Bunker Buster Bomb Back in the News

In Washington, there is no such thing as putting something quietly into a bill, even if there is little prior discussion of an inserted item. But ABC News may be jumping the gun with a headline that reads: "Is the U.S. Preparing to Bomb Iran?" Here's the ABC News article:

Back in October 2007, ABC News reported that the Pentagon had asked Congress for $88 million in the emergency Iraq/Afghanistan war funding request to develop a gargantuan bunker-busting bomb called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). It's a 30,000-pound bomb designed to hit targets buried 200 feet below ground. ...

Now the Pentagon is shifting spending from other programs to fast forward the development and procurement of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The Pentagon comptroller sent a request to shift the funds to the House and Senate Appropriations and Armed Services Committees over the summer.

The first thing to keep in mind is that back in 2002 President Bush advocated building nuclear bunker busters. It was one of the lamest ideas of the Bush Administration since it risked lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. Since that time the thinking has moved toward the development of a conventional weapons system to penetrate a bunker where the development of nuclear weapons is likely to be taking place. That's what being discussed in the article above. By the way, just to broaden the thinking a bit, bunker busters can be used for other purposes than disrupting a nuclear program. But let's stick to the nuclear angle for now.

The two potential nuclear renegades at the moment are Iran and North Korea. Given the feeble world economy, using a bunker buster on Iran would probably drag us into a war that would put much of the oil in the Persian Gulf at peril and sink what little economic recovery the world is seeing so far (In 2006, the idea pushed by Cheney and others to bomb Iran was a lame idea even then). Perhaps Obama and the Pentagon see the bunker buster mostly in terms of pressure on Iran, though the weapon wouldn't be ready, supposedly, until 2010.

As for North Korea, the issue has always been—and remains—the fact that North Korea has artillery weapons that can do enormous damage to Seoul before an effective response can be mounted. Negotiations and sanctions are still the best way to go with North Korea.

So who does that leave? UPI quotes a Pentagon spokesman:

After winning congressional approval, the Pentagon said this week that it had awarded Boeing's McDonnell Douglas a $51.9 million contract to "enable B-2 aircraft" to carry the bomb.

"The threats have been developing over the years," a Pentagon spokesman was quoted saying to U.S. media. "There are, without getting into any intelligence, there are countries that have used technologies to go further underground and to take those facilities and make them hardened. This is not a new phenomenon, but it is a growing one."

Even under Obama, nothing in Washington is ever straightforward. So, what countries does the anonymous spokesman have in mind? First, it should be noted that the bunker buster proposal was put forward over the summer. In the last six months, we have seen nasty developments in Iran and nasty developments in North Korea. In both cases, the nastiness has seemingly died down. Yes, I realize there is this notion sometimes of needing more options. But sometimes having more options simply complicates rather than simplifies the picture. If nothing else, perhaps the bunker buster is intended as a shot across the bow of Ahmadinejad's ambitions (this includes, of course, Iran's more conservative clergy).

Sooner or later, there will be other nuclear pretenders. And some of those pretenders may succeed in building functional bombs. There are several organizations, including the Arms Control Association, who keep track of who has what and who has ambitions. Syria, for example, is an example of a country that may still have ambitions—or not. Actually I don't mean to single out Syria since there are others to consider. Burma, for example? One of the insanities of our era is that nuclear weapons give status to a country and there are a number of leaders who want that status.

For the moment, the real question is whether conventional bunker busters that can do the job help diplomacy or hinder diplomacy. I don't know the answer. I hope someone in Washington does.

Nuclear Weapons and the Gang That Can't Shoot Straight

A sign of poor judgment in recent years are the number of conservatives who think nuclear weapons ought to be used in war. Not only have Cheney and others talked about using nuclear weapons in such places as Iran (to strike its nonexistant nuclear program) but they appear at times to have also encouraged Israel to act as a proxy. The Bush Administration even tried to start a nuclear bunker buster program and although it was reportedly taken off the table, we have no real proof that some sort of nuclear bunker buster program did not go forward. Given the secrecy of the Bush Administration, this is an issue that has never been satisfactorily resolved.

