Gertz: China ships North Korea ingredient for nuclear arms

Washington Times via Drudge ^ | 17 December 2002 | Bill Gertz

[flamefront]

North Korea has purchased a large shipment of chemicals from China that can be used to make nuclear-weapons fuel, U.S. intelligence officials say.

North Korean procurement agents succeeded in buying 20 tons of tributyl phosphate, known as TBP, a key chemical used to extract material for nuclear bombs from spent nuclear fuel, said officials familiar with intelligence reports of the transfer.

[flamefront]

The reprocessing of the spent fuel means Pyongyang could produce more bombs "in fairly short order, a matter of months," he said.

Better hurry the Iraq plan.

[Hugin]

Bush will announce tommorow the deployment of a national ABM system based in Alaska by 2004. Alaska is the only part of the US the NK missiles can reach as of now. No coincedence IMHO.

[flamefront]

Months vs years. At least the 2008 deployment projection was accelerated.

[staytrue]

Gertz seems to be a writer with an agenda of writing bad things about China. This may or may not be true, but I would not take Gertz's word for it.

"The transfer itself is an indication that China's government, contrary to some public statements, is unwilling to support U.S. efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear problem, said administration security officials"

The above quote is pure speculation and conclusion without substantiating facts by the author. In fact, he later quotes Fleisher as saying that the administration believes the opposite is true.

[flamefront]

Perhaps that is the appearance by the sentence standing alone. But you might also want to consider the long history of support of North Korean nuclear development by China as well. Gertz is not cocky IMO, he intends to sell articles later too.

See CHINA OPENS PANDORA'S NUCLEAR BOX.

[Light Speed]

Its possible that a few low yeild nukes are in the possession of Egypt and Syria.
several channels to obtain..both tight lipped..and can be trusted to shut up.
I believe they both do..and a decade ago
Its not possible for the U.S. to keep tabs on everything...and the way this bunch scheme[Russia,China,Pakistan,North Korea]..I'm sure they have aquiesed to the Arabs.

[backhoe]

His own site:

-Bill Gertz's Site--

Also:

-Softwar!-- has tons of National Security info-

[Lion's Cub]

Henry Sokolski, head of the private Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, said the transfer of the nuclear arms-related chemical shows the Chinese "don't understand how important this is to us."

Nonsense. They know exactly what they are doing.

Eventually people will realize that China and Russia are both using NK as a proxy against us. Unfortunately, the realization may come too late.

[meenie]

The leaders (?) of this country know exactly how much China and Russia have contributed to North Korea's armament and nuclear weapons. The lucrative trade that is making them and their accomplices rich is worth losing some American lives if need be.

[flamefront]

Yes, the leaders know but aren't saying. As mentioned in the WH press conference yesterday:

North Korea is seeking nuclear help from China after Pakistan has stopped help. So how much does your President think or is U.S. worried about China's and North Korea's military build-up that might one day --

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, if you recall when President Jiang Zemin visited the President in Texas, just two or three months ago, President Jiang said publicly that China opposes any nuclearization on the Korean peninsula. So I think the premise of your question is not quite right. China is working with the United States to make certain that we can resolve the situation with North Korea peacefully and diplomatically. And that is being done in concert with South Korea and Japan and Russia, as well.

China is working against the United States, as well.

[mikhailovich]

Reluctantly, I must agree with you. It is frightening to concede that tiny, hostile nations like North Korea are developing nuclear weapons. In fact, leave off the hostile, and just make it "tiny."

Suddenly, everyone becomes a "player" on Big Street. Scary.

[DoctorMichael]

...........Gertz seems to be a writer with an agenda of writing bad things about China...............

I disagree. I don't think so.

Gertz seems to be a writer who publishes stories that no one else in the lame-stream, liberal, pro-china, kumbaya-singing, multicultural, can't-we-all-just-get-along, its-a-small-world-after-all media seems to want to publish.

He published the recent story about the mysterious freighter leaving a North Korean port (that turned out to have SCUDS) a full week before the rest of the press even heard about it. I seek his stories out.

[tallhappy]

I actually think you are the one with an agenda.

[staytrue]

This is what I said "This may or may not be true, but I would not take Gertz's word for it." Here I have said that the story may or may not be true which I have no idea and will conclude nothing.

I will say again that the author exposes his bias with this statment that is not attributed to anyone but himself and is his conclusion and speculation and spin only.

"The transfer itself is an indication that China's government, contrary to some public statements, is unwilling to support U.S. efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear problem, said administration security officials"

You want to agree with gertz so you automatically assume I have an agenda and that gertz is clean, unbiased, without an agenda and totally objective simply because his conclusions are your conclusions. The fact that someone agrees with you does not make him right, or unbiased. Maybe gertz is right or maybe he is wrong, but he definitely has a bias and an agenda.

