What President Bush will confirm is that Kim Jong il knew about the IMs that Foley sent AND DID NOTHING!!

Besides, like I said before, Kim Jong il doesn't have nukes. He built an earthquake machine to generate tsunamis

Maybe we can goad these stupid fucking assclowns into firing off another six tests or so; at that point, they'll be out of bullets.

SS

per Fox, the larger the bomb, the lesser the technology. That said, if it was 15,000 tons, thats a good thing.

Actually, the difference beween a 4.2 and a 7.0 is roughly 1000 times, since the Ricter scale is logrithmic. So a .5 kiloton times 1000 is 500kt, off by a factor of 100. So the actual yield should be 50kt from a 4.2 tremor, assuming linear results. However, in order to shake rock more violently, it requires exponetially more energy to produce a more violent earthquake ( just like it requires exponentially more energy to achieve a higher speed for a given mass). At this point my internal calculator falls behind, but gut feel tells me that a .5kt test = 4.2 earthquake does in fact run true with a 50mt test = 7.0 quake. Also, this one was done far under ground, the 50mt soviet test was an airburst. That results in less energy being transmitted to the ground.

Kim-

Allah's point about the Richter scale misses an important point - the Richter scale is logarithmic, like magnitudes when talking about stars. A 7.0 magnitude earthquake or explosion is NOT twice as powerful as a 3.5 magnitude earthquake or explosion.

According to:

http://www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/louie/class/100/magnitude.html

...those numbers quoted are only a little bit off, well within the margin of error.

Hey, what do you know? I know less AND type slower!

At this point there are still some unanswered questions. First is that there is still no concrete evidence that the test was nuclear, and not just a bunch of TNT. My guess is that the satelite guys have a handle on that one. Secondly, as pointed out above, just how many nuks could they have? Why not just goad them into testing all of them.

Sanctions are a waste of time. The only real defense is to let the little twerp know that if a nuk, produced in N. Korea, ever went off anywhere in the world, his bloody country would glow in the dark for the next (5) thousand years, and ground zero would be his bedroom.

And now the evidence is plain enough for even the mouthbreathers to see: failure to take diplomacy seriously leads to real strategic weakness.

This one's gonna be really, really hard to blame on the Clenis.

Also, the 50-megaton blast was an airburst, while this one was underground, making direct comparisons by seismic response all the harder.

Actually, I'm a bit surprised the North didn't set it off above ground. They couldn't care less about the environment. The mountainous Korean terrain must have a few isolated valleys suitable for a test, and the resulting pictures of a mushroom-cloud and half-vaporized targets would be of huge propaganda value to them.

Perhaps the new South Korean UN secretary general can add some teeth to the UNSC.

Don't bet on it. The South Korean government long ago decided that they didn't want the financial burden of trying to, you know, help out their cousins when the North falls. So they're only too happy to prop up the North. They actually suppress defector stories of suffering. They have decided they care more about money and "stability" than the welfare of their fellow Koreans.

Orange Kevin : Actually the cost of development was provided by 'Clenis'. Billions of dollars in blackmail paid by a stupid broad with (I hope) the knowledge that paying blackmail leads to more blackmail. Kim wants billions more in blackmail. Where is Madam NotAllTooBright? She'll give him the finances to develop weapons to reach NY since the previous donation only reaches middle America.

Looks like GOP shoulda been concentrating on NK instead of oil rich Iraq Aye Bushians? Imminent failure

Has anyone heard anything today about S Korean protests about the US military?

Wonder if they want us out of their country today. Do dems have an exit strategy for SoKo??

ja

So He should have invaded North Korea first?? Is this Your brilliant synopsis?

Another Bush failure. Not only did Bush look the other way on this, he actually used our money to fund the bomb!

Wednesday, 3 April, 2002, "The US Government has announced that it will release $95m to North Korea as part of an agreement to replace the Stalinist country's own nuclear programme, which the US suspected was being misused."

"In releasing the funding, President George W Bush waived the Framework's requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors."

Here is the best part:

President Bush argued that the decision was "vital to the national security interests of the United States".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/asia-pacific/1908571.stm

Question:

How did the gargoyle obtain the ability to make nuclear weapons ? (Hint: it wasn't the $95 million release in '02. It occurred in the latter half of the 90's)

So thats where the WMD's are!

