Welcome to the WWII Forums! Log in or Sign up to interact with the community.

Log in or Sign up

North Korea detonates Nuke

Discussion in 'Non-World War 2 History' started by smeghead phpbb3, Oct 9, 2006.

Page 6 of 7

majorwoody10 New Member

Joined:

Sep 20, 2005

Messages:

1,898

Likes Received:

1

Location:

ca.usa

via TanksinWW2

an intruder alert especially during the cmc should generate a scramble of utmost haste ,i should think ..a test is something different..i would hope we didnt test fire an icbm during the cmc...

majorwoody10, Nov 10, 2006

#101
TISO New Member

Joined:

Feb 22, 2005

Messages:

1,231

Likes Received:

1

Location:

A wierd blue planet

via TanksinWW2

i would hope we didnt test fire an icbm during the cmc...
Click to expand...

Yep you did. I guess someone was scked for that one.

per Patria et Gloria

TISO, Nov 11, 2006

#102
majorwoody10 New Member

Joined:

Sep 20, 2005

Messages:

1,898

Likes Received:

1

Location:

ca.usa

via TanksinWW2

where? when was the launch ,tiso...who knows, mabey it was not an oversite....sabre rattleing? does seem a bit foolhardy tho if intentioal

majorwoody10, Nov 11, 2006

#103
TISO New Member

Joined:

Feb 22, 2005

Messages:

1,231

Likes Received:

1

Location:

A wierd blue planet

via TanksinWW2

Link provided by Smedghead in Suez topic:
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/ke...dents/20-mishaps-maybe-caused-nuclear-war.htm

7) October 26, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: ICBM Test Launch

At Vandenburg Air Force Base, California, there was a program of routine ICBM test flights. When DEFCON 3 was ordered all the ICBM's were fitted with nuclear warheads except one Titan missile that was scheduled for a test launch later that week. That one was launched for its test, without further orders from Washington, at 4a.m. on the 26th.

It must be assumed that Russian observers were monitoring U.S. missile activities as closely as U.S. observers were monitoring Russian and Cuban activities. They would have known of the general changeover to nuclear warheads, but not that this was only a test launch.

8) October 26, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: Unannounced Titan Missile Launch

During the Cuba crisis, some radar warning stations that were under construction and near completion were brought into full operation as fast as possible. The planned overlap of coverage was thus not always available.

A normal test launch of a Titan-II ICBM took place in the afternoon of October 26, from Florida to the South Pacific. It caused temporary concern at Moorestown Radar site until its course could be plotted and showed no predicted impact within the United States. It was not until after this event that the potential for a serious false alarm was realized, and orders were given that radar warning sites must be notified in advance of test launches, and the countdown be relayed to them.

9) October 26, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: Malstrom Air Force Base

When DEFCON 2 was declared on October 24, solid fuel Minuteman-1 missiles at Malmstrom Air Force Base were being prepared for full deployment. The work was accelerated to ready the missiles for operation, without waiting for the normal handover procedures and safety checks. When one silo and missile were ready on October 26 no armed guards were available to cover transport from the normal separate storage, so the launch enabling equipment and codes were all placed in the silo. It was thus physically possible for a single operator to launch a fully armed missile at a SIOP target.

During the remaining period of the Crisis the several missiles at Malstrom were repeatedly put on and off alert as errors and defects were found and corrected. Fortunately no combination of errors caused or threatened an unauthorized launch, but in the extreme tension of the period the danger can be well imagined.
Click to expand...

per Patria et Gloria

TISO, Nov 12, 2006

#104
majorwoody10 New Member

Joined:

Sep 20, 2005

Messages:

1,898

Likes Received:

1

Location:

ca.usa

via TanksinWW2

thanks tiso ...its good to see that we had everything well under control....[/u]

majorwoody10, Nov 12, 2006

#105
TISO New Member

Joined:

Feb 22, 2005

Messages:

1,231

Likes Received:

1

Location:

A wierd blue planet

via TanksinWW2

This is rich:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/w...1172751116-JXSls6Z0SbfY+584PlqtDQ&oref=slogin

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 — Last October, the North Koreans tested their first nuclear device, the fruition of decades of work to make a weapon out of plutonium.

For nearly five years, though, the Bush administration, based on intelligence estimates, has accused North Korea of also pursuing a secret, parallel path to a bomb, using enriched uranium. That accusation, first leveled in the fall of 2002, resulted in the rupture of an already tense relationship: The United States cut off oil supplies, and the North Koreans responded by throwing out international inspectors, building up their plutonium arsenal and, ultimately, producing that first plutonium bomb.