The real issue is that the Bush Administration has been trying to lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons. To lower the threshold may require removing certain civilian controls. We don't know if that's what has happened, but last year the air force transported what they thought were unarmed missles to Louisiana (see Washington Post story). Today, we learn fuses for nuclear weapons were sent to Taiwan; here's an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times:

Pentagon officials said the material sent to Taiwan consisted of four electrical fuses for the ICBM nose cones. The fuses, used to trigger nuclear weapons, do not contain nuclear material.

But experts on nuclear security said the mistaken transfer showed a serious deterioration in the safeguards and controls that the U.S. military has over its nuclear warheads.

"This is really unbelievable," said Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, which advocates reducing the number of nuclear weapons. "If the Russians had shipped triggers to Tehran, we would be going nuts right now."

The gang that can't shoot straight still occupies the White House. We know that former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, eased rules on special missions using conventional missiles to take out terrorists. One or two of those missions have succeeded. Several, on the other hand, have rained death and terror on wedding ceremonies or family gatherings in Iraq, Afghanistan and the border area of Pakistan in cases of mistaken intelligence. America's 'good guy' image has been severely damaged by such incidents which have involved the killing of women, children and other innocent civilians.

Nuclear weapons, of course, are in an entirely different league and need to be tightly controlled but it is clear that rules regarding nuclear safeguards have broken down. What is not clear is why.

Americans need to think about these issues. Presidential candidate John McCain has talked about staying in Iraq for a hundred years. He has also talked about expanding America's wars (though it's unclear how he's going to pay for them or what advantage these wars offer the American people). McCain also gets confused about al Qaida and Iran. A president following in the footsteps of George W. Bush is not what our country needs.

New Bunker Buster Could Stimulate Arms Race

In the absence of diplomacy, new weapons always run the risk of increasing the likelihood of a worldwide arms race. Arms races in themselves increase the likelihood of war. We know there are people in the defense industry who would gladly welcome such circumstances. We know political insiders have been making money off of Bush's war in Iraq.

I've been watching out of the corner of my eye the development of bunker busters for some time. Here's the story from a month ago on one of the more advanced, non-nuclear models:

Boeing issued a press release today, crowing about the detonation of company's new, ginormous bomb. DANGER ROOM's David Hambling had the lowdown on the test, ten days back...

The U.S. just detonated an absolutely enormous bomb, in an underground test: a king-sized bunker-buster, six times larger than what's currently in the American arsenal.

(snip)

But, unlike competing technologies MOP is very simple and won’t take much work - you just need a big enough plane to carry it (a B-2 should do).

Sometimes you don’t need to actually use a weapon. MOAB was only a prototype, but the video of the test was a potent propaganda weapon. MOP is being funded (to you, $30 million) by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA),which “safeguards America and its allies from weapons of mass destruction by providing capabilities to reduce, eliminate, and counter the threat, and mitigate its effects.” In other words, it’s aimed at WMD sites, especially those dug too deep for the BLU-113. Perhaps this test is a really signal to someone that their deep bunkers are not deep enough.

Given the recklessness and incompetence of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, I'm not sure I appreciate the editorializing in the article. Bunker busters are two-sided swords that risk creating more problems than they solve. There are also strategic considerations that are difficult to discuss on an open blog but those considerations point even more strongly towards the need for comprehensive diplomacy. To be honest, I suspect the chance of war with Iran is probably less than it was fifteen months ago but the chance fifteen months ago wasn't all that small. Bush and Cheney are slowly being boxed in by their own arrogance and increasingly apparent criminality. They know if they go much further in their behavior, such as starting their second illegal war, they run the very real risk of actual prison time. Yet, Iran is a serious international problem and its leaders should think long and hard about how close they are to joining the community of nations before they go much further on the road to nuclear posturing. Nuclear proliferation is no joke and if Iran develops nuclear weapons, all kinds of international rearrangements and diplomacy will likely be necessary.

