The Fat Lady Hums

IBD Editorials ^ | September 20, 2008

[Kaslin]

Mideast: Experts say Iran now has enough fissionable material to develop a nuclear weapon. Israel has operational plans to attack Iran. We may soon have more than the stock market to worry about.

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The problem with kicking the can down the road is that sometimes you run out of road. The West has been fiddling while Iran pursues a nuclear weapon. Now comes word that we can stop counting centrifuges and whistling past the graveyard. Iran has enough material to build a bomb.

According to a routine update issued Wednesday by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the U.N.'s toothless watchdog, Iran had by early this month made 630 kilograms, or 1,390 pounds, of low-enriched uranium.

That's "a weapon's worth," says Thomas Cochran, a senior scientist at the nuclear program of the Natural Resources Defense Council — enough for an advanced implosion-type weapon such as the bomb we dropped on Nagasaki in August 1945.

"They clearly have enough material for a bomb," agrees Richard Garwin, a top nuclear physicist who helped invent the hydrogen bomb. "They know how to do the enrichment. Whether they know how to design a bomb, well, that's another matter."

[Tarpon]

The fat lady is humming and glowing.

Bush meets with Olmert this week. I wonder what that is all about.

[sionnsar]

Iran has enough material to build a bomb.

Completely raw material is one thing. Semi-processed is another. But stuff ready-to-go? I gather they aren't there yet.

[Texas Eagle]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew5qP2oPdtQ

Obama says Iran is a tiny country that does not pose a threat.

[Tarpon]

IIRC you just keep going with the centrifuge enrichment process, if you don’t have a heavy water reactor to speed things up. Isn’t that what the Russian heavy water reactor is for? The final steps for making plutonium, a much more powerful bomb than one made from enriched Uranium.

Bomb reactor first, best plan.

[Lurker]

That's "a weapon's worth," says Thomas Cochran, a senior scientist at the nuclear program of the Natural Resources Defense Council

Look at the source for this.

I'm not just taking this ponytailed whack jobs opinion with a grain of salt, I'm swallowing the entire mine.

L

[Viking2002]

"Whether they know how to design a bomb, well, that's another matter."

It's 65-year-old technology readily available on the Internet. All it takes is enough fissile material and Andy Griffith-era hardware and knowhow, and Israel is a deep world of hurt. I predict that the Israelis are gonna download on Iran any day now, and justifiably so.

[mkjessup]

Regardless of where in the assembly process the Iranians are, the fact that the 'news' is out that they've got enough material for a nuclear bomb means that it's now time for Israel to either fish or cut bait.

Every day that Israel now fails to act decisively and take out the Iranian nuke weapons program, is a day of lessened credibility for Israel's deterrent and suggests that there is no political will to act in Israel's defense.

7 years after labeling Iran (along with North Korea and Saddam's Iraq) as the "Axis of Evil", our own illustrious President has lost all of HIS credibility due to his periodic and persistent comments about how the U.S. "will not permit Iran to have a nuclear weapon". Well, Iran all but has that nuclear weapon, and Bush's past pompous pronouncements now have all the credibility of one of Joe Isuzu's old TV commercials, i.e. none.

Israel needs to act, and act fast.

This weekend would not be too soon.

[umgud]

We have plenty of time. As a matter of fact, if we just ignore the problem, it will go away. Right?

[xmission]

Wonder how big this amount of material is. Would it be possible for Israel (or us for that matter) to keep track of it’s location long enough to blow it up.

[xmission]

I’m thinking it’ll be this weekend if they know where it is...

[Kaslin]

President bush is meeting with Olmert on Monday, November 24, according to the White House site

[RipSawyer]

Obama says Iran is a tiny country that does not pose a threat.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Rip says Obama is a tiny man with a tiny brain who poses a huge threat to this country.

[Candor7]

Intel Ping

[whipitgood]

History lesson: The NRDC brought us the Alar-on-apples scare a few years back. Pure hokum.

[jonrick46]

They would not need much nuclear material to make an EMP bomb. Just one such detonation over the United States and that would fry enough electronics to:

1. Shut down our transportation system
2. Shut down our food production equipment
3. Shut down all communications for thousands of miles
4. Shut down all heating and air conditioning control systems.
5. Shut down all refrigeration control systems
6. Shut down all aviation—airplanes in the air at the time of detonation would fall from sky.
7. Destroy satellite communications.
8. Destroy the electrical grid by burning up all transformers.
9. Destroy all computers.
10. Destroy all electronic time keeping (watches, traffic lights, etc).

Should I go on?

Just one detonation and we would not know who delivered the weapon. All we would know is it was terrorists.

[misterrob]

Yeah, um how does that bomb get bombed by chance? And, like we wouldn’t have seen it coming?

[RichInOC]

No more Monica jokes.

[Don W]

"They clearly have enough material for a bomb," agrees Richard Garwin, a top nuclear physicist who helped invent the hydrogen bomb. "They know how to do the enrichment. Whether they know how to design a bomb, well, that's another matter."

Well, considering that we have had viable designs from at least two unrelated HIGH SCHOOL/COLLEGE students several years apart, does this guy or his co-MORONS think that the best and brightest of Iran are stupider than anyone else, simply because they're NOT from the west?

God save us all.

[American in Israel]

Bush meets with Olmert this week.

The lame duck meets the ousted criminal means much of nothing.

I respect Bush, I abhore Omert. But the bombs will drop anyway because frankly the third world war is not going to wait for our elections.