Free Republic

AN IRAQI scientist-turned-author says the most significant pieces of his country’s dormant nuclear programme were buried under a lotus tree in his backyard, untouched for more than a decade before the US-led invasion in 2003.But their existence, Dr Mahdi Obeidi writes in a new book, is evidence that the international community should remain vigilant as other countries try to replicate Iraq’s successes before the 1991 Gulf war to develop components necessary for a nuclear weapon. In The Bomb in my Garden, Dr Obeidi details Saddam’s quest for a nuclear bomb: "Although Saddam never had nuclear weapons at his disposal, the...

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps last week demonstrated the integration of a system that turns the Shihab-3 intermediate-range ballistic missile from a flying metal tube into a deadly weapon against Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States, reports Geostrategy-Direct, the global intelligence news service. The Shihab-3's problem has not been its range, but its accuracy. With a range of 1,400 kilometers, it can reach anywhere in Iraq, Israel and Saudi Arabia. But the missile, based on the North Korean No Dong, was not accurate. The Iranians appeared to have changed all that. Tehran has procured and integrated a Chinese missile...

/begin my summary N. Korea May Launch Nodong Missile: Asahi (Tokyo = Yonhap News) Kim Jong-hyun = There are signs that N. Korea would launch medium-range ballistic missile 'Nodong'(range: 1,300km) soon, according to Apr. 30 dispatch from Seoul by Asahi Shimbun. Using satellite(surveillance,) S. Korea and U.S. located the position where signs of missile launch has been detected, and indications are that the launch would be directed toward East Sea(Sea of Japan.) /end my summary

SDI: If you missed the news, which isn't hard given how poorly these things are covered, our "unproven" missile defense proved itself again last week, when a U.S. warship downed a simulated North Korean missile in flight.The test, conducted in Hawaiian waters by the Navy and the Department of Defense's Missile Defense Agency (MDA), was the 23rd firing by ships equipped with the Aegis ballistic missile defense system. It was the 19th success, including the shoot-down of a dead U.S. spy satellite last year. A short-range ballistic missile simulating a missile like North Korea's Nodongs or Scuds was fired from...

Breaking on Yahoo News in Japan (link). Begin my translation: Yonhap News reporting out of South Korea on Tuesday afternoon local, North Korea is preparing for a possible intermediate range misssile (or missiles) launch from its southern central Gangwon Province from the Kittaeryung area.... The South Korean military command has revealed this to Korean parlimentarians today. These intermediate range missile has the potential to any part of the territory of Japan. (Rodong Missiles) ....They previously had a range of 1300 kilometers, but since have be revised to have a range of 3000 kilometers. ....North Korean fired six missiles toward Japan...

North Korea already has the capacity to launch a nuclear missile strike against Seoul and Tokyo, even before the long-range rocket test that it is promising in the next few days, an international think-tank has reported.

BEIJING — North Korean leader Kim Jong-il told a visiting Chinese delegation that the communist nation didn't plan to conduct additional nuclear tests, a news report said Friday. Kim told Chinese envoy Tang Jiaxuan that "we have no plans for additional nuclear tests," Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unnamed diplomatic source in Beijing. Kim also expressed regret about his country's nuclear test to the delegation and said Pyongyang would return to nuclear talks if Washington backs off from its financial sanctions, a South Korean newspaper reported Friday.

Surprise! North Korea Is Acting Up Againby James Lileks It's a strange, sick world where one dinky nuclear test can knock the Mark Foley scandal off the front page. Is it really big news? North Korea's nuclear capability has been tacitly assumed for a few years, and learning they actually set one off is a bit like hearing Paris Hilton appeared unsteady as she left a club. Still, an actual nuclear explosion does focus the mind, and makes you wonder what comes next. Let history be our guide: First we had the Clinton talks, in which North Korea promised to...

