Useful Fools

Iran and Korea have deep tunnel systems to protect their nuclear assets - tunnels too deep for us to destroy - even with nuclear weapons*.

Dr. Charles Krauthammer claims that we cannot defeat Iranian tunnel systems. Iran also threatened to block the Straits of Hormuz if attacked. The conclusion was that we will give up the military option against Iran.

Am I missing something?

Why can’t we put the tunnels out of action? Sure, we can’t destroy the deeply buried equipment and facilities with aerial bombing, but we should be able to make them inaccessible. What if we destroy all of the entrances and utility/communications links, using a combination of powerful bunker busters, and time delay bombs (or better, time delay cluster munitions if they exist) and air-sowable mines? THen e also use High energy microwave weapons to destroy electrical equipment supporting the operation and even equipment in the tunnels.

A tunnel that requires a lot o digging to reach is a useless tunnel - as long as the willingness to attack the diggers exists. Time delay weapons help increase the difficulty and time in digging back into the tunnels. These were used on the Ho Chi Minh trail at a critical mountain pass choke-point. Adequate saturation bombing of the area, or good intelligence or a pre/post attack commando or airborne ranger raids should allow entrances to be identified, and response efforts to be hobbled.

Nobody and no material would be able to get in and out for a long time - as long as we were willing to continue to attack the sites.

As for the Straits, we could and should capture the Iranian territory along the Straits if a single weapon is fired. We should provide Aegis escorts for tankers, and provide insurance if needed to guarantee continued world oil supplies.

None of this is simple, but none of it seems impossible.

None of these is as bad as an ICBM and nuclear armed Iran, an imminent prospect!

We need to start thinking like a country at war.

*In theory , nukes can reach any depth, by a long series of ground bursts. However, the fallout would be intense and the resulting humanitarian issues prevent such an approach.

Nutty Norks with Nukes?

The North Korean announcement today bragging about their nuclear weapons, dropping out of the 6-way talks, and announcing a restart of their nuclear reactor has many ramifications.

Nobody is surprised when they claim they have nukes. In fact, they probably do have them - no surprise.

A desire to blackmail the US is behind dropping out of the talks. They are trying what worked in the past - scaring the US until another foolish treaty like Clinton’s. But it won’t work with Bush in charge.

More significant is restarting their reactor. This allows them to create much more plutonium. They are probably looking at a three scenarios:

1) We bomb the reactor. They lose its ability to produce plutonium. That sounds like a bad deal, until one realizes that North Korea is showing signs of internal stress. The human rights pressure is likely to allow North Korean refugees to avoid repatriation, unleashing a flood of North Koreans eager to escape the Stalinist regime. Provoking an attack by the US is a classic tactic to re-kindle nationalism and justify increased repression, relieving internal dangers to the regime.

Furthermore, there are two paths to nuclear weapons: creating Pluloniuim, or enriching Uranium, increasing the concentration of U-235 and U-233. All evidence indicates that the North has the facilities to enrich Uranium, well hidden underground somewhere. Hence the destruction of the reactor would be like a chess sacrifice - giving away one piece in order to improve one’s position. It is also possible that the huge underground facilities in the North have one or more unknown reactors producing Plutonium.

2) We don’t bomb the reactor. They make a lot more Plutonium, producing more bombs or just selling the Plutonium as is.

3) A major attack on the North. They view this as unlikely because it would trigger another Korean war, with WMD tipped missiles hitting all over South Korea, parts of Japan and potentially the US. This would cause tens of millions of immediate civilian casualties, especially in South Korea and Japan. The response would probably nuclear destruction of North Korea, followed by a complex interaction as China, what’s left of South Korea, and the US contend, for different reasons, for the territory.

China wants a buffer state to protect itself from the outer barbarians - an old and recurrent theme in Chinese history. South Korea wants to re-unify Korea. The US and others need to stop the sale and leakage of WMD’s and WMD material from North Korea.

Meanwhile, the Norks may be selling HEU or Pu or completed weapons to terrorists or nations highly hostile to the US such as Iran.