But now, American intelligence officials are publicly softening their position, admitting to doubts about how much progress the uranium enrichment program has actually made. The result has been new questions about the Bush administration’s decision to confront North Korea in 2002.

“The question now is whether we would be in the position of having to get the North Koreans to give up a sizable arsenal if this had been handled differently,” a senior administration official said this week.

The disclosure underscores broader questions about the ability of intelligence agencies to discern the precise status of foreign weapons programs. The original assessment about North Korea came during the same period that the administration was building its case about Iraq’s unconventional weapons programs, which turned out to be based on flawed intelligence. And the new North Korea assessment comes amid debate over intelligence about Iran’s weapons.

The public revelation of the intelligence agencies’ doubts, which have been brewing for some time, came almost by happenstance. In a little-noticed exchange on Tuesday at a hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Joseph DeTrani, a longtime intelligence official, told Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island that “we still have confidence that the program is in existence — at the mid-confidence level.” Under the intelligence agencies’ own definitions, that level “means the information is interpreted in various ways, we have alternative views” or it is not fully corroborated.

“The administration appears to have made a very costly decision that has resulted in a fourfold increase in the nuclear weapons of North Korea,” Senator Reed said in an interview on Wednesday. “If that was based in part on mixing up North Korea’s ambitions with their accomplishments, it’s important.”

Two administration officials, who declined to be identified, suggested that if the administration harbored the same doubts in 2002 that it harbored now, the negotiating strategy for dealing with North Korea might have been different — and the tit-for-tat actions that led to October’s nuclear test could, conceivably, have been avoided.

The strongest evidence for the original assessment was Pakistan’s sale to North Korea of upwards of 20 centrifuges, machines that spin fast to convert uranium gas into highly enriched uranium, a main fuel for atom bombs. Officials feared that the North Koreans would use those centrifuges as models to build a vast enrichment complex. But in interviews this week, experts inside and outside the government said that since then, little or no evidence of Korean procurements had emerged to back up those fears.

The continuing doubts prompted the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Wednesday to declassify a portion of the most recent, one-page update circulated to top national security officials about the status of North Korea’s uranium program. The assessment, read by two senior intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity in a joint interview, said the intelligence community still had “high confidence that North Korea has pursued a uranium enrichment capability, which we assess is for a weapon.”

It added, they said, that all the government’s intelligence agencies “judge — most with moderate confidence — that this effort continues. The degree of progress towards producing enriched uranium remains unknown, however.”

In other words, while the agencies were certain of the initial purchases, confidence in the program’s overall existence appears to have dropped over the years — apparently from high to moderate.

It is unclear why the new assessment is being disclosed now. But some officials suggested that the timing could be linked to North Korea’s recent agreement to reopen its doors to international arms inspectors. As a result, these officials have said, the intelligence agencies are facing the possibility that their assessments will once again be compared to what is actually found on the ground. “This may be preventative,” one American diplomat said.

American intelligence agencies had long known of North Korea’s nuclear program employing plutonium, which can make compact weapons but requires large, easily detected reactors. By contrast, uranium warheads tend to be larger, but the technology for enriching uranium is much smaller and easier to hide.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, declined to discuss the decisions to confront North Korea in 2002 or the quality of the intelligence behind that decision, though both have noted previously that North Korea purchased equipment from Pakistan that could only have been intended for use in producing weapons fuel. One former official said that it was Ms. Rice, in a meeting at the C.I.A. in 2004, who encouraged intelligence officials to soften their assessments of how quickly the North Koreans could produce weapons-usable uranium.

“She asked, how did we know about the timing, and they didn’t have answers,” said the former official. “Did they have Russians and Chinese helping them? No one was sure. It was really a guesstimate about timing.”

Different players in the 2002 debate have different memories. John R. Bolton, the former American ambassador to the United Nations, who headed the State Department’s proliferation office at the time of the 2002 declaration, said in an interview on Wednesday evening that “there was no dissent at the time, because in the face of the evidence the disputes evaporated.” Mr. Bolton, one of the most hawkish voices in the administration and a vocal critic of its recent deal with North Korea, recalled that even the State Department’s own intelligence arm, which was the most skeptical of the Iraq evidence, “agreed with the consensus opinion.”

But David A. Kay, a nuclear expert and former official who in 2003 and 2004 led the American hunt for unconventional arms in Iraq, said he had found the administration’s claims about the North Korean uranium program unpersuasive. “They were driving it way further than the evidence indicated it should go,” he said in an interview. The leap of logic, Dr. Kay added, turned evidence of equipment purchases into “a significant production capability.”

