Props to deKlerk.
The last thing the world needs is a zulu nation with nukes.
So it was basically right along the same lines as Bush's state o' the union address.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
Why would any thinking person believe that nuclear weapons are a "bad idea"? While the period since 1945 hasn't exactly been free of wars, there has not been a single major war; World War III never happened. Yes, if you are in the middle of a firefight or on the receiving end of an explosive device--be it delivered by an advanced fighter-bomber flying at 10,000 feet or a beat up Toyota--then it's small comfort to note that you are in a minor war, an "insurgency", or an "asymmetric conflict". But it is incontrovertible that the megadeath slaughter of the world wars has not been repeated. Why? Because the invention of the nuclear weapons made war between states that have such weapons suicidal. War is no longer an extension of policy simply because no government will pursue a policy that leads to its own annihilation.
Powerful states do still have the option of attacking backward states that do not possess nuclear weapons, of course. Recently, the United States made this blindingly obvious when it attacked Iraq. Iraq was not attacked because it had "weapons of mass destruction", but precisely because it did not have such weapons--or at least not weapons that could possibly pose a threat to a superpower like the United States. (Iraq used "chemical agents" in its war against Iran; everyone knew this but certainly no one in Washington got hysterical about it. That's because gas was never a particularly good weapon, and certainly is not capable of the same scale of destruction as a thermonuclear bomb.)
The Iranians, not being fools, took the lesson to heart and are now building a nuclear deterrent as quickly as they can, while engaging in the necessary double-talk to palliate the pious official fiction that nuclear weapons are evil (in fact, the policy of every state on earth is that nuclear weapons are evil--when the enemy has them.)
But isn't Iran a "terrorist" state? And doesn't this mean that a nuclear Iran would be a particular threat? Nonsense. Iran is a state, and as such it has a fixed address. This means that if Iran bombs anyone, it can be bombed in return. And if we are speaking of thermonuclear bombs, then that is a decisive deterrent.
Consider the case of India and Pakistan. Both are nuclear powers, and share a tradition of profound hatred that goes back at least to the time when these states were formed. Yet, there has been no war between them since both developed nuclear weapons! This despite the fact that the Pakistani government is not exactly a model of a modern moderate and secular democracy.
As I see it, the greatest danger inherent in nuclear proliferation is that as the number of countries that have such weapons becomes larger, the odds that a nuclear device will fall into the hands of a non-state organization (a.k.a. "terrorists") will increase. This risk is especially great in countries that do not have a sophisticated security apparatus, and that host such non-state actors within their borders. This would obviously be a most undesirable event, because the restraints that apply to states do not apply to non-state organizations. They have no return address, so to speak, so the threat of nuclear retaliation is no deterrent at all to such an organization.
I believe that the world would be far better served if we (and everyone else) stopped mouthing pious platitudes about the evils of nuclear weapons, and established some sensible policies to control them. The goal of such policies should be to make as certain as can be that only states will possess nuclear weapons, and that every such weapon can be accounted for. We need an agreement that would permit an international body to inspect the nuclear arsenals of all who possess such weapons. The goal of such supervision would be to make nuclear weapons traceable. We could then tell Iraq, "Go ahead and build all the nukes you want. But if any of those nukes ever goes off, prepare to lose a major city. And it doesn't matter whether you actually delivered the bomb yourselves, or you lost track of it and it wound up being used by some "freedom fighters"/"terrorists". You will be toast."
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Does training and arming Al Qaeda, selling chemical weapons to Iraq, or giving guns to Iran count for anything? I also fail to see what Bush has done to "stand up to militant islam". The current Bush administration was on the right path there for a while, until they decided that grabbing some oil was more important than finishing the job in Afghanistan.
Without addressing the worldwide opinion of the USA, think of the dangers that an unreliable nuclear weapon could be. Relations with the US and 90% of the world are amicable and we consider a great deal of countries our allies.
