WAS COVERT ATTEMPT TO NUKE IRAN FOILED BY LEAK?

Bernie, I think you said it all.

I think there is a maniac running loose in this thread.

I looked up oralloy and found (I knew already)

Oralloy ...

Oralloy was the code name often used for the enriched uranium being

produced at Natanz.

Invading and occupying Iran would be rather difficult.

Simply dumping a quantity of high explosives on their heads shouldn't pose any major difficulties.

We should certainly pull the carriers back out of range of any Sizzler anti-ship missiles though.

They are lying.





The evidence is the fact that they conducted the program in secret for 20 years.





They are not helping Iran in a technical capacity. But they are helping by preventing any meaningful sanctions from being placed on Iran.

If Iran would have withdrawn from the treaty and then started work on nuclear weapons, that would have been legitimate.

But since they've had a nuclear weapons program while still a party to the treaty, their nuclear weapons are illegal.





What trade treaties have we violated? What human rights treaties have we violated?

As for torture, no one seems to complain when US POWs are tortured. So why should we care about the CIA torturing al-Qa'ida's leadership?





I don't recall rooting for that.

I'm rooting for bombs falling on Iran's illegal nuclear weapons complexes.

I really wouldn't want to be a civilian downwind from the Isfahan site though. I doubt a B61-11 will be dropped there, but if it is, the fallout will resemble Chernobyl.

Without the nuke, it will still be an unpleasant downwind experience, as the bombing of the aboveground uranium conversion facility will result in the release of tons of caustic and toxic chemicals into the atmosphere.

But that's Iran's fault, not ours.





Weapons are cool, and nukes doubly so, but they are not a source of sexual arousal.

I picked the artwork painted on Bockscar's nose because of all the Hiroshima/Nagasaki arguing I do.

There are a lot of people out there who make absurd claims about us nuking Japan (things like saying the cities weren't military targets, or that Japan tried to surrender before the bombs were dropped, etc), and one of my hobbies is setting that sort of nonsense straight.

Numerous trade treaty violations, as previously adjudicted by the WTO.

The "UN convention on torture..."

Your first sentence is a lie.

Your second sentence is not merely a justification for gross immorality, it is also a justification for violating precisely the treaty which you suggest has not been violated.


But which is cooler... the weapon itself or the little child blown apart whose brain and eyeballs are plastered on the wall? Or are they both equally cool?

How cool is the IED? How cool were those jets laden with fuel and so imaginatively and effectively used as weapons? How cool is a lightstick when it is shoved up your ass?

Fearing Fear Itself

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 29, 2007
In America's darkest hour, Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged the nation not to succumb to "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." But that was then.

Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president ?- including all of the candidates with a significant chance of receiving the Republican nomination ?- have made unreasoning, unjustified terror the centerpiece of their campaigns.

Consider, for a moment, the implications of the fact that Rudy Giuliani is taking foreign policy advice from Norman Podhoretz, who wants us to start bombing Iran "as soon as it is logistically possible."

Mr. Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary and a founding neoconservative, tells us that Iran is the "main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11." The Islamofascists, he tells us, are well on their way toward creating a world "shaped by their will and tailored to their wishes." Indeed, "Already, some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which they give the name Eurabia."

Do I have to point out that none of this makes a bit of sense?

For one thing, there isn't actually any such thing as Islamofascism ?- it's not an ideology; it's a figment of the neocon imagination. The term came into vogue only because it was a way for Iraq hawks to gloss over the awkward transition from pursuing Osama bin Laden, who attacked America, to Saddam Hussein, who didn't. And Iran had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 ?- in fact, the Iranian regime was quite helpful to the United States when it went after Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan.

Beyond that, the claim that Iran is on the path to global domination is beyond ludicrous. Yes, the Iranian regime is a nasty piece of work in many ways, and it would be a bad thing if that regime acquired nuclear weapons. But let's have some perspective, please: we're talking about a country with roughly the G.D.P. of Connecticut, and a government whose military budget is roughly the same as Sweden's.

Meanwhile, the idea that bombing will bring the Iranian regime to its knees ?- and bombing is the only option, since we've run out of troops ?- is pure wishful thinking. Last year Israel tried to cripple Hezbollah with an air campaign, and ended up strengthening it instead. There's every reason to believe that an attack on Iran would produce the same result, with the added effects of endangering U.S. forces in Iraq and driving oil prices well into triple digits.

Mr. Podhoretz, in short, is engaging in what my relatives call crazy talk. Yet he is being treated with respect by the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination. And Mr. Podhoretz's rants are, if anything, saner than some of what we've been hearing from some of Mr. Giuliani's rivals.

Thus, in a recent campaign ad Mitt Romney asserted that America is in a struggle with people who aim "to unite the world under a single jihadist Caliphate. To do that they must collapse freedom-loving nations. Like us." He doesn't say exactly who these jihadists are, but presumably he's referring to Al Qaeda ?- an organization that has certainly demonstrated its willingness and ability to kill innocent people, but has no chance of collapsing the United States, let alone taking over the world.

