Our Libyan Success No Capital

This is amazing. Libya is the "victory" that Bush has touted so often, asserting that that nation dismantled its nuclear programs in accordance with US demands.

Well, maybe not so much:

Authorities hunting traffickers in nuclear weapons technology recently uncovered an audacious plan to deliver a complete uranium enrichment plant to Libya.

The discovery provides fresh evidence of the reach and sophistication of the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's global black market in nuclear know-how and equipment. It also exposes a previously undetected South African branch of the Khan network.

Details of the plot began to emerge in September, when police found the elements of a two-storey steel processing system for the enrichment plant in a factory outside Johannesburg. They were packed in 11 freight containers for shipment to Libya.

South African officials will say only that they discovered nuclear components. It appears, however, that the massive system was designed to operate 1000 centrifuges for enriching uranium.

Once assembled in Libya, the plant could have produced enough weapons-grade uranium to manufacture several nuclear bombs a year. Delivery of the plant would have greatly accelerated Libya's efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

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Yesterday at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, Sarah Palin shot back at President Obama for his naked diss of Sarah Palin and her highly sophisticated advice on nuclear policy:

Palin: Now, the president, with all the vast nucular experience that he acquired as a community organizer ... and as a part-time senator and as a full-time candidate, all that experience, still no accomplishment to date with North Korea and Iran.

OK, Sarah, we'll write this very slowly and hope that you can understand:

-- See, the president can't be an expert in all things. So he surrounds himself with the best minds he can, experts who advise him on various aspects of national policy.

-- Obama probably would admit he is not an expert in nuclear issues.

-- However, the people whose advice he's following -- namely, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon -- very much do have that expertise.

Or do you now want to stack your resume on nuclear issues up against theirs?

Of course, it always helps if you know how to actually pronounce the word.

I'm hoping this isn't another "yeah, we thought about it but then Newt Gingrich called us weenies" kind of thing. Because it would be really good news if it isn't:

The review is shaping up to be a major showdown for Obama this year. It is taking on some of the most sacred cows of the nuclear program. For the first time, influential voices, including a former top nuclear commander and senior Obama advisers, are proposing that one leg of the nuclear arms “triad’’ - a $30 billion-a-year enterprise made up of land-, air-, and sea-based weapons - be eliminated.

Another historic change under consideration is adopting a “no-first-use’’ policy, a public declaration stating the United States would not use nuclear weapons first, a step long advocated by arms control advocates who believe it would reduce the incentive for other nations to develop nuclear weapons.

Also on the table, the officials say, is explicitly limiting the nuclear arsenal’s mission to deterring other nuclear weapons - not chemical or biological attacks or halting a massive conventional military assault, as current policy stipulates.

“The US-Soviet standoff that gave rise to tens of thousands of nuclear weapons is over, but the policies developed to justify their possession and potential use remain largely the same," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington think tank and leading advocate of disarmament. “Unless the United States reduces its reliance and emphasis on nuclear weapons, other states will have a cynical excuse to pursue or to improve the capabilities and size of their nuclear forces."

What happens after all the fear mongering that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons bunker turns out to be bunk?

U.N. inspectors found "nothing to be worried about" in a first look at a previously secret uranium enrichment site in Iran last month, the International Atomic Energy chief said in remarks published Thursday.

Mohamed ElBaradei also told the New York Times that he was examining possible compromises to unblock a draft nuclear cooperation deal between Iran and three major powers that has foundered over Iranian objections.

The nuclear site, which Iran revealed in September three years after diplomats said Western spies first detected it, added to Western fears of covert Iranian efforts to develop atom bombs. Iran says it is enriching uranium only for electricity.

ElBaradei was quoted in a New York Times interview as saying his inspectors' initial findings at the fortified site beneath a desert mountain near the Shi'ite holy city of Qom were "nothing to be worried about."

"The idea was to use it as a bunker under the mountain to protect things," ElBaradei, alluding to Tehran's references to the site as a fallback for its nuclear program in case its larger Natanz enrichment plant were bombed by a foe like Israel.

"It's a hole in a mountain," he said.

But, let's not let you get too comfortable about Iran...GuardianUK's Julian Borger comes up with a new scare:

The UN's nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design, the Guardian has learned.

The very existence of the technology, known as a "two-point implosion" device, is officially secret in both the US and Britain, but according to previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of the design. The development was today described by nuclear experts as "breathtaking" and has added urgency to the effort to find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.

Ooooh...booga booga booga! Two things that glare out for me: one, Borger cites the IAEA unpublished report without one single quotation. Two, Borger claims the "two point implosion" is "officially secret" in the US and UK, but how secret can it be when it has its own Wikipedia page?

The media really does think you're dumb and can't figure out teh Google.

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What on earth is going on here? On "This Week" this morning, Biden shrugs off possible Israeli action against Iran with "Whattaya gonna do?". But Joe, while Israel is certainly a sovereign nation, it's one that's heavily subsidized by the United States and we certainly do have a say. Didn't you just give them the go-ahead signal to bomb Iran?

Seems to me this is the moral equivalent of sending detainees to other countries to be tortured and then saying, "That wasn't us!"...

STEPHANOPOULOS: But there will be engagement -- if the Iranians want to...

(CROSSTALK)

BIDEN: If the Iranians seek to engage, we will engage.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And meanwhile, the clock is ticking...

BIDEN: If the Iranians respond to the offer of engagement, we will engage.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But the offer is on the table?