Imagine for a moment, should some terrible situation arise where a nuclear weapon was deployed for detonation. Regardless of your opinion on nuclear weapons, the prospect of a 'dud' nuclear weapon is perhaps the most frightening nuclear nightmares around. An enemy of the US, targeted by a nuclear weapon, is likely now in posession of a nuclear weapon. One that is quite possibly quickly put back together in a working condition.
It is a terrifying situation, and being able to reduce the nuclear weapon stockpile by designing more reliable nuclear weapons doesn't give me much cause for alarm as it would be developed by a country that already is in posession of the largest nuclear weapon stockpile in the world.
Nukes aren't going away unfortunately, and like all military hardware they must be maintained, or they become far more dangerous.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
You've got your history a bit backwards.
The Shah, who was certainly not a fundamentalist, got into power thanks to a CIA and British intelligence funded coup when the parliament voted to nationalise the oil industry. The fundamentalists gained power decades later, after the shah banned multi party rule and got more and more dictatorial in order to preserve his dominance of Iranian politics. This was despite the economic growth during his rule - the economic decline didn't start until after the shah was overthrown.
At best it's an example of "blowback" - if CIA hadn't given the Shah power it's possible that more moderate forces would have kept control, never giving the fundamentalists a chance to build their power base. However, we'll never know if it would've made a difference.
Only an insane man would argue that a fuel-air bomb or daisycutter is somehow near equivalent to a nuclear bomb, even one of Hiroshima vintage. To say that about modern day nuclear bombs would be outright false. All one has to do is look at some of the past's above ground bomb tests to know that this is false. Let me present you one:
Operation Crossroads
Take a look at the Baker test (1946), which was part of Operation Crossroads. Notice the mushroom cloud of water - from the site:
At its greatest extent, the water column was 2000 feet (600 m) across, with walls 300 feet (100 m) thick, and 6000 feet (2 km) tall, holding a million tons of water.
Now, let's compare this blast to daisycutters and MOABs - please reference these links:
GBU-43/B "Mother Of All Bombs"
The Daisy Cutter Bomb
MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Burst)
Now, these sites seem to reference the fact that the destructive area for both of these conventional devices are about "600 yards", or 1800 feet, across. This area is only, at most, the size of just the water column of the Baker test. I can guarantee you that had that test been conducted on a real target, the destructive area (for just blast effects, mind you) would not have been localized just to the column of the mushroom cloud. Please note that the Baker test had only a yield of 23 kilotons. From the Operation Crossroads web page again:
This was only blast effects on the ships, which don't count the radiation aspect. Since MOABs and daisycutters do not have this aspect, I won't post about it here, though it can't really be discounted if you want a comparison of such conventional weapons to nuclear weapons.
Finally, we must also note that the Baker test was only a standard fission bomb test, of relatively low yield (compared to say, the more modern W87 warhead, which has a yield of 300-475 kilotons). One should also note that when a target is selected for these weapons, multiple warheads are targetted for a single target in most cases (since they tend to be larger cities or bases). Even so, a single modern warhead has the equivalent destructive power as 15-20 Baker tests.
How anybody - the media, the layperson, generals, the president - anybody - can equate the two in destructive power, that they can somehow be used (or should be used) interchangibly - is sheer madness. They aren't interchangible, they in no way compare in destructive power, and once you calculate in radiation effects, one can only see that such devices are in fact madness and tributes of hubris to our destructiveness as a species. To claim otherwise is to show a lack of knowledge and humbleness about these devices.
Sometimes I wonder if the test ban treaties over the years have been a wrong thing. By only being able to "test" these devices on computers and such other simulations, we have removed an effective deterrent to the use of these devices. All we have left now are the pictures and movies of past tests. I doubt nothing else could cement the destructive power capabilities in the minds of generals and others, outside of a personally witnessed live test, while at the same sh
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
He wants his "America, love it or leave it" jingoism back. You know who should get the fuck out of MY country? Idiots like you who don't know the value of freedom. Take your fascist authoritarianism elsewhere, buddy, this is the Land of the Free and I won't have you or anyone else trying to turn it into something else.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Switzerland's neutrality also is like a child sticking his fingers in his ears and screaming so he knows nothing about what's going on outside of his little world. If Switzerland wasn't neutral during WW2 I wonder how the outcome might have changed?