For the life of me, I cannot understand why we don't simply pull our troops out of South Korea, say, "You guys have fun," and wash our hands of the whole sorry situation.

North Korea has absolutely *nothing* we want, and they're threatening precisely nothing we care about. What are they gonna do?

Nuke South Korea? Invade South Korea? Good, says I, one less ungrateful pile of asshats to coddle - and one less competitor in the world. Let 'em all starve in the dark.

Give WMDs to terrorists? Even Kim isn't insane enough to do this without getting something *worthwhile* in return - and when he'll get nuked down to the foundations of his shithole if we even *suspect* he supplied WMDs to some raghead, then his price would have to be far in excess of anything said terrorists could possibly supply.

Give WMDs to Iran? Same problem - except now both ends of the transaction have a delivery address.

Just pull outta there and tell South Korea, Taiwan, China, and Japan, "He's your problem. Enjoy. We'll be over here behind our missile shield. Let us know how it all works out. Good luck."

SS

BarneyG2000,
The $95M was the continuation of a deal created by Clinton. I'll agree that it didn't make a whole lot of sense to release the funds and then scrap the agreement, but it was Clinton's plan and if Gore had been elected, they would have gotten the $95M anyway.

What probably would have been different if Gore were in office, would be that North Korea would have taken a slower path to getting the bomb than they did. Mike's claim that they got the ability to make nuclear weapons in the latter half of the nineties is true, but not revelant to what happened after 2002. Before Bush terminated the Agreed Framework, North Korea was working on centrifuges to process enriched uranium. While this is a path to a weapon, it's much easier to simply use plutonium and cut out the hugely time consuming and tedious process with the centrifuges for much more simple processing. After Bush terminated the Agreed Framework, North Korea simply responded by kicking out all inspectors and getting their old plutonium fuel rods out from under lock and key. With the plutonium, their path to the bomb was fairly easy and striaghtforward and all the centrifuges that they had been processing uranium with became irrelevant. See this 2004 article for all the details.

The Richter scale was an odd duck developed for shallow focus Southern California earthquakes and is rarely used today. We use the moment magnitude scale, which is directly related to the energy released. It is also logarithmic, but correlates to the energy released, each whole number releases 32 times the energy of the previous level. (3 is equal to two tons of TNT and 4 is 64 tons of TNT). The RUssian claim of 7 is silly, that could be measured in the US and FELT in South Korea. I was living in the Virgin Islands when a level 7 earthquake hit the Dominican Republic. I watched books dance off my bookshelves during that event.

I hereby propose the following corollaries to Godwin's Law:

1. In any discussion on a political blog, the probability that some BDS deranged, brainless, leftwing asshat will post a comment blaming Bush or calling the Bush administration a 'failure' approaches 1. This appears to hold true regardless of the topic of the original post.

2. In any discussion on a political blog, if Bill Clinton is mentioned in anything less than glowing terms, the probability that some BDS deranged, brainless, leftwing asshat will post a comment whining about the right's 'obsession' with Clinton approaches 1.

Kim probably stacked several tons of Chinese firecrackers in a cave and set them off. He's hoping Madam NotAllToBright, escorted by Dimmy Carter will show up with another check for a few billion. He needs to restock his 'booze' cabinet.

I love the picture of Kim toasting Madam NotAllTooBright when she delivered the check. http://junkyardblog.net/

Following the democrats demand that the President 'take it to the U.N.' has really paid off, hasn't it?

The U.N. is worthless so get them out of the U.S. and quit paying for their raper parties around the world.

Democrats still have no agenda so 'monday' morning quarter backing is they're only option, but they still lose 99.99% of the Sunday games on Monday morning. Monday morning quarter backing fails, so out some homosexuals. Great game plan for a failure.

In releasing the funding, President George W Bush waived the Framework's requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors.

This isn't about blame, it's about responsibility - and making reponsible choices at the ballot box this November.

The Republicans are reponsible for waiving the requirement for inspections.

Scrappy said: "Following the democrats demand that the President 'take it to the U.N.' has really paid off, hasn't it?"