BIDEN: The offer's on the table.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it pretty clear that he agreed with President Obama to give until the end of the year for this whole process of engagement to work. After that, he's prepared to make matters into his own hands.

Is that the right approach?

BIDEN: Look, Israel can determine for itself -- it's a sovereign nation -- what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Whether we agree or not?

BIDEN: Whether we agree or not. They're entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that. But there is no pressure from any nation that's going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed.

What we believe is in the national interest of the United States, which we, coincidentally, believe is also in the interest of Israel and the whole world. And so there are separate issues.

If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But just to be clear here, if the Israelis decide Iran is an existential threat, they have to take out the nuclear program, militarily the United States will not stand in the way?

BIDEN: Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination that they're existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say we can't dictate, but we can, if we choose to, deny over-flight rights here in Iraq. We can stand in the way of a military strike.

BIDEN: I'm not going to speculate, George, on those issues, other than to say Israel has a right to determine what's in its interests, and we have a right and we will determine what's in our interests.

I'll see your sanctions and raise you some weaponized plutonium...

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea responded to new United Nations sanctions on Saturday by defiantly vowing to press forward with production of nuclear weapons and take “resolute military actions” against efforts to isolate it.

In a statement on the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, an unnamed spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry was quoted as saying that his nation will continue its nuclear program to defend itself against what he called a hostile United States policy. He was quoted as saying his nation will “weaponize” its existing plutonium stockpiles and begin a new program to enrich uranium, another material that can be used to make atomic warheads.

The statement was released hours after the Security Council voted to punish the North for its May 25 nuclear test and ballistic missile tests with tough sanctions including an arms embargo and high-seas searches of North Korean vessels.

“We’ll take firm military action if the United States and its allies try to isolate us,” the spokesman said, according to KCNA.

I don't know what this means other than something the Bush administration will grab it with both hands to further their aggression towards Iran.

NYTimes:

The International Atomic Energy Agency, in an unusually blunt and detailed report, said Monday that Iran's suspected research into the development of nuclear weapons remained "a matter of serious concern" and that Iran continued to owe the agency "substantial explanations."

The nine-page report accused the Iranians of a willful lack of cooperation, particularly in answering allegations that its nuclear program may be intended more for military use than for energy generation.

Part of the agency's case hinges on 18 documents listed in the report and presented to Iran that, according to Western intelligence agencies, indicate the Iranians have ventured into explosives, uranium processing and a missile warhead design - activities that could be associated with constructing nuclear weapons.

"There are certain parts of their nuclear program where the military seems to have played a role," said one senior official close to the agency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic constraints. He added, "We want to understand why."

The atomic energy agency's report highlights the amount of work still to be done before definitive conclusions about the nature of the program can be made, a task that the official associated with the agency said would require months.

If the IAEA is getting their information from a corrupted US intelligence agency (much like the UN was given "intelligence" on Iraq that came primarily from Curveball), I would hope that they double and triple check sources before issuing their final report.

The Nuclear Bomb That Wasn't

Of all the justifications that President Bush gave for invading Iraq, the most terrifying was that Saddam Hussein was on the brink of developing a nuclear bomb that he might use against the United States or give to terrorists. Ever since we learned that this was not true, the question has been whether Mr. Bush gave a good-faith account of the best available intelligence, or knowingly deceived the public. The more we learn about the way Mr. Bush paved the road to war, the more it becomes disturbingly clear that if he was not aware that he was feeding misinformation to the world, he was about the only one in his circle who had not been clued in.

The foundation for the administration's claim that it acted on an honest assessment of intelligence analysis - and the president's frequent claim that Congress had the same information he had - has been steadily eroded by the reports from the Senate Intelligence Committee and the 9/11 commission. A lengthy report in The Times on Sunday removed any lingering doubts....read on

Ms. Rice's spokesman, Sean McCormack, said it was not her job to question intelligence reports or "to referee disputes in the intelligence community." But even with that curious job disclaimer, it's no comfort to think that the national security adviser wouldn't have bothered to inform herself about such a major issue before speaking publicly. The national security adviser has no more important responsibility than making sure that the president gets the best advice on life-and-death issues like the war.

If Ms. Rice did her job and told Mr. Bush how ludicrous the case was for an Iraqi nuclear program, then Mr. Bush terribly misled the public. If not, she should have resigned for allowing her boss to start a war on the basis of bad information and an incompetent analysis.

Josh Marshall

The Bush-Cheney policy on North Korea was always what Fareed Zakaria once aptly called "a policy of cheap rhetoric and cheap shots." It failed. And after it failed President Bush couldn't come to grips with that failure and change course...read on

The Nitpicker:

The US Government has announced that it will release $95m to North Korea as part of an agreement to replace the Stalinist country's own nuclear programme, which the US suspected was being misused.
Under the 1994 Agreed Framework an international consortium is building two proliferation-proof nuclear reactors and providing fuel oil for North Korea while the reactors are being built.

In releasing the funding, President George W Bush waived the Framework's requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors.

President Bush argued that the decision was "vital to the national security interests of the United States".

And he did that roughly three months after saying they were part of the "Axis."

JC, in his usual fashion says, "Don't despair over North Korea's nuclear test. It's part of Our Leader's plan to build a case for bombing Iran. Why would Our Leader bomb Iran to punish North Korea? For the same reason he attacked Iraq to punish Al Qaeda. It's what emperors do."