~S
To state that about what I specifically complained about is unattainable is cynical defeatism.
- Is not torturing prisoners unattainable?
- Is following the 6th Amendment and not having indefinite detentions unattainable?
- Is not privatizing an occupation (or at the very least keeping discipline in the security contractors) unattainable?
- Is keeping soldier discipline and morale high enough to avoid civillian massacres unattainable?
History shows we can do better than this. I don't believe that these goals are so hard to accomplish, and I think the betrayal of the Constitution that the first two represent is far closer to treason than demanding our government do better.Not only that but you're publicaly mocking them, thereby making them looks worse in the eyes of other citizens, your allies, and your enemies.
What would you have us do? Praise torture and the infliction of such despair as to cause repeated suicide attempts? Praise prison camps held outside the US specifically to skirt our Constitutional protections? Praise the use of unaccountable mercenaries to handle security? Or shoud I just close my eyes and pretend that we are the same as we were before and that these acts do not sully America. These things happened. Now we have to actually deal with them, and we can't do that with people attacking everybody with a sense of decency for not mutely saluting the flag and giving our blind faith to it.
As Edmund Burke said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing," and that is exactly what you are asking of us with such a cynical comment.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If I had 6 nuclear bombs and wanted to deter the US, I would smuggle them all into major US cities. It shouldn't be any harder than getting a ton of cocaine in there. The delivery system would be to just buy a downtown condo, and leave the bomb there until needed.
Then once the US invades, you blow up one of the cities, preferrably one that voted for the sitting president, and made it clear that more would follow if you were not left alone. I'd be very confident that that would be deterrance enough.
You might actually get away with just making the US think you're likely to have this capability.
I think the stats I was looking at while writing that post said it was the 3rd biggest oil producer (but can't be bothered finding the link). China is one of the biggest, too (About 10th, from memory). I don't consider either of them to "have oil", because they both need to import the stuff.
"Oh, and if you labs also accidentally develop a tiny, tactical version that's only about 100x as strong as a MOAB, we wouldn't mind, nudge nudge, wink wink."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
But I don't think you mean it. I hear (and read) people say things like this, but then I listen to conversations over time and it doesn't seem to hold true.
I read the last 24 posts you made on slashdot (from the time I hit the link to your name, of course; you may have made more since then), and of them, 14 were openly America-bashing. 1 more was critical (I didn't count it, because it was done in neutral, objective language). Interestingly, in this comment, you await evidence of the French troops firing into a crowd. From the tone of your other posts, I doubt if you would grant US soldiers the same grace.
The world is a nasty place. There are many countries with leaders so mindbogglingly nasty and unbelievable corrupt that thousands risk their lives to leave on a regular basis. So why, despite your claim that your disgust has nothing to do with America, but with the crimes she perpetrates, do you comment exclusively on the crimes perpetrated by America, when you comment on crimes at all?
Don't say it's because it's only when it's on-topic, either. Your history suggests that you will seek out opportunities to sneak in comments about Bush or US foreign policy whenever a remote chance presents itself.
So let's hear a little about how bad Castro is, or what's going on in Tibet, or whoever the smegger is who's running that pit of despair in Africa (there are so many), or whatever there is bad that is going on in your country, or the systematic dismantlement of personal human responsibility in the European Union, or the....
The list goes on. Worldwide. I don't care much if you speak truth about America. Even if you lie, sometimes that can be enlightening. But don't insult us by pretending not to be caught up in anti-American sentiment, especially when the evidence so handy.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
For example:
American Indians at the hands of the United States, ca. 1600-19xx
India at the hands of Britain, ca. 1800.