But the doubts were on full display on Wednesday, when Christopher R. Hill, the chief American negotiator with North Korea, testified on Capitol Hill. “If we determine that there is a program, it’s got to go,” Mr. Hill said, words that were far more tentative than American policy makers have used about the program in the past. Expressing his resolve to get to the bottom of the mystery, he added: “We cannot have a situation where we — you know, they pretend to disarm and we pretend to believe them. We need to run this into the ground.” He said that while there was no doubt that North Korea had bought centrifuges from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue Pakistani engineer, there was doubt about “how far they’ve gotten.”

John E. McLaughlin, a former director of central intelligence and the deputy C.I.A. director in 2002, defended the initial North Korean findings as accurate. “At the time we reported this, we had confidence that they were acquiring materials that could give them the capability to do this down the road,” he said in an interview. But no one, he added, “said they had anything up and running. We also made clear that we did not have a confident understanding of how far along they were.”

That confidence has dropped further because inspectors have been banned from North Korea for four years, nearly as long as they were out of Iraq before their readmittance just before the 2003 invasion. In Iraq’s case, intelligence analysts extrapolated from the last information they had to assess what kind of weapons Iraq might be producing.

Outside experts, including David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear arms, have suggested in recent days that something similar happened in North Korea’s case. “The evidence doesn’t support the extrapolation” to the judgment that North Korea was making crucial strides in its uranium program, Mr. Albright said in an interview. “The extrapolation went too far.”

He said administration analysts were right in thinking that Dr. Khan had sold North Korea about 20 centrifuges. Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, confirmed that in a memoir published last year. But, Mr. Albright said, intelligence agencies overstated whether North Korea had used those few machines as models to construct row upon row of carbon copies.

His report zeroed in on thousands of aluminum tubes that the North Koreans bought and tried to buy in the early 2000s. The C.I.A. and the Bush administration, the report said, pointed to these tubes as the “smoking gun” for construction of a large-scale North Korean plant for the enriching of uranium. It was assessments about the purpose of aluminum tubes that were at the center of the flawed Iraq intelligence.

In the North Korea case, intelligence analysts saw the tubes as ideal for centrifuges. But Mr. Albright said the relatively weak aluminum tubes were suitable only for stationary outer casings — not central rotors, which have to be very strong to keep from flying apart while spinning at tremendous speeds.

Moreover, he added, the aluminum tubes were “very easy to get and not controlled” by global export authorities because of their potentially harmless nature. So that purchase, by itself, Mr. Albright added, was “not an indicator” of clandestine use for nuclear arms.
Click to expand...

per Patria et Gloria

TISO, Mar 2, 2007

#106
Grieg New Member

Joined:

Feb 25, 2005

Messages:

2,625

Likes Received:

1

via TanksinWW2

TISO said:

Link provided by Smedghead in Suez topic:
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/ke...dents/20-mishaps-maybe-caused-nuclear-war.htm

7) October 26, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: ICBM Test Launch

At Vandenburg Air Force Base, California, there was a program of routine ICBM test flights. When DEFCON 3 was ordered all the ICBM's were fitted with nuclear warheads except one Titan missile that was scheduled for a test launch later that week. That one was launched for its test, without further orders from Washington, at 4a.m. on the 26th.

It must be assumed that Russian observers were monitoring U.S. missile activities as closely as U.S. observers were monitoring Russian and Cuban activities. They would have known of the general changeover to nuclear warheads, but not that this was only a test launch.

8) October 26, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: Unannounced Titan Missile Launch

During the Cuba crisis, some radar warning stations that were under construction and near completion were brought into full operation as fast as possible. The planned overlap of coverage was thus not always available.

A normal test launch of a Titan-II ICBM took place in the afternoon of October 26, from Florida to the South Pacific. It caused temporary concern at Moorestown Radar site until its course could be plotted and showed no predicted impact within the United States. It was not until after this event that the potential for a serious false alarm was realized, and orders were given that radar warning sites must be notified in advance of test launches, and the countdown be relayed to them.

9) October 26, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: Malstrom Air Force Base

When DEFCON 2 was declared on October 24, solid fuel Minuteman-1 missiles at Malmstrom Air Force Base were being prepared for full deployment. The work was accelerated to ready the missiles for operation, without waiting for the normal handover procedures and safety checks. When one silo and missile were ready on October 26 no armed guards were available to cover transport from the normal separate storage, so the launch enabling equipment and codes were all placed in the silo. It was thus physically possible for a single operator to launch a fully armed missile at a SIOP target.