One thing that should be kept in mind is that real diplomacy in regard to Iran has yet to be tried by the Bush Administration. The odds of war have become less but there are too many variables to rule out military action that leads to a wider war. It may be time for a completely new approach. It's time for the United States and other major industrial powers to sit down with the nations of the Middle East and talk about a simple subject that everyone is avoiding: the finite amount of oil that is left in the oil producing countries of the Middle East and where things should go from here. Everyone, including the industrialized nations, the Third World nations, and the Middle East oil producers have a right to a future: it's time to start talking. And every topic should be on the table in the diplomatic sense. Americans can no longer afford political leaders who play ostrich as the future begins to rush towards us. Our country needs to talk and the world needs to talk.

"Doomsday" Clock Closer to Midnight

After mentioning the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists last night, it shouldn't really be a surprise that they're in the news today. Keeping in mind that the "Doomsday" clock is primarily a symbol of the danger nuclear weapons pose to the world and that the purpose of the Bulletin is to alert people to changing conditions when it comes to nuclear weapons (and sometimes other problems), the magazine has moved the minute hand closer to midnight.

Here's the story from Tom Zeller Jr. of The New York Times:

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which 60 years ago began keeping tabs on humanity’s temporal distance from self-annihilation with the concept of a “Doomsday Clock,” apparently found things sufficiently dire to nudge the minute hand forward two clicks, indicating that we are now “five minutes to midnight” — or Doomsday.

(snip)

Rather than bore you with more exposition, however, we figured we’d we’d render a graphic for your viewing pleasure. So with no further ado, here’s a very rough sketch of how the experts interpreted our distance from the bitter end over the last 60 years....

Given the seriousness of what's going on, Zeller's sarcasm isn't particularly useful and doesn't reflect well on The New York Times. But take a look at the graph anyway.

Here's the announcement by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) is moving the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight. It is now 5 minutes to midnight. Reflecting global failures to solve the problems posed by nuclear weapons and the climate crisis, the decision by the BAS Board of Directors was made in consultation with the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors, which includes 18 Nobel Laureates.

BAS announced the Clock change today at an unprecedented joint news conference held at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC, and the Royal Society in London. In a statement supporting the decision to move the hand of the Doomsday Clock, the BAS Board focused on two major sources of catastrophe: the perils of 27,000 nuclear weapons, 2000 of them ready to launch within minutes; and the destruction of human habitats from climate change. In articles by 14 leading scientists and security experts writing in the January-February issue of theBulletin of the Atomic Scientists (http://www.thebulletin.org), the potential for catastrophic damage from human-made technologies is explored further.

(snip)

By moving the hand of the Clock closer to midnight — the figurative end of civilization — the BAS Board of Directors is drawing attention to the increasing dangers from the spread of nuclear weapons in a world of violent conflict, and to the catastrophic harm from climate change that is unfolding. The BAS statement explains: "We stand at the brink of a Second Nuclear Age. Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has the world faced such perilous choices. North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a renewed emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons, the failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia are symptomatic of a failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on Earth."

The BAS statement continues: "The dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons. The effects may be less dramatic in the short term than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades climate change could cause irremediable harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival."

Stephen Hawking, a BAS sponsor, professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of The Royal Society, said: "As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth. As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change."

From its inception, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has always had big names in the field of science associated with the organization. These issues must be taken seriously. The Bush Administration pays lip service to the issues but does a poor job of handling them. Many of Bush's Republican supporters explicitly refuse to take the issues seriously and have obstructed useful things that might have been done over the last six years. Leaving these issues to Bush and his Republican friends is something Americans cannot afford.

Iran's Nuclear Program and the US Navy

On my better days, I sometimes pore over a fair amount of material without actually have a particular take on what I'm reading. Now I'm no expert on nuclear issues but I've been reading about nuclear weapons and arms control from time to time for more than thirty years (mostly in Scientific American and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists with a few books thrown in now and then). Once some of the basics become clear, it's easier for nonexperts like myself to understand some of the issues but it's also easy to miss some things. The material and links below are very much worth reading but take them with a grain of salt.