China at the hands of Japan, ca. 1940.
France at the hands of Germany, ca. 1940.
South Korea at the hands of North Korea and Chian, ca. 1950.
The list goes on and on and on.
"Is not torturing prisoners unattainable?"
Red herring. The US doesn't torture prisoners. What you're doing is changing the meaning of the word "torture" to cover anything other than keeping them in a 5 star hotel and saying "please" and "thank you" every 5 seconds.
"Is following the 6th Amendment and not having indefinite detentions unattainable?"
The US constitution applies to US citizens only. How many US citizens are being held under "indefinite detention"? To my knowledge, zero. If you can prove otherwise, you have a case I can agree with.
"Is not privatizing an occupation (or at the very least keeping discipline in the security contractors) unattainable?"
Eh? Well, security contractors are going to exist no atter what. Making them illegal would be a violation of the constitution. The government doesn't have to USE them, no. But the government isn't technicaly using them much anyway - it's the other contractors in Iraq who make use of them. Can't say I blame them - if you were hired to fix power lines in a war zone, you'd want some mean bastard with a gun watching your back too. And I'm not sure what you're refering to when you speak about "keeping discipline" amongst them. It's certainly not the governments job to do that. Like any other civilian company, it's up to the firms themselves to enforce discipline as they see fit.
"Is keeping soldier discipline and morale high enough to avoid civillian massacres unattainable?"
Morale has nothing to do with it. What you're really asking is "can we change human nature so that none of our soldiers will ever commit murder again". And no, we can't. Unless you can find someone who can geneticaly engineer a race of super-soldiers who have no human emotion, and can raise and educate them seperate from normal society, you're always going to end up with a military that's a fairly proportional representation of your society. And, in general, western soldiers commit a lower percentage of murder, rape, assault, and other violent crimes, than do their civilian counterparts.
"History shows we can do better than this."
Really? What part of history? When we used to burn women at the stake for being witches? Maybe when we killed indian women and children? Perhaps during WW2 hen we exectued surrendering soldiers on a regular basis? Or firebombed Dresden? Leveled Berlin? Or when the US dropped two nukes on Japan? Which part of history exactly shows that "we can do better than this"? If anything, you're better today then you've ever been in history. The only difference is that today you like to beleive that "we" can achieve perfection. And you're arrogant enough to scoff at the best effots of your government, while being ignorant and complacent enough to disregaurd the words and actions of those who wish us harm.
I'm going to break my response into multiple posts because the first one is so long.
The US doesn't torture prisoners. What you're doing is changing the meaning of the word "torture" to cover anything other than keeping them in a 5 star hotel and saying "please" and "thank you" every 5 seconds.
An interesting assertion. This flies flat in the face of pretty much all evidence that's come to light so far. You know, I've stayed in some pretty crappy motels, but I've never had the kind of "service" detainees have had in the care of US forces.
On August 1st 2002, Alberto Gonzalez sent a memo to the President about the use of torture in interrogation of prisoners. In this document, torture defined extremely narrowly. Physical torture is defined as physical punishments that would result in severe physical impairment, organ failure, or death and psychological torture is defined as only acts with threaten the above to the interogated or to a third party and the use of drugs to alter the senses or the personality of the detainee. (You can find more torture documents here.)
This, interestingly, does not cover many of the acts that went on at Abu Ghraib. Beatings that don't cause organ failure, severe impairment, or death don't count as torture under this. Electric shocks don't count as torture under this. Sexual humilation and rape doesn't count as torture under this. Hanging people in stress positions for hours doesn't count as torture under this. Having a prisoner parade around nude and covered in feces doesn't count as torture under this. You can find many images of the abuse on the Wikimedia Commons. Be warned, due to the sexual molestation involved, most of these images are not really safe for work.