The facts:

The United States will seek U.N. sanctions to curb North Korea's import and export of material that could be used to make and deliver weapons of mass destruction, as well as its illicit financial activities, Ambassador John Bolton said.

Are the Democrats telling Bolton what to do Scrappy, is that what you're suggesting now?

Own and fix it Republicans - and quit blaming the Democrats for your choices.

Bush waived the inspections, and is now telling Bolton to seek UN sanctions - so if sanctions are a bad idea accept responsibility for that decision, and please, Republicans, quit lying about it.

So Lee...are you saying that NoKo went from no nukes to conducting an underground test in 4 years or even 6 years? and it only cost 95 million?

Own and fix it Republicans - and quit blaming the Democrats for your choices.

Lee, did you come out of decade long coma in 2001?? You can't be serious.

And lie about what now? (and you bolded it, you must mean business) Jesus christ, Lee, you're so full of BDS that no matter what Bush does or has done or does not do you will see fault in it. It simply doesn't matter to you.

So please, why don't you just come out and state what you think should be done with N. Korea? What should the President do? Do you have solutions or only criticism in that one track mind of yours?

Vagabond - Without the inspections - who knows?

It was a huge, HUGE, mistake to waive the inspections.

And Lee...

From the same article you are quoting:

It (North Korea) has systematically refused to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors into its nuclear facility at the Yongbyon research base north of the capital.

According to their interpertation of the 1994 Agreed Framework, they didn't need inspectors until after the LWR were built which was expected to be in May 2005.

The Bush admin. probably realizes that the 900 lb gorilla in the room is China.

North Korea has been a proxy in the past and I'm not so sure they are not doing China's work now. China is building armed forces at a fast pace and has used lasers to blind our satelites in recent weeks.

If Japan gets nukes Taiwan might also, which will give China the pretext it needs to threaten Taiwan again, and screw with everyone.

Thus far, neither Bush or Clinton has been willing to confront the real concern in the area. Given this, it is perhaps understandable, if unforgivable, that Clinton (Carter) bought off the North Koreans with that deal that now looks silly.

It is also understandable that Bush wants the 6 party talks, to bring China in. Anything else
is pissing in the wind.

Japan is very aware that many Chinese hold strong feelings against them going back to WWII. Add this to their understandable fear of nukes and you begin to understand the panic in Tokyo.

J. R. - another "reading/comprehnsion challenged Republican" said "And lie about what now? (and you bolded it, you must mean business)"

Scrappy said: "Following the democrats demand that the President 'take it to the U.N.' has really paid off, hasn't it?"

Scrappy is lying when he said the Democrats are responsibile for "taking it to the U.N.," J.R. -- Bush and Bolton have made the decision to do that.

Republicans also made the decision back in 2002 to waive the inspections.

Back in 2002:

According to the Framework, North Korea should be fully compliant with IAEA safeguards when "a significant proportion" of the project is completed.

The builders say that will be around May 2005, and given the inspections will take at least three years, this means that North Korea should start admitting inspectors now.

But Pyongyang believes that they should only allow the inspections to start, rather than finish, by that date.

The head of the Non-proliferation Policy Education Centre in Washington, a critic of the Agreed Framework, has warned that even when the new reactors are completed they may not be tamper-proof.

"These reactors are like all reactors, They have the potential to make weapons. So you might end up supplying the worst nuclear violator with the means to acquire the very weapons we're trying to prevent it acquiring," Henry Sokolski told the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Andf that's exactly what the Republicans idid -- hand North Korea the nuclear "key".

Bush waived the inspections, and we now have a dangerous despot with his finger approaching the nuclear trigger.

If you aren't going to fix this, Republicans, at least quit lying about it. The American people deserve better.

Vagabond - So North Korea didn't want the inspections - what a surprise! Now we know why.

Who waived the requirement for inspections, Vagabond ? Who gave in to the tin-horn despot's demands, and gave them nuclear capability?

The fact that they didn't want inspections is exactly why the requirement for inspections, negotiated by Clinton, should have been adhered to.

Instead the Republicans rolled over, as they handed over $96 million, and look at the result.