THE HOT JOINTS » nuclear weapons

NORTH KOREA CONDUCTS NUCLEAR TEST

Chris Jones — Mon, 25 May 2009 02:50:31 +0000

Breaking on Twitter…

Don’t know much yet, but just moments ago South Korea detected an “artificial earthquake” in North Korean territory believed to be from a nuclear test.

Developing…

***UPDATE***

From the AP:

SEOUL, May 25 (AP) – (Kyodo)—North Korea appears to have gone ahead with its threat to conduct a second nuclear test, South Korean media reported Monday.

Yonhap News Agency quoted a source as saying South Korea detected an “artificial earthquake” in North Korea that was felt shortly before 10 a.m.

Developing…

Obama Looks To Shatter America’s Nuclear Deterrence

Chris Jones — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:26:53 +0000

It looks like rolling back successful anti-terror policies isn’t the only thing on president Obama’s agenda. He also seeks to make the long held liberal fantasy of nuclear disarmament (at least for America) a reality. Time has an interesting piece looking at the policy Obama has already set in stone of “no new nuclear weapons” for America. This runs contrary to the military’s position and to that of secretary of defense Gates who has been pushing for the funding of a RRW (Reliable Replacement Warhead) program.

Gates doesn’t want “new” nuclear weapons as in additional weapons for our stockpile, but rather a new generation of warheads to replace our aging ones. The majority of our nukes are from the 1970’s and 1980’s and may no longer function correctly if it becomes necessary to use them. The plutonium core of a nuke suffers radioactive decay over time which lessens their effectiveness and can make them either not function correctly or fail to detonate entirely.

Gates argues the reason we need to have such a large stockpile of nukes now is because the Pentagon must operate on the assumption that a certain percentage of the weapons may not function correctly. If we had a new generation of warheads to replace the aging ones we could significantly cut down on the overall size of our stockpile since the new ones would be certain to work.

Obama and his liberal cronies don’t want that, because in their naive mind they hope the nukes will quit working and we can just get rid of them entirely — thus ushering in a new era of nuclear free peace around the world. That’s a nice pipe dream but it will never happen. Liberals operate on the false premise that other countries only have nukes because America has nukes. If America no longer had nukes the rest of the world wouldn’t need them. That’s of course absurd to the point of being laughable, but it’s nevertheless what the lefties believe.

Nuclear weapons are a horrible thing. I cannot imagine a reason to ever use a nuke except in response to a nuclear attack on us or our allies. Having said that, the nuclear genie is unfortunately out of the bottle and it’s never going back in. As long as a single country in the world possesses nuclear weapons or the ability to produce them, America must maintain a nuclear deterrence. Russia will NEVER give up its nukes, China will NEVER give up its nukes, Israel will NEVER EVER give up its nukes, and therefore America must always have better and badder nukes than anyone else.

Even if by some miracle every country agreed to give up nukes, you could never be sure they didn’t have a couple squirreled away somewhere. The bottom line is that America can never be caught flat footed when it comes to nukes. You don’t get a second chance to deter a nuclear attack or respond to one in kind.

Obama is determined to weaken our national security with his pinko liberal ideology of peace and love instead looking at the world the way it really is. He’s a fool to close Gitmo, he’s a fool to end harsh interrogation, and he’s a dangerous fool to weaken our nuclear deterrence.

-Chris Jones

Mass Murder Still Continues Inside North Korea

Chris Jones — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:36:32 +0000

After the decision by North Korea to declare and begin disassembling their nuclear program, the Bush Administration has agreed to lift sanctions long held against the regime in Pyongyang and remove that country from the list of state sponsors of terror.

To show their country is serious about disarming, the North Koreans are planning the televised destruction of the cooling tower at one of their major nuclear facilities at Yongbyon.

U.S. officials are quick to point out that this is only the beginning of a process that will be completed in stages. As the North Koreans fulfill each part of the agreement, the U.S. will in return make good on its promises.

The Bush Administration acknowledges that North Korea has a rich history of deception and broken promises and will of course be watched very carefully. Representatives from the U.S. and the IAEA will be allowed in to the country to monitor the progress of disarmament.

The disarmament of North Korea is of course a wonderful thing, however the world must not forget about the literal genocide that’s taking place in that country.

There is absolutely no country on the face of the earth with a worse record on human rights than North Korea. Kim Jong-IL makes Saddam Hussein look like a choir boy. North Korea is known as “the world’s largest prison camp” which is not an exaggeration by any means.