Any sane person would consider these acts as having stepped beyond interrogation techniques and into torture.
Of course, even by these harsh and extremist standards, torture went on under US forces. Manadel al-Jamadi was beaten to death in the hands of soldiers at Abu Ghraib. That certainly counts as an interrogation method that leads to "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."
Prisoner abuse by US forces in the "War on Terror" didn't start in Iraq, though. There were actually several deaths of detainees under US control in Bagram in Afghanistan.
Beyond that, you have Guantanamo Bay prison. The abuses of detainees at Guantanamo either haven't been as severe as those at Bagram and Abu Ghraib, or they've been kept a better secret. There have been numerous prisoners beaten (though not to death), and there is a lot of use of stress positions to cause pain and suffering to coerce prisoners as reports of treats that violated even Gozalez's standards to the family members of detainees. The tactics there that are publicly known are a lot softer than those at other facilities, but are certainly harsher than what's tolerated at prisons in US land, but there are a few things that have gotten out that suggest that some of the accusations of former inmates have some substance.
In one chilling account, Sean Baker, a soldier who served in the 438th Military Police was asked to pretend to be a resistant detainee in a training exercise in 2003. Other guards who were not aware he wasn't a detainee came in a began suffocating and beating him. The beatings did not stop with the codeword for the exercise and only stopped when he yelled that he was a soldier and they found his fatigues under the orange prisoner jumpsuit. Unfortunately, by then the head trauma led to traumatic brain injury and a discharge f
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The US constitution applies to US citizens only.
That requires a pretty "activist judge" interpretation of the amendment. The US Constitution applies to the federal and state governments. The text exists as a body of granted powers and limitations on the government. The Bill of Rights exists mostly as a check on the federal government's powers (including that of the U.S. Army). Let's look at the 6th Amendment:
Note that nowhere in this Amendment is "the accused" defined as a U.S. Citizen. Similarly, the 1st Amendment doesn't state that Congress can't limit the speech of citizens, the 5th Amendment doesn't state that only citizens can't be forced to incriminate themselves, the 8th Amendment doesn't prevent cruel and unusual punishment only against citizens, etc. Additionally, the 14th Amendment states in Section 1:
Note that the first part talks about citizens, but the second and third parts talk about "any persons." The way that the government tries to skirt 14th Amendment protections is by claiming that Guantanamo Bay is not "within its jurisdiction," but no such limitation exists on the 6th Amendment. That's jurisdictional limit has been a large part of the government's arguments against habeus corpus rights for detainees that they would certainly have if on US soil.
Gitmo violates several parts of the 6th Amendment. Prisoners do not have a right to a speedy and public trial there. They don't have a right to an attorney, and they don't have the right to confront witnesses against them. In fact, the trials that they do have exist in a sort of legal black hole. The Bush administration even went so far as to assert before the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that prisoners had absolutely no right to question US actions in Guantanamo even if the government went so far as to torture or commit summary executions.
The government claims that "these are bad men," "the worst of the worst," but we've released a great many of them after we've gotten all the useful information we could out of them and determined that they weren't serious threats. Farsically, we've refused for a long time send some of them home for fear that they'd be rounded up in their homelands upon release and kept them imprisoned "for their own safety."
How many US citizens are being held under "indefinite detention"? To my knowledge, zero. If you can prove otherwise, you have a case I can agree with.
Currently, none that I'm aware of, but that wasn't the case from 2002-2005. Enter Jose Padilla, a natural born US citizen who was declared an "illegal enemy combatant" and thus not subject to the protections of US law by the President. He's not a great guy by all accounts -- a former gang member who converted to Islam in prison and hung out with al Qaeda members according to government allegations. He was arrested on his return to the US in 2002 from a tour of Muslim nations as a "material witness" to the September 11th hijackings and put in a military brig in South Carolina and was held for three yea
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For one, there's more than two responses to Iran. Our current likely response (the one apparently advocated by you) is "Do something aggressive." Something that is also by the way short-sighted and likely ineffective.