The key to this mess is China. They can hurt North Korea by cutting of its oil and commerce, and allowing refugees to stay free. But they haven’t done so, for unclear reasons.

The US needs to convince China that it is in their interest to end the North Korean nuclear threat and missile proliferation.

George Bush just warned Iran not to develop nukes, so naturally North Korea, wanting the spotlight, has announce it has nuclear weapons for “defensive” use.
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FOX News is reporting that Israeli commando forces are in Northern Iraq, and that an excess of US carrier battlegroups are heading towards the Persian Gulf.

Today, Iran stated it was going to restart its Uranium enrichment programs. In the last year, it has constructed large facilities for nuclear processing, and then buried them to protect them from attack. A considerale number of defensive positions surround these facilities.

In addition, there have been several reports of Iranian force buildups along the Iraq border (3 battalions) and of Iranian forces penetrating into Iraq.

Just revealed: An Iranian airport has been closed for a couple of months because, intelligence analysis believe, a spill of weapons grade uranium from North Korea happened. Note that weapons grade uranium, in sufficient quantity (a few tens of kilograms) can be directly fabricated into a nuclear weapon.

Iran also has a serious internal unrest problem. Real power is exercised only by unelected Ayatollahs, but a democratic structure underlies it - a Potemkin democracy. It has a largely young population, who want freedom and specifically like the United States.

A commentator on FOX stated that if Iran were to have a nuclear weapon, it would use it. Ayatollah Rafsanjani made a statement 18 months ago that can be interpreted to mean that it would attack Israel if it had a nuke, and simply accept the huge retaliatory casualties, on the logic that there are few Israelis and many Muslims. While this commentator considers it unlikely that Iran would use a nuclear weapon against Israel, Israel cannot afford to take the chance. A single nuclear weapon would devastate Israel. A ground burst weapon, used under the right meteorological conditions, could kill 100,000 or more people, and make Tel Aviv and Jerusalem uninhabitable for many years. Another possibility is the weapon could be given to Al Qaeda and used against the United States or Moscow. Thus the US also cannot affort to take any chances.
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The following letter from Kevin Kim of Big Hominid speaks for itself:

Fellow blogger,

I am sending this message to the bloggers on my blogroll (and a few
other folks) in the hopes that some of you will print this, or at
least find it interesting enough for comment. I’m not usually the
type to distribute such messages, but I felt this was important enough
to risk disturbing you.

As some of you may already know, a wing of the South Korean
government, the Ministry of Information and Culture (MIC), is
currently clamping down on a variety of blogging service providers and
other websites. The government is attempting to control access to
video of the recent Kim Sun-il beheading, ostensibly because the video
will have a destabilizing influence. (I haven’t seen the video.)

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The Context for Analysis

The most important fact in examining this issue is that we are at war. Many of us believe, with good reason, that this war is as dangerous to our country as any war we have fought in the last 100 years. Furthermore, the key in this war is changing the minds of those who would commit terrorist acts against us or those who would employ or aid them. This is extraordinarily important. given the newly appreciated combination of two factors: the potential capability of a few terrorists to cause vast damage possible with weapons likely to be available to terrorists if we lose this war ( nuclear weapons, possibly with additives like cobalt to create much worse fallout than normal, contagious, possibly genetically engineered biological agents, and less deadly weapons such as dirty bombs, non-contagious biological weapons, and chemical agents like “nerve gas”); and, the existence of loosely coupled terrorist movements which have the intent to cause such damage and are willing to sacrifice their lives in the process.

This situation has never before existed in the history of man.

Even those who do not believe the war situation to be as dangerous or widespread as stated above should understand that many American’s lives are at daily risk in Iraq.
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While the hyenas that make up our press are trying to find red meat in the Bush Administration, and the jackals in the Democrat party are trying every dishonest trick in the book to grab the power of the presidency, there is a big ugly elephant in the room that everyone is ignoring.