During the remaining period of the Crisis the several missiles at Malstrom were repeatedly put on and off alert as errors and defects were found and corrected. Fortunately no combination of errors caused or threatened an unauthorized launch, but in the extreme tension of the period the danger can be well imagined.
Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Not nearly as dramatic if one is aware that neither the US nor the Soviets had a "launch on warning" policy. The test launch might have caused some grey hairs in the Kremlin but they weren't going to launch based on the launch of a single US missile. As far as we know both countries had planned to absorb a first strike and then launch a retaliatory strike.
Movies always got this wrong but then the films would have lost a lot of their drama.

Grieg, Mar 2, 2007

#107
Grieg New Member

Joined:

Feb 25, 2005

Messages:

2,625

Likes Received:

1

via TanksinWW2

TISO said:

This is rich:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/w...1172751116-JXSls6Z0SbfY+584PlqtDQ&oref=slogin

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 — Last October, the North Koreans tested their first nuclear device, the fruition of decades of work to make a weapon out of plutonium.

For nearly five years, though, the Bush administration, based on intelligence estimates, has accused North Korea of also pursuing a secret, parallel path to a bomb, using enriched uranium. That accusation, first leveled in the fall of 2002, resulted in the rupture of an already tense relationship: The United States cut off oil supplies, and the North Koreans responded by throwing out international inspectors, building up their plutonium arsenal and, ultimately, producing that first plutonium bomb.

But now, American intelligence officials are publicly softening their position, admitting to doubts about how much progress the uranium enrichment program has actually made. The result has been new questions about the Bush administration’s decision to confront North Korea in 2002.

“The question now is whether we would be in the position of having to get the North Koreans to give up a sizable arsenal if this had been handled differently,” a senior administration official said this week.

The disclosure underscores broader questions about the ability of intelligence agencies to discern the precise status of foreign weapons programs. The original assessment about North Korea came during the same period that the administration was building its case about Iraq’s unconventional weapons programs, which turned out to be based on flawed intelligence. And the new North Korea assessment comes amid debate over intelligence about Iran’s weapons.

The public revelation of the intelligence agencies’ doubts, which have been brewing for some time, came almost by happenstance. In a little-noticed exchange on Tuesday at a hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Joseph DeTrani, a longtime intelligence official, told Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island that “we still have confidence that the program is in existence — at the mid-confidence level.” Under the intelligence agencies’ own definitions, that level “means the information is interpreted in various ways, we have alternative views” or it is not fully corroborated.

“The administration appears to have made a very costly decision that has resulted in a fourfold increase in the nuclear weapons of North Korea,” Senator Reed said in an interview on Wednesday. “If that was based in part on mixing up North Korea’s ambitions with their accomplishments, it’s important.”

Two administration officials, who declined to be identified, suggested that if the administration harbored the same doubts in 2002 that it harbored now, the negotiating strategy for dealing with North Korea might have been different — and the tit-for-tat actions that led to October’s nuclear test could, conceivably, have been avoided.

The strongest evidence for the original assessment was Pakistan’s sale to North Korea of upwards of 20 centrifuges, machines that spin fast to convert uranium gas into highly enriched uranium, a main fuel for atom bombs. Officials feared that the North Koreans would use those centrifuges as models to build a vast enrichment complex. But in interviews this week, experts inside and outside the government said that since then, little or no evidence of Korean procurements had emerged to back up those fears.

The continuing doubts prompted the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Wednesday to declassify a portion of the most recent, one-page update circulated to top national security officials about the status of North Korea’s uranium program. The assessment, read by two senior intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity in a joint interview, said the intelligence community still had “high confidence that North Korea has pursued a uranium enrichment capability, which we assess is for a weapon.”

It added, they said, that all the government’s intelligence agencies “judge — most with moderate confidence — that this effort continues. The degree of progress towards producing enriched uranium remains unknown, however.”

In other words, while the agencies were certain of the initial purchases, confidence in the program’s overall existence appears to have dropped over the years — apparently from high to moderate.

It is unclear why the new assessment is being disclosed now. But some officials suggested that the timing could be linked to North Korea’s recent agreement to reopen its doors to international arms inspectors. As a result, these officials have said, the intelligence agencies are facing the possibility that their assessments will once again be compared to what is actually found on the ground. “This may be preventative,” one American diplomat said.

American intelligence agencies had long known of North Korea’s nuclear program employing plutonium, which can make compact weapons but requires large, easily detected reactors. By contrast, uranium warheads tend to be larger, but the technology for enriching uranium is much smaller and easier to hide.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, declined to discuss the decisions to confront North Korea in 2002 or the quality of the intelligence behind that decision, though both have noted previously that North Korea purchased equipment from Pakistan that could only have been intended for use in producing weapons fuel. One former official said that it was Ms. Rice, in a meeting at the C.I.A. in 2004, who encouraged intelligence officials to soften their assessments of how quickly the North Koreans could produce weapons-usable uranium.