The cult-of-personality that the current Kim regime and his father before him have created in North Korea is unprecedented anywhere in the world. Most people have no idea the level to which that country is controlled. Their are only two phone lines in the entire country that reach the outside world, and you only need one guess to know who controls them.

More than 3 million North Koreans have died of starvation in recent years due to widespread famine. The Kim regime diverts what food aide it does allow in to the country to the military and party faithful.

The people of North and South Korea are genetically identical people, separated only by razor wire and a Stalinist madman.

However, North Koreans are on average 5″ shorter than South Koreans because of chronic malnutrition and starvation. South Korea is one of most technologically advanced nations in the world with a standard of living comparable to the United States, while North Koreans don’t even have anything to eat.

Human beings in North Korea have no value to the regime. The slightest infraction can result in a life sentence to one of the hundred of political prison camps scattered about the country. Prisoners live about as well as farm animals, and are worked until they die of starvation, hypothermia, sickness, suicide, or execution.

One particular human rights abuse is something right out of Nazi Germany. North Korea routinely tests chemical and biological weapons on prisoners. Sometimes gassing entire families together to study the effect of weapons.

Guards in these prisons are taught that prisoners are not humans but criminals who wish to destroy the country.

Collective punishment is the norm in North Korea. Not only is a suspected dissident arrested but also three generations of his family are imprisoned, to root out the bad blood and seed of dissent. There are children who are literally raised in prison camps if they’re fortunate enough to survive to adulthood. Their only crime is to have ancestors labeled as “criminals” by the regime.

One man who actually escaped from a camp he was born in says he had no idea about the outside world or anything. He thought it natural that he was in a prison camp because of his ancestors crimes.

“I didn’t know about America, or China or the fact that the Korean Peninsula was divided and there was a place called South Korea,” he said. “I thought it was natural that I was in the camp because of my ancestors’ crime, though I never even wondered what that crime was. I never thought it was unfair.”

The government practices total information control. North Koreans have no cell phones, no Internet access, and only limited government controlled television.

The bottom line is that while we celebrate what looks to be a nuclear disarmament of North Korea, we must also remember the horrifying cruelty that the citizens of North Korea will still be forced to endure.

Hollywood lefties love to play activist when it comes to global warming or Darfur, but the people of North Korea are suffering daily atrocities the likes of which the world has only rarely seen.

Robert Mugabe, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, or the Junta in Berma, are all amateurs when it comes to mass murder compared to “Little Kim” of North Korea.

-Chris Jones

EU Approves New Sanctions Against Iran

Chris Jones — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:40:16 +0000

EU nations approved new sanctions against Iran today, imposing additional financial and travel restrictions on a list of Iranian companies and experts — including the country’s largest bank.

Khan Network Had Advanced Nuclear Warhead Design

Chris Jones — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:27:25 +0000

The Washington Post is reporting that the now defunct A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling ring was in possession of a far more advanced nuclear warhead design than has been previously reported. The blueprints were discovered on seized computers and showed how to build a compact nuclear warhead that would easily fit atop ballistic missiles. Specifically, the kind of missiles that both North Korea and Iran possess.

The real stink of it is that U.S. intelligence and the U.N. simply have no idea who the blueprints may have been shared with before they were discovered.

Hypocrisy: Is The U.S. Helping The Saudis Go Nuclear?

Chris Jones — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:57:45 +0000

Hot Air is reporting that Condoleezza Rice was in Saudi Arabia last month promising the Saudis that America would help them develop a nuclear infrastructure, build nuclear reactors, and train nuclear engineers. Basically, everything the Iranians are doing that we want them stop doing.

I really hope there is some kind of context that I’m missing here, because this is the kind of thing that really makes America lose credibility. We can’t expect to be taken seriously when we complain that Iran sits on a lake of oil, and therefore has no need to develop nuclear power. Then at the same time start helping the Saudis to develop nuclear technology when they sit on an even bigger lake of oil.

US shows evidence of alleged Syria-N. Korea nuke collaboration

Chris Jones — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:57:04 +0000

Via the AP:

The Syrian nuclear reactor allegedly built with North Korean design help and destroyed last year by Israeli jets was within weeks or months of being functional, a top U.S. official said Thursday.

The facility was mostly completed but still needed significant testing before it could be declared operational, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

However, no uranium—needed to fuel a reactor—was evident at the site, a remote area of eastern Syria along the Euphrates River.