Here's a post by Steve Clemons of The Washington Note concerning Iran's nuclear program and the naval situation in the gulf:

Chris Nelson Provides Reality Check on Iran's Nuke Capacity

Chris Nelson has some great stuff on Iran tonight. I had not heard until tonight that Iran failed to bring its centrifuges on line and that the 50 they assembled blew up.

(snip)

IRAN. . .recent news stories out of the Middle East seem to be generating a sense that Iran is closer to a successful nuclear weapons capability than had previously been thought, and that the risk to Israel is rising to the point where Israel is moving closer to a decision to "take out" the Iranian nuclear weapons facilities.

Balderdash, our informed sources continue to maintain.

Yes, it does seem to be true that Iran has accelerated its program to bring on line the 3,000 centrifuges required to generate nuclear fuel. . .but it also seems true (and not Iranian disinformation) that of the 50 centrifuges recently hooked up, all 50 blew up.

(snip) [The following is from a Chris Nelson source about our Navy]

This deployment is carefully calibrated. It could have been larger. Increasing to two carrier strike groups in the AOR serves as a firm signal and deterrent, reminding everyone US has bench strength; the US also still can "reach out and touch someone."

(snip)

On the other hand, increasing to three carrier strike groups would be noticeably more 'robust', belligerent and suggestive of intending or anticipating attack. The difference between two and three strike groups is huge. ...

Clemons posted a link to this report by Paul Kerr of the Arms Control Association:

Iran continues to advance its nuclear programs even as diplomatic efforts to contain it continue, according to a Nov. 14 report from International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei to the agency’s Board of Governors. ElBaradei also reported that investigators have not been able to make progress in their investigation of Tehran’s nuclear activities for months, although Iran promised some renewed cooperation with the agency in late November.

Uranium Enrichment Continues

The report indicates that Iran is moving forward with its gas centrifuge-based uranium-enrichment program. Gas centrifuges enrich uranium by spinning uranium hexafluoride gas at very high speeds in order to increase the concentration of the uranium-235 isotope. They can produce low-enriched uranium (LEU), which can be used in nuclear reactors, and highly enriched uranium (HEU), which can be used in certain types of nuclear reactors and as fissile material in nuclear weapons.

ElBaradei confirmed that Iran has been testing centrifuges in its pilot uranium-enrichment facility with uranium hexafluoride “during intermittent periods,” although they have mostly been operated without nuclear material.

And finally I came across this detailed article and analysis in Haaretz by Yossi Melman but have no idea how accurate the reporting is:

About a week ago, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) completed a routine visit to nuclear sites in Iran. They were surprised to discover that in the city of Natanz no real work has been accomplished in several months. In Natanz, approximately 400 kilometers from Tehran, Iran is building a large plant to enrich uranium, an important step on its way to mastering nuclear technology and producing nuclear weapons.

In all scenarios dealing with the possibility of Israel attacking Iran's nuclear sites, the Natanz plant plays a central role. The site has two plants: One is the pilot and is supposed to operate some 3,000 uranium gas-powered centrifuges. The second, much larger installation, is intended in the future to absorb and operate up to 60,000 centrifuges. It will not be easy to strike at these installations, which were built deep underground and are protected from bombs by reinforced concrete up to 20 meters thick and anti-aircraft defense systems, including state-of-the-art Russian-made missiles.

(snip)

Iran is conducting inspections and tests at the experimental facility to test the centrifuges' operation. These are sensitive and complex processes technologically speaking: The centrifuges must be fed uranium after it has undergone a chemical process of conversion from ore (yellow cake) to gas, a process that is completed at another facility (located in Isfahan). The gas is placed in a centrifuge and it is operated. The experiment is meant to ascertain, among other things, whether the centrifuge blades are functioning properly.

