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North Korea Claims It Detonated Its First Hydrogen Bomb (nytimes.com)
HughPickens.com writes:
North Korea announced it has detonated its first hydrogen bomb, dramatically escalating the nuclear challenge from one of the world's most isolated and dangerous states. "This is the self-defensive measure we have to take to defend our right to live in the face of the nuclear threats and blackmail by the United States and to guarantee the security of the Korean Peninsula," said a North Korean announcer on the state-run network. "With this hydrogen bomb test, we have joined the major nuclear powers." The North's announcement came about an hour after detection devices around the world had picked up a 5.1 seismic event that South Korea said was 30 miles from the Punggye-ri site where the North has conducted nuclear tests in the past.
"North Korea's fourth test — in the context of repeated statements by U.S., Chinese, and South Korean leaders — throws down the gauntlet to the international community to go beyond paper resolutions and find a way to impose real costs on North Korea for pursuing this course of action," says Scott Snyder, a Korea expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. According to the NY Times, the test is bound to figure in the American presidential campaign, where several candidates have already cited the North's nuclear experimentation as evidence of American weakness — though they have not prescribed alternative strategies for choking off the program. The United States did not develop its first thermonuclear weapons — commonly known as hydrogen bombs — until 1952, seven years after the first and only use of nuclear weapons in wartime.
"North Korea's fourth test — in the context of repeated statements by U.S., Chinese, and South Korean leaders — throws down the gauntlet to the international community to go beyond paper resolutions and find a way to impose real costs on North Korea for pursuing this course of action," says Scott Snyder, a Korea expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. According to the NY Times, the test is bound to figure in the American presidential campaign, where several candidates have already cited the North's nuclear experimentation as evidence of American weakness — though they have not prescribed alternative strategies for choking off the program. The United States did not develop its first thermonuclear weapons — commonly known as hydrogen bombs — until 1952, seven years after the first and only use of nuclear weapons in wartime.
It won't be long before China or Russia sells them a delivery vehicle, if they haven't done so already.
We have sniffer/detector craft for just this reason.
I wait until we hear confirmation before believing anything NK says.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
A nuclear armed world is a polite world.
So, you'd prefer the approach Chamberlain took with Hitler, and think Regan did it the wrong way with the U.S.S.R. Maybe you could give an example of how pacifism has successfully worked at disarming a despot?
Just another day in Paradise
Could be worse they could have put a person called Bush on a boat (no aircraft carriers) and delcared misson complete!
Nah.
Worst case would be some clown who had no idea what he was doing pulling the US out of Iraq and allowing Al Qaeda in Iraq to grow into an organization that could take over actual territory, say, maybe calling itself something like "The Islamic State", such that it would then have the resources to conduct terrorist attacks like bombing airliners and mass shootings in disparate places such as Paris and Southern California.
That would be the worst possible outcome.
Good thing nobody in power in the US is that fucking naive and stupid.
The shootings in CA and Paris were really of 0 impact especially comparing it against something like 9/11 that happened on Bush's watch. The islamic state has absolutely no power outside of their tiny tribal areas and if you are afraid of them at all and you live in the US then you are a huge pussy.
Anyone who knows my history of posting on the whole Iran/nuclear topic knows that I'm about as far from an Iran apologist as you can get, but frankly your post is pretty much entirely bullshit.
Nuclear technology transfer has been in the exact opposite direction, rather than Iran transferring knowledge and information to Iran, it is in fact North Korea that transferred to Iran (and it's close ally Syria).
North Korea's nuclear programme stems back much further than both Iran and Syria, and in fact, Iran was still largely under Western influence long after North Korea had already decided to pursue the nuclear weapons route.
The early North Korean weapons effort was largely kickstarted by the USSR under the form of an initially civilian effort and this gave North Korea the initial technology it needed to start refining Uranium (the same sort of enrichment technology that has been at the heart of the current Iranian nuclear drama). As such, North Korea was doing what Iran is being criticised for 40 years before Iran really started though North Korea never really got anywhere through that time until the 90s when it benefitted from the AQ Khan network. That is, it was our supposed ally (as fucking usual) Pakistan that traded nuclear weapon technology with North Korea and made them a nuclear weapon capable state.
Whilst there has been ample evidence over the years that Iran has at least dabbled in pursuing nuclear weapons (though personally I think they did more than dabble) we don't necessarily know in much detail what shape that took. We do know however that when Syria's al-Kibar nuclear programme was unveiled by the fact Israel blew the fucking thing up, that it was basically an exact clone of North Korea's programme. Had Iran had it's own indigenous built programme with no outside influence, it would seem odd that Syria's programme looked like North Korea's, not Iran's, when Syria and Iran are far closer partners (to the extent that Iran is currently paying in the blood of it's special forces and top generals to prop up Assad right now).
Which is why in all likelihood, there's little that North Korea could gain from Iran. North Korea's programme is decades ahead, and whilst Iran was also a beneficiary of the AQ Khan network it still lacked the actual experience and knowledge of enrichment that North Korea had.
So the idea that Iran is somehow coaching the North Koreans makes absolutely no sense, NK's programme is a year short of 55 years in the making, whereas Iran's is sat at about 15 to 20 years at best, the bulk of which has been spent recreating that which NK already had been handed outright in the 1960s by the soviets.
For all the criticism I've had of Iran over the years, I'm optimistic about the nuclear deal. The biggest problem I've had with Iran's nuclear programme is simply that it's completely blocked the IAEA from confirming that it isn't producing weapons by outright blocking access to key nuclear facilities, and as such this is why I believe that the only reason Iran would do this is because it did genuinely have something to hide - there's no point suffering crippling economic sanctions just to pretend you're trying to make nukes if you're not. If Iran is now willing to allow full and thorough inspections, then I suspect that's because it's now got nothing to hide any more because it genuinely has given up on it's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
It's pretty clear that the path Ahmadinejad carved wasn't working for Iran, that Iran was getting weaker, poorer, and increasingly more isolated. The arab spring was the wake up call to Iran's elite that that path simply was not sustainable. Whilst I'm not particularly a fan of Rouhani, because he was still ultimately a vetted option and still under the thumb of Khamenei, he is at least reversing many of Ahmadinejad's bad ideas (like the pursuit of nuclear weapons) precisely because the alternative is collapse of the Iranian political system, and likely a Syria-esque civil war.
That is why it's both nonsense to sug
Could be worse they could have put a person called Bush on a boat (no aircraft carriers) and delcared misson complete!
Nah.
Worst case would be some clown who had no idea what he was doing pulling the US out of Iraq and allowing Al Qaeda in Iraq to grow into an organization that could take over actual territory, say, maybe calling itself something like "The Islamic State", such that it would then have the resources to conduct terrorist attacks like bombing airliners and mass shootings in disparate places such as Paris and Southern California.
That would be the worst possible outcome.
Good thing nobody in power in the US is that fucking naive and stupid.
Sadly, there was someone in power who was that stupid, and his name was George W. Bush. It was his administration that negotiated the exit-date with Iraq. Obama succeeded at getting a short extension, but ultimately his hands were tied.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.