“She asked, how did we know about the timing, and they didn’t have answers,” said the former official. “Did they have Russians and Chinese helping them? No one was sure. It was really a guesstimate about timing.”

Different players in the 2002 debate have different memories. John R. Bolton, the former American ambassador to the United Nations, who headed the State Department’s proliferation office at the time of the 2002 declaration, said in an interview on Wednesday evening that “there was no dissent at the time, because in the face of the evidence the disputes evaporated.” Mr. Bolton, one of the most hawkish voices in the administration and a vocal critic of its recent deal with North Korea, recalled that even the State Department’s own intelligence arm, which was the most skeptical of the Iraq evidence, “agreed with the consensus opinion.”

But David A. Kay, a nuclear expert and former official who in 2003 and 2004 led the American hunt for unconventional arms in Iraq, said he had found the administration’s claims about the North Korean uranium program unpersuasive. “They were driving it way further than the evidence indicated it should go,” he said in an interview. The leap of logic, Dr. Kay added, turned evidence of equipment purchases into “a significant production capability.”

But the doubts were on full display on Wednesday, when Christopher R. Hill, the chief American negotiator with North Korea, testified on Capitol Hill. “If we determine that there is a program, it’s got to go,” Mr. Hill said, words that were far more tentative than American policy makers have used about the program in the past. Expressing his resolve to get to the bottom of the mystery, he added: “We cannot have a situation where we — you know, they pretend to disarm and we pretend to believe them. We need to run this into the ground.” He said that while there was no doubt that North Korea had bought centrifuges from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue Pakistani engineer, there was doubt about “how far they’ve gotten.”

John E. McLaughlin, a former director of central intelligence and the deputy C.I.A. director in 2002, defended the initial North Korean findings as accurate. “At the time we reported this, we had confidence that they were acquiring materials that could give them the capability to do this down the road,” he said in an interview. But no one, he added, “said they had anything up and running. We also made clear that we did not have a confident understanding of how far along they were.”

That confidence has dropped further because inspectors have been banned from North Korea for four years, nearly as long as they were out of Iraq before their readmittance just before the 2003 invasion. In Iraq’s case, intelligence analysts extrapolated from the last information they had to assess what kind of weapons Iraq might be producing.

Outside experts, including David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear arms, have suggested in recent days that something similar happened in North Korea’s case. “The evidence doesn’t support the extrapolation” to the judgment that North Korea was making crucial strides in its uranium program, Mr. Albright said in an interview. “The extrapolation went too far.”

He said administration analysts were right in thinking that Dr. Khan had sold North Korea about 20 centrifuges. Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, confirmed that in a memoir published last year. But, Mr. Albright said, intelligence agencies overstated whether North Korea had used those few machines as models to construct row upon row of carbon copies.

His report zeroed in on thousands of aluminum tubes that the North Koreans bought and tried to buy in the early 2000s. The C.I.A. and the Bush administration, the report said, pointed to these tubes as the “smoking gun” for construction of a large-scale North Korean plant for the enriching of uranium. It was assessments about the purpose of aluminum tubes that were at the center of the flawed Iraq intelligence.

In the North Korea case, intelligence analysts saw the tubes as ideal for centrifuges. But Mr. Albright said the relatively weak aluminum tubes were suitable only for stationary outer casings — not central rotors, which have to be very strong to keep from flying apart while spinning at tremendous speeds.

Moreover, he added, the aluminum tubes were “very easy to get and not controlled” by global export authorities because of their potentially harmless nature. So that purchase, by itself, Mr. Albright added, was “not an indicator” of clandestine use for nuclear arms.
Click to expand...

Click to expand...

You quote American partisan political sources so often one could conclude that you were a card carrying member of the Democratic Party. Of course we know better, it's just convenient to allow others to assist you in your Bush bashing

Grieg, Mar 2, 2007

#108
TISO New Member

Joined:

Feb 22, 2005

Messages:

1,231

Likes Received:

1

Location:

A wierd blue planet

via TanksinWW2

You quote American partisan political sources so often one could conclude that you were a card carrying member of the Democratic Party. Of course we know better, it's just convenient to allow others to assist you in your Bush bashing
Click to expand...

I would quite like to quote the other side (like Fox NC) but it seems that the other side just doesn't report about such glitches in US policies. Wonder why?