The false alternative you propose that replacement politicians will do is "do nothing."
The other alternatives are along the line of gradually do something that might possibly get the desired result, but won't be an immediate political 'gotcha.' In other words, the right thing.
The other problem with your statement is the notion that we are "standing up" to "militant Islam."
Before going off in that direction try bothering yourself to read up on the history of Iran. ~50 years ago, prior to our intervention, Iran had a blossoming democracy. It was intentionally destabilized, by us, for the most imbecilic reason one can currently imagine: Iran had just nationalized their oilfields. In short, it was about fucking money.
So, for a minimum short-term gain we wrecked Iran's democracy, replaced it with the thuggish Shah, who was in turn overthrown by a highly resentful Muslim/nationalist movement who naturally want America to keep our fucking hands off their politics from now on. Who'da thunk it?
Regardless of what kind of people are in charge in Iran now, we are little more than the victims of our selfish short-sightedness. Given that, I'd quite bluntly prefer that we as a nation drop the aggressive posture (because to Iranians we look like nothing more than arrogant meddlers and nothing we do in that realm could possibly look friendly) and do our best to let things evolve as naturally as they can. I know that most neocons are big fans of "letting the market decide" and maybe it's too brusque to shove that logic in their faces when it comes to foreign political systems as well, but to be even blunter we've made a fucking mess of our last couple of attempts to impose our (new) democratic values on a Middle Eastern country so it's not like we can claim any credible record of success at it. Things are as they are, and there's goddamn little we can do to change them, and certainly not with an aggressive cowboy mentality as we've been doing.
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Eh? Well, security contractors are going to exist no atter what. Making them illegal would be a violation of the constitution. [...] I'm not sure what you're refering to when you speak about "keeping discipline" amongst them. It's certainly not the governments job to do that. Like any other civilian company, it's up to the firms themselves to enforce discipline as they see fit.
No it wouldn't be Unconsitutional -- not any more than it is illegal to make drug dealers, prositutes, and hitmen illegal. It's also isn't illegal to ban trade with Apartheid South Africa or dealings with terrorists and drug cartels overseas. That's a ridiculous assertion.
You don't have to make security contractors illegal to improve things, though. You can make it clear that contractors working for US companies are subject to US law and will be harshly punished for running rampant and acting like thugs.
Allowing heavily armed cowboys outside of the central chain of command to run around in an occupation and reconstruction effort is a recipe for disaster. It's a PR nightmare in a war for hearts and minds. Iraqis hate a lot of the security contractors because they're famous for pushing people around like they own the place. Former contractors for Custer Battles (a firm under investigation for mispending of coalltion authority money and war profitteering) have alleged that contractors have carried out abuses. Private contractors were involved in the abuses at Abu Ghraib.
Why do we allow out of control thugs to tarnish our name when we could provide soldiers ourselves? Estimates show that security contractor levels are at 1 for every 10 soldiers. Would hiring them through official channels and keeping them in the chain of command be that bad of an idea?
There HAS to be regulation to ensure that they don't just go running rampant. Of course, we don't put forth such rules because "private contractors" are wonderful deniable assets. They don't wear uniforms identifying them as working for us, they're bosses are uncertain, and they don't count in offical military KIA totals if they fall. The use of them for such work is often a sign of the dirtiness of the deed and is just one more reason to take them off the table as an option.
What you're really asking is "can we change human nature so that none of our soldiers will ever commit murder again".
No, I'm not. What I'm asking for is that they not be put in stressed out situations, that they not be put in situations where it's impossible to tell foe from bystander to the point that no one looks like a bystander anymore. I'm asking for accountability and punishment for wrongdoing instead of coverups. I'm asking for discipline.
Really? What part of history? [List of atrocities.] Which part of history exactly shows that "we can do better than this"? If anything, you're better today then you've ever been in history.
