Yabbut..... if you were a country, and had "massive oil reserves" which were your country's ONLY source of hard currency income wouldn't you prefer to find an energy method that allowed most of your oil to be traded for that currency, or for needed goods like machine tools, phramaceutical manufacturing equipment, and electronic facilities - oh the list is endless.

The ONLY thing that the West could honestly complain about is the heavy-water manufacturing plant - which is less that 40% complete, I believe. That's going to make heavy water, which will be useful in the plutonium manufacturing plant which I believe will not be finished for 6 or 7 years.

I did say "honestly" however, which of course is a foreign word to John Bolton.

Bush & Co. are idiots, but the stuff from Iran really does worry me. The point isn't that Iran is a non-threat like Iraq was. It's more that Bush doesn't know how to meet the threat, and he's squandered our resources for doing so.

Lets see, you collect hand guns, you can only shoot one at a time, so why do you need more than one? Therefore the others are for a private army you are putting together to overthrow the gov'ment.

The Iranians are within the rights granted each country to pursue nuclear energy. Face it, the ONLY reason this country gives a damn is because of their oil. We need to be able to march in and steal it for Exxon if required.....

Well, I'm sure that Iran would mostly appreciate some "US non-invasion insurance" like NK managed to get. But they might well get that just from having a somewhat plausible claim to having the bomb, without actually having a working bomb.

Iran won't get there with their enrichment program anytime soon: it's too small-scale (milligrams vs. 10's of kg) too low-enrichment (3% vs 90%) and too inefficient and expensive as compared to a plutonium-based project.

But there's other stuff they have, or are working on, that makes a somewhat confusing overall picture. It makes me wonder if their immediate goal is the confusion.

For example, I'm pretty sure that NK doesn't have a bomb that they _trust_ will work, yet. Two main reasons here: if they had a bomb that they were sure would work, they'd test it and world opinion be damned. But testing one that results in a failure is like hanging an "attack me!" sign around their neck, so they won't test until they're sure. But also, their plutonium was from power reactor fuel; power reactors burn their fuel for too long to be good for bomb-grade plutonium production (>18mo vs. 3days), so while they'll have plutonium, it will have a rather lousy mix of isotopes for use in a bomb. (I think this is why Pakistan had such crappy bomb yield, BTW; they're now starting to build a reactor specifically for plutonium production)

So I'd bet that NK's strategy is to put together a lousy, unreliable bomb, *claim* a bomb, try and look like they *have* a bomb (while not testing) and use the time gained to do plutonium-production for an actual reliable bomb. Then test. Iran might well have a similar overall strategy.

1. Out of town
   
2. Rolled
   
3. Riiiight
   
4. Spreading Freedom, Democracy, Love and Understanding 101
   
5. More NeoCon Bullshit
   
6. Interesting stuff
   
7. Payback?
   
8. The Longer Answer
   
9. Krauthammer goes Whack
   
10. Ney to dance with Justice...