Basicly what is interesting is this:

But the doubts were on full display on Wednesday, when Christopher R. Hill, the chief American negotiator with North Korea, testified on Capitol Hill. “If we determine that there is a program, it’s got to go,” Mr. Hill said, words that were far more tentative than American policy makers have used about the program in the past. Expressing his resolve to get to the bottom of the mystery, he added: “We cannot have a situation where we — you know, they pretend to disarm and we pretend to believe them. We need to run this into the ground.” He said that while there was no doubt that North Korea had bought centrifuges from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue Pakistani engineer, there was doubt about “how far they’ve gotten.”
Click to expand...

Where are those confirmed reports of N.Koreans having extensive uranium enrichment program which was the couse of scraping 1994 USA-N.Korea agreeament? Basicly now situation is the same as after 1994 agreamen except a little thing of N.Korea possesing few plutonium nuclear bombs. Very succesfull foreign policy by US i must say And all for what, a bunch of unconfirmed reports pushed forward by hawks like Bolton, Wolfowitz....

per Patria et Gloria

TISO, Mar 2, 2007

#109
Grieg New Member

Joined:

Feb 25, 2005

Messages:

2,625

Likes Received:

1

via TanksinWW2

TISO said:

You quote American partisan political sources so often one could conclude that you were a card carrying member of the Democratic Party. Of course we know better, it's just convenient to allow others to assist you in your Bush bashing
Click to expand...

I would quite like to quote the other side (like Fox NC) but it seems that the other side just doesn't report about such glitches in US policies. Wonder why?

Basicly what is interesting is this:

But the doubts were on full display on Wednesday, when Christopher R. Hill, the chief American negotiator with North Korea, testified on Capitol Hill. “If we determine that there is a program, it’s got to go,” Mr. Hill said, words that were far more tentative than American policy makers have used about the program in the past. Expressing his resolve to get to the bottom of the mystery, he added: “We cannot have a situation where we — you know, they pretend to disarm and we pretend to believe them. We need to run this into the ground.” He said that while there was no doubt that North Korea had bought centrifuges from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue Pakistani engineer, there was doubt about “how far they’ve gotten.”
Click to expand...

Where are those confirmed reports of N.Koreans having extensive uranium enrichment program which was the couse of scraping 1994 USA-N.Korea agreeament? Basicly now situation is the same as after 1994 agreamen except a little thing of N.Korea possesing few plutonium nuclear bombs. Very succesfull foreign policy by US i must say And all for what, a bunch of unconfirmed reports pushed forward by hawks like Bolton, Wolfowitz....
Click to expand...

Your point isn't clear. They know that NK purchased centrifuges. They don't know how far along they have gotten in enrichment.
So what? It's pretty clear that they are pursuing the development of nukes it's just isn't clear how advanced they are at this point.

Grieg, Mar 2, 2007

#110
TISO New Member

Joined:

Feb 22, 2005

Messages:

1,231

Likes Received:

1

Location:

A wierd blue planet

via TanksinWW2

I belive my point is clear enough.
They bought 20+ centrifuges as part of Pakistani arms purchase (rockets). Right now Iran will according to US start enriching uranium with few hunders centrifuges and it is estimated that they could build their first bomb in 5+ years. So those 20 misely centrifuges don't mean much. BTW anyone knowing anything about state weapons sales in communist world can tell you that sometimes you have to compensate the sale for something you don't realy need (at least that was the norm in cold war days).

As you once quoted amateurs talk about tactics and strategy proffesionals talk about logistics. N.Korea does not have logistical capabilities to guarantie uninterrupted supplies of huge electrical needs of such enterprise (i.e. those few hundred suposed centrifuges spinning 24/7). Their electrical production is based on termo-electrical power plants that doesn't have enough fuel (BTW that's the reason for their oil import), their electrical grid is in shambles (mildly put). That is the reason that they concentrated on plutonuoum in the first place. Their Jong-byon reactor is relatively cheap and simple enterprise (once it was built) comparing to building entire new program for uranium enrichment. Also their plutonim program was in adavanced state in 1994. The bad joke is that they acctualy adhered to 1994 agreament.

per Patria et Gloria

TISO, Mar 2, 2007

#111
Grieg New Member

Joined:

Feb 25, 2005

Messages:

2,625

Likes Received:

1

via TanksinWW2

TISO said:

I belive my point is clear enough.
They bought 20+ centrifuges as part of Pakistani arms purchase (rockets). Right now Iran will according to US start enriching uranium with few hunders centrifuges and it is estimated that they could build their first bomb in 5+ years. So those 20 misely centrifuges don't mean much. BTW anyone knowing anything about state weapons sales in communist world can tell you that sometimes you have to compensate the sale for something you don't realy need (at least that was the norm in communist YU).