The Syrian reactor was similar in design to a North Korean reactor at Yongbyon that has in the past produced small amounts of plutonium, U.S. officials said. Plutonium is highly radioactive and can be used to make powerful nuclear weapons or radiological bombs.

Top members of the House intelligence committee said Thursday after being briefed on the facility by intelligence and administration officials that the reactor posed a serious threat of spreading dangerous nuclear materials.

“This is a serious proliferation issue, both for the Middle East and the countries that may be involved in Asia,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich.

Iran Begins Installing 6,000 New Centrifuges

Chris Jones — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:32:27 +0000

Iran has begun installation of 6,000 new centrifuges which will be added to the 3,000 centrifuges already producing enriched uranium for their nuclear weapons program (that they don’t have).

The workhorse of Iran’s enrichment program is the P-1 centrifuge, which is run in cascades of 164 machines. But Iranian officials confirmed in February that they had started using the IR-2 centrifuge that can churn out enriched uranium at more than double the rate.

A total of 3,000 centrifuges is the commonly accepted figure for a nuclear enrichment program that is past the experimental stage and can be used as a platform for a full industrial-scale program that could churn out enough enriched material for dozens of nuclear weapons.

What this means is that America’s brilliant intelligence services who recently got a thrill by knee-capping President Bush with their ridiculous intelligence estimate claiming that Iran suspended it’s weapons program several years ago.

As a result of the CIA’s continued incompetence and dishonest ambushing of the executive branch, Iran will indeed become a nuclear power unless Israel steps in to stop them.

-Chris Jones

China Drops Out of Talks on Iran Sanctions

Chris Jones — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 20:15:50 +0000

It looks like China is taking a hard line against further sanctions:

China has dealt a blow to Western efforts to increase diplomatic pressure on Iran over its nuclear program by dropping out of a meeting to discuss tougher sanctions against Tehran.

Russia, which like China opposes further U.N. sanctions against Iran, added fuel to the fire by announcing on Friday that the U.N. nuclear watchdog would soon start inspecting and sealing atomic fuel bound for an Iranian reactor.

The West fears Iran wants to develop atomic weapons but Iran denies this. Tehran says it wants only to generate electricity.

Political directors from Britain, France, Germany, the United States, Russia and China were due to meet on November 19 to assess reports about Tehran’s nuclear program from the United Nations and from EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

“I think it’s partly related to genuine travel difficulties, but also linked to resistance on the broader question of sanctions from that quarter,” a European diplomatic source said of China’s decision.

It doesn’t make any sense that China and Russia keep urging the Bush Administration to use diplomacy rather than war, but then block our diplomatic efforts at every opportunity.

-Chris Jones

Time To Act On Iran

Chris Jones — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 04:30:10 +0000

The International Atomic Energy Agency issued its report on the status of Iran’s nuclear program, and it’s extremely troubling. What the report revealed is that Iran is much farther along in it’s weapons development than most intelligence agencies.

According to the report Iran has already installed 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium. That is enough to begin production of highly enriched uranium on an industrial scale. This would allow Iran to produce enough highly enriched uranium to have a nuclear warhead within a year.

The installation of 3,000 fully-functioning centrifuges at Iran’s enrichment plant at Natanz is a “red line” drawn by the US across which Washington had said it would not let Iran pass. Israel has also expressed similar sentiments and is thought to already be ready to strike Iran’s nuclear sites.

It is my belief that Israel will take military action if the U.S. does not. If Mexico was developing nuclear weapons while at the same time threating to wipe us of the map, you can be sure that the United States would take action.

While I do believe we must continue diplomatic talks, I don’t believe they will ultimately be successful. If diplomacy does fail I think one of two things will happen.

The first possibility is that Israel will launch air strikes against Iran and the U.S. will back them up with sea based cruise missiles and stealth aircraft.

The second possibility is that the U.S. will take military action against Iran and Israel will stand down. The purpose of the attack will be to not just delay the Iranian’s nuclear program, but to effectively end it. We would achieve this not with an Iraq-style invasion, but with a combination of air and sea assets.

Whatever happens, I suspect it will be happen within the next 4-6 months or at least before the Bush Administration leaves office. In light of the campaign rhetoric on the Democratic side, it’s not likely that a Democratic President would ever take military action in Iran or anywhere else.

-Chris Jones

THE HOT JOINTS » nuclear weapons

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