Things get better in some areas and get worse in others. The era of wars between Great Powers is hopefully the end of mass civillian casualties as well as the use of WMDs in war. We did not "execute surrendering soldiers on a regular basis" as far as I'm aware, but I could be wrong. I'd like to see some citations on that.
There are things that we did better in the past. We championed the Geneva Convention. We did this to prevent our soldiers from being treated poorly because we saw how they were treated by the Axis powers. We treated POWs fairly and considered widespread word of the soldiers' treatment to be a major psychological warfare advantage. For the past several decades we've avoided unilateral action, and the doctrine of pre-emptive war had been retired from our playbook. And for the love of God, I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but we didn't torture prisoners.
The pattern of history is not one of unblemished purity but one of increasing progress towards a better way of doing things. The problem
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You're right,
CIA factbook says #3 for the US, preceeded by Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Tell you though, it felt really weird clicking "allow cia.gov" in my trusty ol' noscript plugin...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
How do you define "forced regime change"?
Regime change that comes from without, backed by use of military force. Saddam was widely hated as a thug and murderer, but in the wake of the war, we're reaping the visceral gut reaction in the Sunnis of, "Yeah, but he was our thug and murderer."
The problem is that this is a war of perception. If we get a democratic Iraq, then we may have won our goal there, but we may get a democratic Iraq who's people have all decided that they don't particularly like us. In time, I think that if we pull this off in Iraq, we'll get a good ally at least on the level of Germany and South Korea if not on the level of Japan.
In the mean time, however, every other Islamic state will know that we are willing to kill others and seed chaos and death to get what we want. Leaders in those nations get to use the US as a big scary boogeyman to divert unrest at their own policies. Al Qaeda and clones swell their ranks with the families of people who died in the occupation.
If instead we had tried to embrace Muslim nations as brothers and put pressure to open up slowly, we could have parleyed the "Today we are all Americans" attitude of the days following 9/11 into widespread admiration and gruding envy that could have led a groundswelling of support for the American way of life. We knifed that in the back when we built Gitmo, when we decided to go to war in Iraq, and when looting, Abu Ghraib, and sectarian violence there were allowed to happen.
We put the cart before the horse by saying, "Change! Then admire us," instead of "Admire us and then change." We fought a battle of ideology -- a battle for hearts and minds -- with rule by fear instead of rule by love. That was a strategic and diplomatic error that we will pay for for generations.
Once again I bring to you the examples of Bosnia and Korea. Those are what the American people, with the assistance of allied nations, can achieve when they set their minds to it. Vietnam, on the other hand, is an example of what happens when you tuck tail and run; 4 years after the pullout, 2.2 million dead, and some 1 million as refugees. Which would you prefer?
I'm with you there. I don't think we can leave. Public opinion is swinging such that we probably won't be able to stay after 2008, but I think that we have to. While we're certainly inflaming the insurgency with our presence, we cannot stand down until the Iraqis are ready to stand up, to paraphrase the President.
I just think we shouldn't have been there in the first place. That in no way changes the "Pottery Barn rule" as people have called it. We broke it, we fix it. End of story.
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As for critical thought, I was actually attempting a critical thinking exercise. I read your posts (I noticed there were several of them in the same thread) and this was the only one that really jumped out at me. So I read your little blurb that made it sound like you were an equal-opportunity-basher. I thought to myself, "I'll bet this guy has no posts bashing any country but the USA." I figured if you commented on a nation's (or a leader's) faults based only on the existence of those faults, then there would be mention of at least one of the many out there that are worse than the USA or President Bush. As far as I could tell, you were America-bashing.