As you once quoted amateurs talk about tactics and strategy proffesionals talk about logistics. N.Korea does not have logistical capabilities to guarantie huge electrical needs of such enterprise (i.e. those few hundred centrifuges spinning 24/7). Their electrical production is based on termo-electrical power plants that doesn't have enough fuel (BTW that's the reason for their oil import), their electrical grid is in shambles (mildly put). That is the reason that they concentrated on plutonuoum in the first place. Their Jong-byon reactor is relatively cheap enterprise comparing to building entire new program for uranium enrichment. Also their plutonim program was in adavanced state in 1994. The bad joke is that they acctualy adhered to 1994 agreament.
Click to expand...

Pretend like I'm a bit dim and explicitly state what your point is.
Do you think that NK is not trying to build nuclear weapons?
Do you admit that they are actively pursuing nukes but the US intelligence estimate overestimated how quickly they could achieve that end?
If the estimates were wrong how does that change the fundamental facts? They are still working towards that end, it just may take longer than anticipated.

Grieg, Mar 2, 2007

#112
TISO New Member

Joined:

Feb 22, 2005

Messages:

1,231

Likes Received:

1

Location:

A wierd blue planet

via TanksinWW2

Do you think that NK is not trying to build nuclear weapons?
Click to expand...

Where do you live? Read the name of the topic! THEY NOW HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS!

Do you admit that they are actively pursuing nukes but the US intelligence estimate overestimated how quickly they could achieve that end?
Click to expand...

US (as now you) forgot that in 1994 they had fairly advanced plutonium program with large quantities of plutonium that they under 1994 agreament couldn't touch and that under the agreament both were under the seal and watcfull eye. US scarped 1994 agreament for unverified roumours.

If the estimates were wrong how does that change the fundamental facts? They are still working towards that end, it just may take longer than anticipated.
Click to expand...

Again, they already have the bomb!

Again a little comment :

You quote American partisan political sources so often one could conclude that you were a card carrying member of the Democratic Party. Of course we know better, it's just convenient to allow others to assist you in your Bush bashing
Click to expand...

You don't need to get personal. Reading your posts i came to conclusion that you should not watch only FOX News for getting your info of the world around you.

per Patria et Gloria

TISO, Mar 2, 2007

#113
TISO New Member

Joined:

Feb 22, 2005

Messages:

1,231

Likes Received:

1

Location:

A wierd blue planet

via TanksinWW2

Forgot about this one:

Pretend like I'm a bit dim and explicitly state what your point is.
Click to expand...

Point (stated explecitly so you won't miss it gain):

“If we determine that there is a program, it’s got to go,” Mr. Hill said, words that were far more tentative than American policy makers have used about the program in the past.
Click to expand...

Where are those confirmed reports of N.Koreans having extensive uranium enrichment program which was the couse of scraping 1994 USA-N.Korea agreeament?

per Patria et Gloria

TISO, Mar 2, 2007

#114
Grieg New Member

Joined:

Feb 25, 2005

Messages:

2,625

Likes Received:

1

via TanksinWW2

TISO said:

Do you think that NK is not trying to build nuclear weapons?
Click to expand...

Where do you live? Read the name of the topic! THEY NOW HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS!

Do you admit that they are actively pursuing nukes but the US intelligence estimate overestimated how quickly they could achieve that end?
Click to expand...

US (as now you) forgot that in 1994 they had fairly advanced plutonium program with large quantities of plutonium that they under 1994 agreament couldn't touch and that under the agreament both were under the seal and watcfull eye. US scarped 1994 agreament for unverified roumours.

If the estimates were wrong how does that change the fundamental facts? They are still working towards that end, it just may take longer than anticipated.
Click to expand...

Again, they already have the bomb!

Again a little comment :

You quote American partisan political sources so often one could conclude that you were a card carrying member of the Democratic Party. Of course we know better, it's just convenient to allow others to assist you in your Bush bashing
Click to expand...

You don't need to get personal. Reading your posts i came to conclusion that you should not watch only FOX News for getting your info of the world around you.
Click to expand...

Of course it's pretty clear that they have detonated a nuke already but that could have been a ploy for more concessions with no real intention of acquiring a nuclear arsenal.
What does where I live have to do with this issue?
What I stated regarding your Bush bashing is pretty much an objective fact and not a personal attack. You, of course have no clue what news sources I use but your comments are the one's verging on personal attacks. Note the use of the smiley face when I asked about your Democratic Party affiliation.

Grieg, Mar 2, 2007

#115
Grieg New Member

Joined:

Feb 25, 2005

Messages:

2,625

Likes Received:

1

via TanksinWW2

It's also pretty clear that they were determined to buidl nuclear weapons with or without the 1994 agreement so nothing has really changed except that they have built at least one working device and tested it.

