BREAKING NEWS: North Korea claims nuclear test!

[Krill]

*Shrug* Dear leader has got to die sometime

[BeBMan]

I wonder how they call the next guy then. Maybe "dearest leader"

[DRoseDARs]

North Korea's nuclear capabilities

http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/89305,cst-nws-nknuke09.article

North Korea's nuclear capabilities

October 9, 2006
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
North Korea announced Monday that it had tested an atomic weapon, a claim that if true would make it the latest member of the elite club of nuclear powers.

HOW MANY BOMBS: Estimates of the amount of radioactive material the North possesses vary widely, enough for possibly between four and 13 weapons, and are unverifiable.

The count compares with a U.S. arsenal of more than 5,000 strategic warheads, more than 1,000 operational tactical weapons -- meant for the battlefield and less powerful than the strategic arms -- and approximately 3,000 reserve strategic and tactical warheads.

• • •

DELIVERY: A top concern is the possibility of North Korea mounting bombs atop missiles aimed at Seoul, Tokyo or even parts of the United States.

The communist nation shocked the world in 1998 by firing a long-range ballistic missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean. But the country isn't believed to have a nuclear weapons design that would be small and light enough to be mounted atop a missile.

In July, North Korea test-launched seven missiles, but a long-range rocket believed capable of reaching American shores exploded shortly after liftoff.

• • •

HOW STRONG: There were conflicting reports on the strength of the blast. A state-run South Korean geological institute said the force of the test was equivalent to 550 tons of TNT. That is relatively small compared to the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima, which was equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT.

But Russia's defense minister said it was far more powerful, equivalent to 5,000 to 15,000 tons of TNT.

In 1996, France detonated a bomb beneath Fangataufa Atoll about 750 miles southeast of Tahiti that had a yield of about 120,000 tons of TNT.

• • •

HISTORY: North Korea is believed to have been accumulating plutonium for a bomb since the mid-1980s. It froze the program in 1994 as part of an agreement with the United States. Since the breakdown of that agreement in late 2002, North Korea is believed to have ramped up production.

Some experts estimate that at least 80 percent of the country's stockpile of 44 to 116 pounds of refined plutonium was processed since the end of the freeze in 2002.

Without another agreement, North Korea is forecast to boost its stockpile to 160 pounds by 2008 -- enough to build between eight and 17 bombs.

• • •

Source: Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

Bush had been in office for about a year at that point, plus it's post-9/11, so this is what happens when you swing the stick instead of the carrot. Whipping out your dick and saying, "Mine's bigger, Axis of Evil." during your 2002 State of the Union Address doesn't help much either.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
Bush had been in office for about a year at that point, plus it's post-9/11, so this is what happens when you swing the stick instead of the carrot. Whipping out your dick and saying, "Mine's bigger, Axis of Evil." during your 2002 State of the Union Address doesn't help much either.

The problem here is that there was too much carrot and too little stick.

[DRoseDARs]

Seemed to work just fine during the Clinton years. Notice the bolded section? Very little was produced during Clinton's time, but in struts Bush and in the span of 4 years 80% of their plutonium was produced.

[Lord Avalon]

Originally posted by BeBro
I wonder how they call the next guy then. Maybe "dearest leader"

"Yes, Dear Leader"?

BTW, I posted 17min prior in the "Japan warns North Korea" thread.

http://apolyton.net/forums//showthread.php?postid=4618203#post4618203

[GePap]

Originally posted by LordShiva


The problem here is that there was too much carrot and too little stick.

Its easy for states that would bear little of the cost of a full blown war to be aggresive. Its the South Koreans and Chinese who would bear the greatest cost.

Second, the US never offered a carrot, which is idiotic when you know there is no stick you can use anymore that anyone is willing to use.

[Dis]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
North Korea's nuclear capabilities

http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/89305,cst-nws-nknuke09.article

Bush had been in office for about a year at that point, plus it's post-9/11, so this is what happens when you swing the stick instead of the carrot. Whipping out your dick and saying, "Mine's bigger, Axis of Evil." during your 2002 State of the Union Address doesn't help much either.

North korea doesn't have oil

'nuff said.

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by Lord Avalon

BTW, I posted 17min prior in the "Japan warns North Korea" thread.
http://apolyton.net/forums//showthre...03#post4618203

You mean where everyone ignored it until it happened; and then Shiva acts like its brand new, never been considered to happen news?

Oh yeah.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
You mean where everyone ignored it until it happened; and then Shiva acts like its brand new, never been considered to happen news?

Oh yeah.

It was posted in a Sloww thread. You know I never read those

[Dis]

Originally posted by LordShiva


It was posted in a Sloww thread. You know I never read those

how did you know it was posted then?

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Dis
how did you know it was posted then?

I took Lord Avalon's word for it

Originally posted by Lord Avalon
BTW, I posted 17min prior in the "Japan warns North Korea" thread.

[DRoseDARs]

Rumsfeld holds a special place in his heart wallet for North Korea...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/korea/article/0,2763,952289,00.html

The two faces of Rumsfeld

2000: director of a company which wins $200m contract to sell nuclear reactors to North Korea
2002: declares North Korea a terrorist state, part of the axis of evil and a target for regime change

Randeep Ramesh
Friday May 9, 2003
The Guardian

Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld confused Iraq with Afghanistan yesterday. Photo: Reuters

Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, sat on the board of a company which three years ago sold two light water nuclear reactors to North Korea - a country he now regards as part of the "axis of evil" and which has been targeted for regime change by Washington because of its efforts to build nuclear weapons.