How can a chain of centrifuges be connected in a single system called a cascade (each cascade has 164 centrifuges)? How do several cascades connected to each other function simultaneously and continuously and for how long? What is the quality of the uranium they enrich? What malfunctions occur during the operating process? All of these are important questions that only trials conducted at nuclear installations can provide answers to. Only then will it be possible to know if and when Iran will succeed in mastering nuclear technology processes and turn into a nuclear power.

All three articles contain more information so give them a read if you have the time.

There are different ways to interpret some of the above information, depending how accurate any particular part of it is. Here's a problem to ponder: Bush and Cheney have a poor record of performance and have no credibility when it comes to their word. Is it possible to trust their decisions on such complex issues?

Growing Need for Diplomacy in Middle East

It appears that Bush is going forward with his phony troop surge. I say phony because we have had troop increases several times in almost four years now. I say phony because the British do not appear to be joining us in a troop surge and their numbers are far below what they once were. I say phony because this is not about Bush having a solution but only two things: more publicity designed to turn public opinion around and a cynical attempt to fumble Iraq into the hands of the next president. A troop surge also buys Bush more time to drag us into another war, this one possibly with Iran.

There are consequences to Bush's incompetence. The failure to engage in negotiations in the Middle East has not only led to a major drift in our foreign policy but we are now faced with the unthinkable from those who aren't any better than our president in clear thinking; Truthout carries the story from The Sunday Times:

Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.

Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear "bunker-busters", according to several Israeli military sources.

The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.

Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open "tunnels" into the targets. "Mini-nukes" would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.

"As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished," said one of the sources.

Breaking the nuclear taboo of the last sixty-one years for the sake of a preemptive strike is a bad idea. It does not matter if Israel does it or the United States does it. In either case, it will further damage our foreign policy and our reputation as the leader of the free world.

The Israelis are clearly doing their best to influence our foreign policy. Apparently the Saudis are pretty much doing the same thing. It is proper for the Israelis and Saudis to express their concerns but the Bush Administration has things backwards if we decide to follow their lead instead of leading ourselves. The many blunders of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld require that we repair our foreign policy before we dig a hole so deep we will regret it for decades to come. On all sides, the dead in Iraq have many angry cousins. It will do no good to behave like a colonial power and create more angry cousins in Iraq as well as Iran. It is time for talk.

North Korea's Nuclear Dud

I'm always amazed at how much contemporary news one can find in Scientific American. In the late 1970s, I used a Scientific American article on the economic and military strength of the world's nations to identify four countries I thought the Soviet Union might invade partly because of its growing militarism at the time and partly because of its strangely conservative habit of nibbling at countries around its border. Afghanistan was at the top of that list. I was no hawk at the time; it was just a matter of reading clues in the public literature.

North Korea's strange performance last July 4th when it launched a series of missiles that didn't function well was a sign that their technological prowess was not what the Bush Administration said it was (no surprise after their exaggeration of Iraq's threat to the United States). When North Korea's nuclear explosion this fall showed signs of a being a fizzle, I was suspicious that the Bush Administration was trying to claim a much more serious situation (there was one report, as an example, that maybe North Korea detonated a suitcase bomb). It takes time to evaluate these things and given the seriousness of these things you have to avoid a rush to judgment—that includes the Bush Administration as well as its critics. And for all we know, North Korea may solve its technical problems in the next year or two.

Evaluating the Bush Administration's ability to judge threats is important. Here's a Scientific American article that sheds some light on the North Korea fizzle:

Soon after the news broke that North Korea claimed to have conducted a nuclear test, experts realized that the blast had been much smaller than is usual for a first device. Nuclear explosions are measured in kilotons, an energy release equivalent to that of thousands of tons of TNT. Most countries' first tests range from five to 25 kilotons. For example, the U.S.'s 1945 "Trinity" test had a yield of about 20 kilotons. Yet estimates of the North Korean test clustered around half a kiloton. Reportedly, North Korean officials had told China to expect a blast of four kilotons.