As for the rest, I hardly know what to say. I was not trying to defend Bush, or the war in Iraq, or Afganistan, or anything of the kind. I was trying to point out what I thought was intellectual dishonesty. Your claims that each post was on-topic or a joke doesn't help, because it would not be difficult to find statements to make in any of those threads that bashed the injustices brought about by the corrupt governments of North Korea, China, or even Mexico (corrupt, yes; evil, I don't know). If you were not, as you say, seeking out America, I would have expected at least one post to mention the evils of another country. Any other country. There was no such post. The joke may have been excusable, of course, but it did serve as a further example so I counted it, though Castro, might have fit nicely in there.
So I stand by it: you're picking on the USA and President Bush. Please don't pretend you aren't. I think you would be better off to explain why you are picking on them, or why they might be deserving of it.
For The Record:
Though I truly love the USA, I am not completely blind to its faults.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
Uh, I would say it was pretty clear I was discussing the difference in the tactics of the PNAC-led regime in Washington concerning North Korea and Iraq. However, more significantly, I was pointing out a piece of very popular double-think that's flying around at the moment. People are absolutely convinced that the USA maintains a nuclear arsenal for deterrent purposes. This presumes that they hold it as axiomatic that the nuclear deterrent works (and there is, indeed, a good deal of evidence for this: only one government in history has been aggressive enough to employ nuclear weapons against significant targets during a war). Logically, people must therefore assume that the Bush regime are aware of the effectiveness of the nuclear deterrent. Logically, therefore, the Bush regime would be deterred from attacking any nation which was known to have working nukes, say on a 45-minute deployment capability. Logically, therefore, the Bush regime knew Iraq did not have nuclear capacity.
Somehow people have forgotten that if the nuclear deterrent works, it works bi-laterally. Of course Iran wants nukes, it's the only way that any modern nation can guarantee itself safe from a unilateral invasion.
~cHrisYeah, the builders could be put to work on focusing on fusion power and how to harness it, like this: http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/mg190 25534.000.htmllike this
But then think about it, these people are employed, paid and taught how to build bombs, which means the American government would probably use the research for better bombs.
Right.
Like they're going to decommission even one of those functioning nukes before its shelf-life runs out.
If that's the case, why isn't Canada a state yet?
One word: Quebec. Besides you already sell us 99% of your crude oil exports. Why buy the healthcare system when the oil is free? (Though, uh, if you'd be interested in selling it, I could, uh, you know, maybe find an interested, um, third party for you. Not us! You know, just, um, for a friend.)
All kidding aside, the real question is why we didn't attack North Korea -- a dangerous, evil regime that brutally oppresses its people, that's in violation of multiple UN proclamations, that has actual real nukes, that has engaged in nuclear proliferation, that is such a world pariah that is has to fund itself through criminal operations and missile trade.
The answer is because unlike Iraq, North Korea has Chinese friends and actually poses a credible threat to the US and two of it's strongest allies in the region -- Japan and South Korea. Iran has learned that it really, really needs to become a credible threat to some of America's friends (like Israel and Europe) if it wants to get some more breathing room than its alliances with Russia, China, and India afford it right now.
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in iran and north korea. oops. on iran and north korea.
for weapons exporting and mass genocide...
You hit the nail on the head. The reason why you have so many of my fellow citizens rallying aboutg this fact is that, for the most part, AMERICANS ARE STUPID PEOPLE!!! There, after so many years of political activism and voter registration, I can say with that with impunity. There is no logical way to explain otherwise.
In what sane, rational universe do we not impeach a President for blantantly lying us into two wars against defenseless nations? ( I know its not a popular view, but Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11 either.) And now, we are building nukes and wondering why countries like North Korea and Iran are in a rush for an A-bomb? Isn't it obvious that they are logically scared shitless of our current leadership?
Americans refuse to think for themselves, our at least vote for someone else other than two clones. Americans are more interested in the fate of dead white girls in Aruba than what's going on in the war. This nation has enough problems with the environment, an energy crunch, education, poverty and soon to collaspe economy. How about we demand resources put into this instead of weapon we're supposed to be getting rid of? Hmmm...........oh, that's right, it would make sense. And logic isn't a American value anymore.
Cappadonna