Mr Rumsfeld was a non-executive director of ABB, a European engineering giant based in Zurich, when it won a $200m (£125m) contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors. The current defence secretary sat on the board from 1990 to 2001, earning $190,000 a year. He left to join the Bush administration.

Article continues
The reactor deal was part of President Bill Clinton's policy of persuading the North Korean regime to positively engage with the west.

The sale of the nuclear technology was a high-profile contract. ABB's then chief executive, Goran Lindahl, visited North Korea in November 1999 to announce ABB's "wide-ranging, long-term cooperation agreement" with the communist government.

The company also opened an office in the country's capital, Pyongyang, and the deal was signed a year later in 2000. Despite this, Mr Rumsfeld's office said that the de fence secretary did not "recall it being brought before the board at any time".

In a statement to the American magazine Newsweek, his spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said that there "was no vote on this". A spokesman for ABB told the Guardian yesterday that "board members were informed about the project which would deliver systems and equipment for light water reactors".

Just months after Mr Rumsfeld took office, President George Bush ended the policy of engagement and negotiation pursued by Mr Clinton, saying he did not trust North Korea, and pulled the plug on diplomacy. Pyongyang warned that it would respond by building nuclear missiles. A review of American policy was announced and the bilateral confidence building steps, key to Mr Clinton's policy of detente, halted.

By January 2002, the Bush administration had placed North Korea in the "axis of evil" alongside Iraq and Iran. If there was any doubt about how the White House felt about North Korea this was dispelled by Mr Bush, who told the Washington Post last year: "I loathe [North Korea's leader] Kim Jong-il."

The success of campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have enhanced the status of Mr Rumsfeld in Washington. Two years after leaving ABB, Mr Rumsfeld now considers North Korea a "terrorist regime _ teetering on the verge of collapse" and which is on the verge of becoming a proliferator of nuclear weapons. During a bout of diplomatic activity over Christmas he warned that the US could fight two wars at once - a reference to the forthcoming conflict with Iraq. After Baghdad fell, Mr Rumsfeld said Pyongyang should draw the "appropriate lesson".

Critics of the administration's bellicose language on North Korea say that the problem was not that Mr Rumsfeld supported the Clinton-inspired diplomacy and the ABB deal but that he did not "speak up against it". "One could draw the conclusion that economic and personal interests took precedent over non-proliferation," said Steve LaMontagne, an analyst with the Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington.

Many members of the Bush administration are on record as opposing Mr Clinton's plans, saying that weapons-grade nuclear material could be extracted from the type of light water reactors that ABB sold. Mr Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and the state department's number two diplomat, Richard Armitage, both opposed the deal as did the Republican presidential candidate, Bob Dole, whose campaign Mr Rumsfeld ran and where he also acted as defence adviser.

One unnamed ABB board director told Fortune magazine that Mr Rumsfeld was involved in lobbying his hawkish friends on behalf of ABB.

The Clinton package sought to defuse tensions on the Ko rean peninsula by offering supplies of oil and new light water nuclear reactors in return for access by inspectors to Pyongyang's atomic facilities and a dismantling of its heavy water reactors which produce weapons grade plutonium. Light water reactors are known as "proliferation-resistant" but, in the words of one expert, they are not "proliferation-proof".

The type of reactors involved in the ABB deal produce plutonium which needs refining before it can be weaponised. One US congressman and critic of the North Korean regime described the reactors as "nuclear bomb factories".

North Korea expelled the inspectors last year and withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in January at about the same time that the Bush administration authorised $3.5m to keep ABB's reactor project going.

North Korea is thought to have offered to scrap its nuclear facilities and missile pro gramme and to allow international nuclear inspectors into the country. But Pyongyang demanded that security guarantees and aid from the US must come first.

Mr Bush now insists that he will only negotiate a new deal with Pyongyang after the nuclear programme is scrapped. Washington believes that offering inducements would reward Pyongyang's "blackmail" and encourage other "rogue" states to develop weapons of mass destruction.

First giving Saddam Hussein and Iraq weapons of mass destruction and now this? Jesus terrorist-appeasing Christ, can this man ever STOP aiding and abettting the enemy? What next, we find out he's sold Iran anti-ship missiles?


Edit: The Horta come from Horth Korea, but that's another story...

[Whoha]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
Seemed to work just fine during the Clinton years. Notice the bolded section? Very little was produced during Clinton's time, but in struts Bush and in the span of 4 years 80% of their plutonium was produced.

ignoring the Uranium work, which was why we left the framework in the first place. strangely, that article doesn't even mention the word Uranium.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
Rumsfeld holds a special place in his heart wallet for North Korea...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/korea/article/0,2763,952289,00.html

First giving Saddam Hussein and Iraq weapons of mass destruction and now this? Jesus terrorist-appeasing Christ, can this man ever STOP aiding and abettting the enemy? What next, we find out he's sold Iran anti-ship missiles?

The usual dishonest journalism from The Guardian. ABB is one of the largest electrical engineering companies in the world, and one of only a handful that can fulfill an order like this one. They sell and install hundreds of power generators to customers all over the world, and it's exceedingly easy for a non-executive director to not know about every single one, much less have any power to change it. Also, it's a Swiss/Swedish company. Does this put Sweden on the left's list of entities it loves to hate?