(snip)

Clearly, then, the North Koreans produced some kind of a nuclear damp squib. What could have gone wrong depends on the nuclear fuel used. Apparently, the device relied on plutonium (like Trinity and the Nagasaki bomb) and not uranium (like Hiroshima), a conclusion that is supported by the nature of the air samples, according to U.S. officials. Indeed, North Korea has ample quantities of plutonium, but outside that country no one knows its progress in enriching significant quantities of uranium to weapons-grade levels.

Plutonium weapons have several ways of misfiring. The first depends on the triggering of the plutonium by an implosion process. The implosion must be extremely symmetrical to be fully successful. Typically a combination of fast and slow conventional explosives surrounds a sphere of plutonium (the "core" or "pit"). Engineers must carefully machine all the pieces that make up this explosive shell into shapes that, when detonated simultaneously, produce a precisely spherical shock wave that compresses the plutonium to two to five times its normal density (the more compression, the greater the explosive yield). At the higher density, what was a subcritical mass of plutonium becomes supercritical--that is, one in which a sustained chain reaction takes place, producing the blast.

If the shock wave fails to be completely symmetrical--for example, if a detonator goes off 100 nanoseconds later than the rest--the compression will be less efficient because the core will tend to squirt out in the directions where the shock wave is weaker or arrives late. ... ...

The article is properly cautious about what it all means but I would note that Kim Jong Il was rather contrite towards the Chinese within a week of the test. That strongly suggests that indeed things did not go well.

How Big Was the North Korean Bomb?

There are a number of different types of nuclear bombs but the two that are of interest for those nations entering or thinking of entering the nuclear club are the basic uranium bomb and the basic plutonium bomb.

The problem with uranium is that it takes a great deal of time and technology to enrich uranium (or isolate the isotope U-235); but once the uranium is acquired, the device for setting off a nuclear explosion is a relatively simple cannon closed at both ends. Plutonium is created in atomic reactors and once a sufficient amount is created, it is relatively easy to isolate chemically from other materials (assuming that precautions against radiation are taken). North Korea has a stockpile of plutonium but not, as far as I've read, stockpiles of enriched uranium. If a device was detonated, it's assumed to be a plutonium-type bomb.

The problem with plutonium is that the bomb device itself is a great deal more complicated than the one for uranium and requires precision machining, explosive packing, high quality switches that all combine to create an implosion (an inward-directed explosion). A mistake anywhere can result in a) a lethal radiation for those putting the bomb together, b) an outright dud, or c) a small misfired explosion.

It's not clear what happened in North Korea but we're hearing reports that it was a 1-kiloton explosion, far less than the first plutonium bomb set off by the United States in 1945 in New Mexico. A small misfired explosion is considered a likely explanation.

Jeremy Manier of the Chicago Tribune has a useful article that explains some of the possibilities and issues around the North Korean test:

When North Korea detonated what it said was a nuclear device Monday, the blast set off seismic sensors as far away as Wyoming and Norway and sparked a round of urgent study by scientists around the world.

But determining just what caused the seismic spike is such a delicate art that after five days of intense work, analysts still cannot say for sure whether the test was a success or a dud—and there is a remote possibility the blast was not nuclear.

The job requires analysis of data drawn from hundreds of monitoring stations worldwide, including seismic monitors so sensitive that they can detect rumblings from mine cave-ins halfway around the world. Getting an accurate read on the bomb's power is complicated by the fact that some forms of seismic waves are detectable only at a great distance.

One seismic clue the scientists may look for is whether the bomb caused its underground cavern to collapse. That could be one sign of a significant nuclear blast, said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

Monitors are also watching air samplers that can pick out radioactive particles or gases released by a nuclear blast, though those devices are subject to the whims of the winds over North Korea.

France's defense minister has called North Korea's bomb a dud—a "failed explosion"—but other analysts said that conclusion is premature. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that U.S. intelligence officials had "not yet determined ... what exactly they tested."

There have been false alarms in the past about nuclear tests so I appreciate that the experts are taking their time. Then again, if France says the test was a dud, we have to wonder why they reached such a conclusion so quickly while US experts are still taking their time.