Grieg, Mar 2, 2007

#116
TISO New Member

Joined:

Feb 22, 2005

Messages:

1,231

Likes Received:

1

Location:

A wierd blue planet

via TanksinWW2

Of course it's pretty clear that they have detonated a nuke already but that could have been a ploy for more concessions with no real intention of acquiring a nuclear arsenal.
Click to expand...

Off cours it was ploy to get US to negotiate and to get concessions. otherwise wouldn't detonate it. They already have nuclear arsenal, it is small but it is there.

What does where I live have to do with this issue?
Click to expand...

If you mean this:

US (as now you) forgot that in 1994 they had fairly...
Click to expand...

It deals with faulty memory not where you live
and if you mean this:

Where do you live?
Click to expand...

It is rethorical question as you seem to forget or you are not informed that they already have the bomb (and they tested it) and that it was posted all ower the world.

You, of course have no clue what news sources I use
Click to expand...

Interesting. So you can come to conclusions about me but i can't come to conclusions about you.

but your comments are the one's verging on personal attacks.
Click to expand...

Comments go both ways. If you push you can expect that i will push back

per Patria et Gloria

TISO, Mar 2, 2007

#117
TISO New Member

Joined:

Feb 22, 2005

Messages:

1,231

Likes Received:

1

Location:

A wierd blue planet

via TanksinWW2

It's also pretty clear that they were determined to buidl nuclear weapons with or without the 1994 agreement so nothing has really changed except that they have built at least one working device and tested it.
Click to expand...

They built and tested plutonium device. Their plutonium program was shut down from 1994 to 2002 when US broke 1994 agreament.

per Patria et Gloria

TISO, Mar 2, 2007

#118
Grieg New Member

Joined:

Feb 25, 2005

Messages:

2,625

Likes Received:

1

via TanksinWW2

TISO said:

Of course it's pretty clear that they have detonated a nuke already but that could have been a ploy for more concessions with no real intention of acquiring a nuclear arsenal. Off cours it was ploy to get US to negotiate and to get concessions. otherwise wouldn't detonate it. They already have nuclear arsenal, it is small but it is there.
Click to expand...

Is a ploy for concessions the only reason to test nuclear devices? That hardly seems to have been the motivation for most of the recorded tests throughout history. Usually one is testing to further refine and develop better and more effective devices.

What does where I live have to do with this issue?
Click to expand...

I don't think i ever mentioned it. If you mean this:

US (as now you) forgot that in 1994 they had fairly...
Click to expand...

It deals with faulty memory not where you live
and if you mean this:

Where do you live?
It is rethorical question as you seem to forget or you are not informed that they already have the bomb (and they tested it) and that it was posted all ower the world.
Click to expand...

Your assumption that I wasn't informed that NK had detoneated a nuke is incorrect. Of course I knew that. In fact that was going to be my point if I was able to figure out where you were going with your comments about the use of the centrifuges and the US intelligence estimates. You seemed to be the one that wasn't aware that they had already developed weapons.
Thus the points you were raising seemed moot.

You, of course have no clue what news sources I use
Interesting. So you can come to conclusions about me but i can't come to conclusions about you.
Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Just stating a fact. You don't know what news sources I use. My opinion, given somewhat tonque in cheek, that you might be a Democrat was purely opinion, not fact. And not even meant to be a seriosu opinion since you are not a US citizen and couldn't possibly be a Demo(n)crat.

Grieg, Mar 2, 2007

#119
jeaguer New Member

Joined:

Feb 5, 2006

Messages:

929

Likes Received:

4

Location:

Sydney Australia

via TanksinWW2

.

Hi , on a point of detail ,
one need centrifuges if one's want to enrich the ratio of uranium 235/ 238 from the natural 2.5% to the ~6% needed to fire it in an power station , to make weapon grade stuff the U235 as to be enriched to ~95%
a Very expensive proposition requiring thousand of centifuges working in a tricky cascade ,
the irannians are on the first , legal ,part of this path .

The other path for a bomb is to use plutonium 239
but the stuff one's get from a nuclear power plant is mixed with PU 238 wich need to be reduced
that's the path of the north coreen at the jonbyong plant .
all indications are that they have not succeded in getting the engineering right and their test was a flop ,
however it's only a question of time until they get it right .

the north coreen have only a limited amount of mischief to create until china order them to stop , but the prospect of getting the japannese pants
stained brown is not without some satisfaction in beijijng and washington alike .

.

.
. jeaguer

jeaguer, Mar 2, 2007

#120

(You must log in or sign up to reply here.)

Page 6 of 7

Share This Page

Hello and welcome to the WWII Forums!
Sign up and join the discussion!