Generally, people will judge the quality of someone's writing and logically abilities solely on the extent to which the writer agrees with what the reader wants to hear. College professors do this all the time as a well written and argued conservative piece will get graded lower than a poorly written liberal piece. Just because college professors do this, does not mean that we have to too.

Gertz either absently mindedly omitted the attribution and/or supporting facts for his statement or he has an agenda and bias. I can not see something that is not there, so I must conclude until proven otherwise that in this article, the author has bias.

[DoctorMichael]

This is what I said "This may or may not be true, but I would not take Gertz's word for it." Here I have said that the story may or may not be true which I have no idea and will conclude nothing.

I will say again that the author exposes his bias with this statment that is not attributed to anyone but himself and is his conclusion and speculation and spin only.

"The transfer itself is an indication that China's government, contrary to some public statements, is unwilling to support U.S. efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear problem, said administration security officials"

You want to agree with gertz so you automatically assume I have an agenda and that gertz is clean, unbiased, without an agenda and totally objective simply because his conclusions are your conclusions. The fact that someone agrees with you does not make him right, or unbiased. Maybe gertz is right or maybe he is wrong, but he definitely has a bias and an agenda.

Generally, people will judge the quality of someone's writing and logically abilities solely on the extent to which the writer agrees with what the reader wants to hear. College professors do this all the time as a well written and argued conservative piece will get graded lower than a poorly written liberal piece. Just because college professors do this, does not mean that we have to too.

Gertz either absently mindedly omitted the attribution and/or supporting facts for his statement or he has an agenda and bias. I can not see something that is not there, so I must conclude until proven otherwise that in this article, the author has bias.

Sorry. With all respect, I disagree.

If anything, your reply denotes YOUR bias.

[Carry_Okie]

The transfer itself is an indication that China's government, contrary to some public statements, is unwilling to support U.S. efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear problem, said administration security officials.

"China is working with the United States to make certain that we can resolve the situation with North Korea peacefully and diplomatically, and that is being done in concert with South Korea, and Japan and Russia, as well," Mr. Fleischer said.

What's with the diplomatic nice-nice here? These thugs are trying to get us killed without looking like they have their finger on the trigger.

It is indeed a world war.

[FreeSpeechZone]

Freedom or Free Trade???

[Carry_Okie]

Free trade assumes a taxpayer-funded military subsidy by which to enforce contracts and conduct safe transit.

[staytrue]

After rereading the article, I think I have no idea what I'm talking about. Gertz does say that the material can be used for other purposes and cites Fleisher who makes statements that disagrees with the other people in the article. Perhaps it is my bias showing and we all have to watch out for that as seeing bias in yourself is possibly the most difficult thing to do.

[DoctorMichael]

............. I think I have no idea what I'm talking about..............

Can I just say a few words about Gertz to maybe clear this whole thing up?

First of all, though: Being in Charlottesville, VA I have purchased the WashTimes for the last 10 years despite insults from my colleagues and insinuations about my Moonie-ness. More bluntly: I am a loyal reader of this newspaper. THAT is my bias.

That said, I DO search out Gertz's column and articles. I have found him to be right more often than not and he presents facts that no one else seems to be privy to. How does he get these 'facts'? It has been my impression that he has "SOURCES" within the US military and intelligence community that "feed" him stories. This is just the journalistic game, straight up; No BS. (Ever hear of Woodward and Bernstein? Someone fed them too.)

When the US military and intelligence community wishes to 'send a message' they 'leak' what they know to a trusted journalist. They pick of course a sympathetic ear. They would not pick a communist-loving, America-hating liberal. More often than not they pick Gertz. He in turn publishes it and usually includes in his article a statement to the effect: ".......unnamed CIA/Pentagon sourses yesterday said that........". Voila! The message is sent: "We are watching you. We KNOW what you are doing".

This is exactly what happened 3 weeks ago when his 'sources' informed him of the mysterious freighter that had just left a North Korean port. The US military and intelligence community sought to send a message to the scumbag, commie, WMD-proliferating NKs: "We are watching you. We KNOW what you are doing".

A week later the freighter was boarded. Surprize, surprize.

At least to those who had not been reading Gertz.

You can be sure that the Ambassador to China sitting in his high-rent-district-residence was on the secure phone this morning after having had the usual US morning papers delivered to him. He reported to the Politburo what he had read in Gertz's article.

The message has been sent.