In the end, the real issue remains the failure of the Bush Administration to talk to our enemies, an obvious diplomatic strategy that has been productive since the end of World War Two. When the leader of the free world refuses to negotiate or even hold discussions with our enemies, it is equivalent to refusing to show up for work. There is a reason President John Kennedy installed the red phone.

Juan Cole Comments on Sy Hersh Article

Middle East expert Juan Cole of Informed Comment has some thoughts on the Sy Hersh article in the current New Yorker:

Seymour Hersh says that sources knowledgeable about Israeli and Bush administration planning maintain that the Israelis laid out last spring in Washington and gained administration support for a plan for a bombing campaign against Hizbullah in Lebanon based on the Kosovo campaign. Moreover, the exercise was intended as a demonstration project and a preparation for a Bush administration war on Iran. The campaign against Hezbollah would have two major benefits. It would remove Hezbollah's rocket capability, which was a form of deterrence against Israeli or American bombing of Iran. And, what Israel learned from attacking Hezbollah would be useful in formulating tactics in the American assault on Iran.

Let me say this loud and clear, drawing on Pat Lang. Any US attack on Iran could well lead to the US and British troops in Iraq being cut off from fuel and massacred by enraged Shiites. Shiite irregulars could easily engage in pipeline and fuel convoy sabotage of the sort deployed by the Sunni guerrillas in the north. Without fuel, US troops would be sitting ducks for rocket and mortar attacks that US air power could not hope completely to stop (as the experience of Israel with Hizbullah in Lebanon demonstrates). A pan-Islamic alliance of furious Shiites and Sunni guerrillas might well be the result, spelling the decisive end of Americastan in Iraq. Shiite Iraqis are already at the boiling point over Israel's assault on their coreligionists in Lebanon. An attack on Iran could well push them over the edge. People like Cheney and Bush don't understand people's movements or how they can win. They don't understand the Islamic revolution in Iran of 1978-79. They don't understand that they are playing George III in the eyes of most Middle Eastern Muslims, and that lots of people want to play George Washington.

The only disagreement I have with Cole's analysis of a major Shiite upheaval in Iraq is that the American military would probably be able to extricate itself, possibly with serious losses, from such an upheavel, but that's the point: our military would be forced to extricate itself and withdraw back somewhere where it had supplies, possibly back to Kuwait. With the possible exception of the Kurdish areas, it would be the end of American presence in Iraq.

Cole goes on to say:

As for the Israelis, the Kosovo analogy is plausible, since Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has instanced Kosovo as justification for his actions. The irony is that the Israelis misunderstood Kosovo. Hizbullah is like the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), not like Milosevic's Serbs. If Wesley Clarke had bombed the KLA, the Kosovo war would have failed completely. More ironically, in its decision to expel the Shiite population from the area of Lebanon south of the Litani river, and to make nearly 1 million Lebanese homeless, the Israelis acted more like Milosevic himself than like NATO.

Bombing campaigns rarely do much by themselves. The real key is that Milosevic was thoroughly isolated in the international community; even Russia, though it threatened a UN veto, largely stood on the sidelines. In the Hersh article, Wesley Clark also pointed out that the threat of ground troops was quite real.

The conventional bombing of Japan in the last months of World War II (exempting Hiroshima and Nagasaki) is sometimes used as an example of a successful bombing campaign (the argument ignores present conditions and of course, we can argue about 'success' on several levels). But using Japan as an example of a successful bombing campaign can be highly misleading. Japan's real problem late in the war was simply that the American navy had cut off Japan's fuel supplies. In fact, Japan wasn't getting much of anything in the way of imports. Japan had ships and planes but very little fuel with which to operate them and thus little chance to defend themselves. There's a lesson in this but not the one Bush and Cheney want to hear. The irony of a bombing campaign against Iran is that we're likely to damage the fuel supply for the world's economy not to mention our own. Talk of such bombing completely ignores the strategic situation.