You’re a regular little ray of sunshine.

TexasDan on February 23, 2008 at 10:42 AM

Indeed, yet a timely and sobering one ;)

I have always been breathless with stupefaction upon hearing the varied ‘guesstimates’ being tossed around as a factor for deciding international policy regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions – 5 years until they get the bomb. 3 years. 7 months next Wednesday.

Utter bullshit. Always has been.

Given a marketplace transaction, they could have a functional bomb tomorrow. Nobody seems stupid enough to sell them one – for now. So they have to build their own. The materials are well-known. The physics is well-known. The deployment platforms are well-known. They are busy refining the fissile material as we blog.

It is an inevitability that they will have a deliverable weapon in an ‘electoral’ timeframe. To believe otherwise is to have ones head firmly buried in the sand – or another suitably dark place.

As opposed to what Bush is doing now, which is…uhh…uhhh…ummmm…

Say, anybody heard any good “Axis of Evil” jokes lately?

Nah, me either.

cheers (sort of)

eon

eon on February 23, 2008 at 8:23 AM

You’re a regular little ray of sunshine.

Was the NIE written by the NYT????

dmann on February 22, 2008 at 8:42 PM

No, but I strongly suspect it was written by people who do not understand the difference between a Research and Development program and a Production program.

As a general rule, you do R&D first, to determine how to build whatever it is you want- a plane, a car, or an atom bomb. But once you’ve got the design parameters set, the R&D phase ends, and you begin actually making the item(s) in question.

Back in WW II, there was a saying that “At some point, you have to fire the engineers and start the assembly line rolling”- meaning that sooner or later, you have to stop refining and fine-tuning a piece of equipment (R&D) and put it into actual production and deployment (production). (BTW, this is a lesson we seem to have forgotten today- I can think of no other reason that we are only now beginning production of aircraft like the F-22, F-35, Eurofighter, Rafale’, etc., all of which are based on designs that were frozen in the Carter Administration.)

I’d say that RE nuclear weapons, the Iranians are in the “fire (or in their case, shoot) the engineers” phase right now. The fact that a document has come to light describing “high-voltage detonator firing equipment” (klystron switches, in the correct terminology) and the exact specifications for an underground test-shot hole (roughly similar to those used by the major powers in the 1940s and 1950s) indicates that the major thrust of their program now is actual application, as opposed to theory and design. (There are several ways to built a relatively cheap and effective A-bomb. However, some are inherently more vulnerable to accidental triggering than others. The Iranians seem to have gotten past the stage of weeding out the potentially “tricky” designs.)

Or in other words, the next “earthquake” in the Dasht-i-Kabir Desert may not be due to a fault slippage.

cheers (sort of)

eon

They seem to be able to hold video cameras steadily enough while doing beheading videos.

Isn’t that reassurance enough of their stability?

Those idiots couldnt find their butts with both hands, a map, AAAand a flashlight.

Or in Star Wars-ese: These are not the droids you’re looking for.

Are they just too busy with all the corruption at that U.N. and the IAEA that they don’t have time to actually KNOW for sure what Iran is or isn’t doing regarding pursuing nuclear weapons?

I might be just a regular gal from Texas, but it would seem that allowing one of the most crazy regimes on the planet to obtain THE weapon of mass destruction is not entirely the best idea in the world.

Why wouldn’t Iran just continue the program in secret?

Why bother to do anything in secret? Since the late 70′s, Iran has managed to create an effective and destabilizing network that they are just staring to bring to full force. The bastards have killed our boys from Lebanon to Iraq, and get away with it. Iran is rushing to an end of days scenario that reflects the suicide bomber mentality on the scale of a nation.

Six word solution, already proposed by Maverick with music by The Beach Boys.

Exit question: Why wouldn’t Iran just continue the program in secret?

Exit answer: Why do it the hard way, in a year Madyline Albrite will give them all the technology they need. Hell, we will probably give them some enriched uranium too!

Exit question: Why wouldn’t Iran just continue the program in secret?

Indeed. It worked for North Korea.

I’ll just stop typing now and start shopping for bicycles and candles (while they’re still available, that is).

Exit question: Why wouldn’t Iran just continue the program in secret?

Answer: They will if Obama is elected president.

That Muhammed fellow that heads the IAEA, he’s not a Muslim is he?

Not to worry. He’s a moderate Muslim. He doesn’t want to kill infidels. He just wants to watch them die.