IRAN

Iran is the heart of Islamist extremism. Iranian mullahs invented the modern practice of state sponsored Islamic terrorism and the high tech state with the values of the dark ages. Iranian mullahs held our diplomats hostage for a year. Iranian mullahs are today causing the deaths of coalition soldiers in Iraq, while at the same time brutally suppressing their own people. Iranian mullahs cannot survive our success in Iraq, so to them, our work in Iraq is a fight to the death - the mullahs die or Iraqi democracy dies stillborn. Our troops are fighting Iranian armed and led Iraqis at this very moment.

At the same time, Iran is playing a shell game with their program to develop nuclear weapons, hoping to have an IRBM nuclear deterrent before the feckless world institutions try to stop them. Iran has threatened to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons, regardless of Israel’s retaliation (Rafsanjani, 2003).

Meanwhile, in the last few months, Iranian people, who want freedom and to live in a modern secular democracy, are desperately asking for the help of the United States. They are demonstrating, holding strikes, refusing to vote, and of course being murdered, executed and imprisoned in increasing numbers.

The myth of Iranian moderates in government is used as an excuse to avoid action against this very dangerous and vicious government, even as that same government sends killers and money and arms into Iraq to murder our people - soldiers and civililans. The Europeans, including Britain and Russia, see Iran as a source of money, and are ignoring the danger, or in the case of Russia, fueling it with their construction of high powered nuclear reactors.

This must end!

It is time for George Bush to address the nation about the overall situation in the war on terror.

When he does so, he should expose the Iranian actions;

He should expose their aid and sanctuary given to Al Qaeda;

He should remind Americans that Iran has sponsored attacks which have killed many Americans;

Most importantly, Bush should declare his support for the Democratic forces in Iran.

Behind the scenes, if it isn’t being done already, our covert action forces should be aiding in the destabilizaiton of the regime, recruiting support in the Iranian military and training revolutionaries. Our government should aid in the broadcast of information to Iran (and Iraq, as previously suggested), and should provide detailed information and support for the Iranian resistance.

Of course, the negative forces in this country, Democratic Party activists and their pliant press will fail to see the importance of this goal, as they failed to understand the necessity of deposing Saddam. They will blame this on George Bush and try to scare Americans. They will issue their usual platitudes about the need for international cooperation, ignoring the fact that much of the world is abetting the Mullahs for commmercial gain, just as they were on Saddam’s payroll while obstructing the U.S.’s efforts in Iraq.

We must stop the Mullahs;

We have a duty to stop the Mullahs, since we (Jimmy Carter) put these monster in power.

They represent a great danger to our country and to our efforts in Iraq and in the broader war on terror..

Don’t let the press bury this.

Don’t let the administration ignore it.

Also read Roger Simon’s article, “It’s Iran, Stupid! - A Message to the Blogosphere“.

From Al Bawaba

Substitute Leader of Tehran Friday Prayers and Secretary of the Guardians Council Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati and Chief Looneytune on Friday called for Iran’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), reported the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). “The treaty has been denounced by a number of states. Although Iran has signed the NPT, it is free to withdraw from it anytime,” he was quoted as saying.
Sound familiar? North Korea did this recently, and hasn’t been hurt. So why shouldn’t Iran?

Read on… it gets much worse…
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Bill Gertz is one of my favorite national security reporters. Working for the conservative Washington Times, he has outstanding sources in the national security establishment.

Hence I was shocked to read an article by Gertz and Scarborough containing (emphasis added):

Israel has ready a plan to bomb Iran’s Bushehr nuclear-power plant should the Persian Gulf coast facility, now under construction, begin producing weapons-grade material, an insider tells us.

This source says Israel has mapped out a route its jet fighters would take to destroy what is designed to be a two-reactor plant. A successful strike would ensure that the radical Tehran regime does not develop nuclear weapons.

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So North Korea plans to test a nuke (probably on a national holiday on Sept. 9).

Well, if I were Osama, I’d want to verify that the merchandise worked. And plutonium-based nukes, which is what they probably have, are tricky to make, which is why the US had to test one before using it in WW-II.

Once tested, then the market is open. The Chechens or Al Quaeda or other affiliated terrorist group can start their bidding!

Time to make a very public warning to North Korea about all of this.