Be Specific
Rook is right to be upset with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen saying that Iran has enough “fissile material” to make a bomb – so does the state of New Mexico, and the country of Mexico. There are any number of countries in Africa who have enough uranium for hundreds of bombs.
This required a clarification to be issued: U.S.: Iran has material for nuclear bomb but still ‘not close’.
Iran has managed to refine the uranium ore to a 4% concentration. To actually make a weapon it has to be at a 90% concentration. Given how long it has taken them to get to 4%, and the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency says that they have hit a plateau in their refining process, it is highly unlikely that they will actually produce weapons-grade “fissile material” any time in the foreseeable future even if they are pursuing nuclear weapons.
The science of nuclear weapons is very simple, but the engineering is not. Two guys with buckets accidentally started a nuclear reaction in a fuel processing plant in Japan a few years ago. The fuel was in a liquid form and they put too much of it together because they weren’t using the proper equipment. They died.
Building a bomb that doesn’t kill all of the workers before it’s completed which can be detonated when you want it and be transported requires a lot of infrastructure and precision manufacturing equipment. It isn’t easy and it definitely isn’t cheap.
After the Shrubbery eliminated Saddam Hussein, Iran has less reason than ever to want to waste money on weapons. It has been the big winner in the Hedgemony’s blunders in the area, and it hasn’t conducted an aggressive war in centuries. Iran isn’t ruled by paranoid whackos like North Korea and Israel, so they have no reason to build a bomb, but plenty of reasons to build nuclear power plants.
10 comments
*sigh* Thar ya go again Bryan! Upsetting their poisoned apple cart with facts and logic! Will ya just neva learn?? 😉 LOL
Sorry… I just have a fit of laughter every time some ‘know-it-all clueless ignoramus ass-kisser’ in the USA mentions, usually in a hysterical tone, Iran. 🙂 These cowardly idiots have NO idea whatsoever what Iran is, how Iran operates, and just how nasty they can get! And they don’t need to make any nukes! Idiots.
Of all of the threats in this world, Iran is so far down at the bottom of the scale as to be laughable. The top of the Iranian food chain, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has issued an opinion that nuclear weapons are “un-Islamic”. Before any work can take place that will have to be challenged and voided by other Ayatollahs. These are the equivalent of Western legal decisions, and it will require time and effort to overcome one, and the effort will have to be public. If I start reading about a campaign to alter the decision, then Iran can be returned to the status of bomb wannabes, but until then, it isn’t going to happen.
This is part of the Shi’ia culture. This is how they do things. The people at the top really believe this stuff, and it has to be taken into consideration when dealing with them. The closest we come to the structure of the real movers and shakers in the government of Iran is a law school faculty, which is scary enough, but it isn’t like the Catholic hierarchy or any other Western religious model.
Just leave them alone. We have enough problems.
One only has to look at a map, and a geological survey, to know why the clueless morons want to take on Iran. The fact is however, that the USA wouldn’t stand a chance unless the USA uses nukes or a whole lot of serious WMD’s. Iran would make Afghanistan look like a kindergarten dispute. Of course, if the USA did start using nukes or WMD’s… the USA would have some very serious problems to deal with that make an economic depression look like a minor inconvenience.
Two quotes spring to mind:
Fools never learn.
Stupid is as stupid does.
There is an unsubstantiated rumor that when the Shah was in power the US flew missions out of Iran on a regular basis. If you had participated in these hypothetical missions, or in the rescue mission during the Carter administration, one might point out what a totally defensible country Iran is with all of the mountains and caves.
I would imagine there are any number of veterans of the Iran-Iraq War willing to point out the problems of combat operations in Iran, even with WMDs.
A sane person might take note of the effects of exposing a major oil field to hard radiation.
Persia/Iran has been attacked dozens of times over the course of several millennia by much better generals than those currently serving, and it still exists as an independent entity. There really is a reason for that. The same can be said of Afghanistan.
These cowardly idiots have NO idea whatsoever what Iran is, how Iran operates
But Kryten, they don’t need to know that, because they’re Americans, and the Iranians, well… they’re darkies. Unseemly mud people. So of course they’re evil and Satanic and stupid and must be destroyed and will be easily destroyed and all that. At least, that’s what 51+% of Americans are quite willing to believe as soon as someone points them in the direction of some suspicious dusky fellers who speak one of them furriner gabble tongues.
Sigh. If the average American were any dumber about the world outside his city limits, the entire nation would disappear into a giant black hole of suck.
How about a Constitutional amendment saying that the US cannot attack another country until 50% of voters can successfully locate it on a globe. That would pretty much reduce the need for a huge military.
Hell, half the time the Florida government is unaware that the western Panhandle is in the Central Time Zone.
I live surrounded by people who honest to Dog want to know what tribe Jindal belongs to.
I live surrounded by people who honest to Dog want to know what tribe Jindal belongs to.
Do they think he fights Democrats… or cowboys?
Steve Bates´s last blog post..Will Los Angeles Stop Cussing?
Cowboys. They are blissfully unaware of the homeland of all telephone call centers. I assume they think Bangalore is in Nevada or Colorado. Somehow this is tied to casinos on reservations. I assume someone said something in a Wednesday prayer meeting and it spread like a cold at a daycare.
Oh my… the stupid! it burns! it burns!
(Penguin wobbles off looking for the nearest alcoholic beverage…)
Okay. I thought Louisianians were dumb. But at least Louisianians know how to look at maps. They need to, otherwise they’d get lost in the woods during hunting season :-).
– Badtux the Louisiana Penguin
Since the creation of GPS units, map reading will to devolve just like making change in your head after calculators were introduced.