And Mike Huckabee, whom reporters like to portray as a nice, reasonable guy, says that if Hillary Clinton is elected, "I'm not sure we'll have the courage and the will and the resolve to fight the greatest threat this country's ever faced in Islamofascism." Yep, a bunch of lightly armed terrorists and a fourth-rate military power ?- which aren't even allies ?- pose a greater danger than Hitler's panzers or the Soviet nuclear arsenal ever did.

All of this would be funny if it weren't so serious.

In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration adopted fear-mongering as a political strategy. Instead of treating the attack as what it was ?- an atrocity committed by a fundamentally weak, though ruthless adversary ?- the administration portrayed America as a nation under threat from every direction.

Most Americans have now regained their balance. But the Republican base, which lapped up the administration's rhetoric about the axis of evil and the war on terror, remains infected by the fear the Bushies stirred up ?- perhaps because fear of terrorists maps so easily into the base's older fears, including fear of dark-skinned people in general.

And the base is looking for a candidate who shares this fear.

Just to be clear, Al Qaeda is a real threat, and so is the Iranian nuclear program. But neither of these threats frightens me as much as fear itself ?- the unreasoning fear that has taken over one of America's two great political parties.

America did nuke Japan.
It was an experiment with the two different types of bomb.
They needed to test them on a real live cities, mainly to impress the Russians.
Thats why hiroshima and nagasaki were relatively untouched, so they could measure the bomb's capability.
Japan was trying to surrender with terms about the Emperor, rejected by the US until suddenly Japan surrendered after the Nagasaki bomb, and guess what the Emperor was untouched, just as they wanted. The experiment with the uranium and plutonium devices was over, thats what ended the war.

(Regarding Iran if you have knowledge of their secret bomb program these last 20 years, suggest you bring it to the attention of your President...otherwise its just guesswork on your part and worth nothing)

There are a lot of disputes over trade treaties. I'd hardly call such disputes "treaty violations". (And if they were violations, the biggest violators would probably be the EU with their illegal ban on genetically modified food.)






You mentioned torture in addition to human rights, which led me to believe that you were claiming human rights violations in addition to torture.

If all you meant was the torture, then I agree with your assessment that we are violating that treaty.






No it isn't, though it is possible that I am mistaken.

Do you have some evidence of a great outcry over the torture of US POWs?






I agree that we have violated the prohibitions against torture.






The weapon is what is cool, not the victim.

Yes.





Not really. They did take measurements, but they do that every time a new weapon is used in combat.

The difference in bomb type had nothing to do with the bombing.





No, there was no "need" to test on live cities. And the point was to impress the Japanese.

The whole point of dropping the bombs was to make Japan surrender.





We left cities untouched so the Japanese would understand the overwhelming power of the bombs.





They weren't trying hard enough. Japan only managed to convey a request to surrender after Nagasaki was bombed.

Japan was in control over when they offered to surrender. Any complaints over surrender timing should be addressed to them.





Japan asked us to guarantee he Emperor's position (though they only asked after Nagasaki). Instead we guaranteed that MacArthur had the power to depose the Emperor at will.





The only experiment over uranium vs. plutonium devices was the Trinity test back in the US. That experiment was over before any nukes were dropped on Japan.





The President already knows about it. It is the reason we are gearing up to blow up Iran's nuclear weapons facilities.

Wrong. Trinity was a test of the plutonium device only. The uranium bomb was certain to work. As an enthusiast you should do more research.

The fact that the gun bomb was certain to work, and the implosion bomb was tested at Trinity, shows that I am not wrong. There were no questions left on the issue of gun vs. implosion after the Trinity test. Before Trinity they knew how the gun design would work. After trinity they knew how both the gun and implosion designs worked.

Japan was nuked twice because they surrendered between the second and third bombs. If they had surrendered between the third and fourth bombs they would have been nuked three times.





That isn't possible. There is no research I haven't already done on the subject.

oralloy

It's very difficult to stay angry with you. But I'm going to try.

Having an exchange with Orally leaves one with the feeling that he or she has squandered valuable time.

He might be putting us on with his nonsensical statements.

I challenge you to demonstrate how even one of my statements is nonsensical.

O, you said: "Bush should make it clear that if Iran nukes Israel, the US will nuke Moscow and Leningrad."

That is a stupid statement. Haven't you heard of mutually assured destruction? We will be a cinder should we attack Russia.

That is a clear statement of my opinion. Nothing nonsensical about it.





Was it stupid of JFK to say: "It will be the policy of the United States Government to regard any missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack upon the United States by the Soviet Union, requiring a full retaliatory response."





Yes. I was applying that principle when I proposed holding Russian cities hostage to Iran's good behavior.

After all, they are not only providing diplomatic cover for Iran's development of nuclear weapons, they are doing all they can to prevent any defenses against Iranian missiles.





They'll be a bigger cinder.

I wonder if the Agent Defeat Weapon would allow the safe destruction of the uranium conversion facility.

I never thought of that before. Hmmm....

That we will be a bigger cinder makes me feel much better.

"Fanaticism is ... overcompensation for doubt."
Robertson Davies


Kennedy was wrong in drawing the line in Cuba. Had he attacked, we would have lost 90 million people.

Better dead than red.