Posted on 10/09/2006 7:52:09 PM PDT by blogblogginaway
GERTZ: U.S. doubts Korean test was nuclear; Readings fall short of atomic explosion... MORE...
U.S. intelligence agencies say, based on preliminary indications, that North Korea did not produce its first nuclear blast yesterday, WASHINGTON TIMES star reporter Bill Gertz is set to report in Tuesday editions.
U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that seismic readings show that the conventional high explosives used to create a chain reaction in a plutonium-based device went off, but that the blast's readings were shy of a typical nuclear detonation.
'There was a seismic event that registered about 4 on the Richter scale, but it still isn't clear if it was a nuclear test. You can get that kind of seismic reading from high explosives.'
The underground explosion, which Pyongyang dubbed a historic nuclear test, is thought to have been the equivalent of several hundred tons of TNT, far short of the several thousand tons of TNT, or kilotons, that are signs of a nuclear blast, the official said. Developing...
Well, it doesn't really matter one way or the other if North Korea was testing nuclear stuff or just skimming stones. It is none of our business, other than to watch and make sure they don't point any hysterical stuff at the United States. China, Japan and Russia are by far closer, and these folks are the only ones the nut job of North Korea will pay any attention to. So, the United States should just put up the wall between us and Mexico, for their lovely corruption is a much bigger threat to the United States than some skimpy country, thousands of miles away, that can't tie their shoes correctly...
Headline: N. KOREAN NUKE TEST A SHAMEFUL FIASCO
Former US Secretary of State Madeline Half-bright expressed her fervent sympathy for North Korea after a failed nuclear test proved to be a great embarrassment before the world. Said a tearfully supportive Albright:
"My poor dear Kim Jong-Il, he's struggled for a long with this problem, I thought I'd worked with him enough on his premature ejaculation......"
The whole damn country is a gulag.
I am tempted put in forth possiblity, device designed to be low yield, but that seems to unlikely to be a real possibility.
Of the three (or four) possibilities all but one is bad news. Guess we've got about 5 years to prepare. In 5 years NK will arm all our enemies with nukes. We can survive losing a city or two or three but not much more then that. Lose 10 Cities and we are back to being an 1880's society, 300,000,000 an 1880's society can not support. Which means 3 months after a 10 city Nuke attack we go back to the middle (dark) ages.
If its Nu then it is ,if it isn't its not !
Whole country in a gulag.....
True, but even in hell there are deeper levels.
Can we trust anything coming out of the CIA (assuming they're the source) after how badly they've been on other intelligence?
Probably just the rev. moon trying to stick it to kim.
I seem to remember a few weeks back that North Korea was moving large amounts of conventional explosives for some unknown reason. Sounds like we found the reason.
Wonder how much cash he brought with him.
Me too. There's a hell of a lot of energy in a 4+.
You could if Chiaman packed a hole with 200 tons of TNT and claimed it were nuclear (a dumb idea, yes) to get the US to consider face-to-face talks with NK.
No madman rants, threats, or flexile calisthentics have produced even a slight budge in US policy toward NK and Chiaman's obviously beginning to feel the pressure. With the string of failures Kim's regime has recently suffered and the rhetoric from Pyongyang, it's apparent his regime is running out of sane options.
I will wait for the radiation detection test conclusions before totally dismissing the probability of a nuclear test event by NK, but so far, all sniffing equipment indicates that the event may never have gone critical and since trigger devices usually aren't of the hundreds of ton ranges, I suspect Kim may have "set us up the bomb" of conventional TNT.
I thought that if it were"nuclear",this could be dtermined by taking air-samples downwind?
We should show them a nuclear weapon up close and personal, so that they can understand the difference between a conventional one and an nuclear one.
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