Four days after North Korea tried to set off its first nuclear bomb, U.S. intelligence agencies think the blast detected by seismic sensors was a plutonium-fueled device that did not fully explode. "The working assumption is that what happened, more likely than not, was an attempted nuclear test that fell far short of being successful," said one U.S. official familiar with the latest intelligence assessment. There is still no confirmation that North Korea succeeded in creating a nuclear explosion, and so far no radioactive particles that would confirm a successful nuclear test have been detected. The Washington Times first reported...

The abbreviation for North Korea used by American military officers says it all: KFR, the Kim Family Regime. It is a regime whose demonization by the American media and policy makers has obscured some vital facts. North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, was not merely a dreary Stalinist tyrant. As defectors from his country will tell you, he was also a popular anti-Japanese guerrilla leader in the mold of Enver Hoxha, the Stalinist tyrant of Albania who led his countrymen in a successful insurgency against the Nazis. Nor is his son Kim Jong Il anything like the childish psychopath parodied...

Democrats have begun a desperate-yet-predictable effort to blame North Korea's nuclear aspirations on President George W. Bush's strident rhetoric. Despite their leftist cant, they seem remarkably uninterested in the "root causes" of Pyongyang's current nuclear brinksmanship: Bill Clinton's eight years of appeasement and the gullible cordiality of the South Korean government. Threats of a nuclear winter did not mix well with Clinton's sunny disposition. Clinton, who saw the domestic front thronged with "crises," refused to disturb his illusion of a post-Cold War world at complete peace under his watch. He had two private conversations with CIA Director James Woolsey in...

PANMUNJOM -- Spitting across the demarcation line that separates the two armies. Making throat-slashing hand gestures. Flashing their middle fingers. Trying to talk to the South Korean troops. North Korean troops in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas have been more boldly trying to provoke guards on the other side since the North claimed to have detonated a nuclear bomb Monday, a U.S. military spokesman said. "They're walking a little taller," Army Major Jose DeVarona of Fayetteville, N.C., told reporters during a tour of the zone Wednesday. "They're more confident about making contact." Still, he said the overall situation...

The French Defence Minister has cast doubts over the success of North Korea’s claimed nuclear test, saying that it produced an explosion so small that if indeed it was nuclear, it had been a failure.Michele Alliot-Marie said that although experts had not yet determined the precise cause of the explosion, French, American and other scientists had detected that it was of "relatively limited size." "In any case, if this was a nuclear explosion, it would be a case of a failed explosion," she said. Mme Alliot-Marie’s comments were the strongest yet from a senior Western policy-makers to suggest that the...

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea stepped up its threats aimed at Washington, saying it could fire a nuclear nuclear-tipped missile unless the United States acts to resolve its standoff with Pyongyang, the Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday from Beijing. Even if Pyongyang is confirmed to have nuclear weapons, experts say it's unlikely the North has a bomb design small and light enough to be mounted atop a missile. Their long-range missile capability also remains in question, after a test rocket in July apparently fizzled out shortly after takeoff. "We hope the situation will be resolved before an unfortunate incident...

The original Chinese document on this facility The picture of Lee Chun-Sun and the N. Korean missile Comment: The following is the English translation and shortened version of a korean article on the uranium enrichment facility of N. Korea in operation since '89. N. Korean Uranium Enrichment Facility (since '89) Revealed It is now revealed that N. Korean uranium enrichment facility is deep under the Chon-Ma Peak, 1,119m high from the sea level. The official name of this facility is Mt. Chon-Ma Powerplant to hide its real function. Two power generators from Kum-Chang Ri Powerplant were installed at this...

TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea appears to have conducted another nuclear test, Japanese national broadcaster NHK said on Wednesday.

MOSCOW, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- Russian military experts said Tuesday that North Korea has carried out a test of a nuclear weapon. "Defense Ministry technical means registered the nuclear explosion and a mistake here is impossible," Maj. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, who formerly headed a Russian military researcher center, told Interfax News Agency. "A nuclear explosion can be accurately distinguished from a conventional explosion, say the explosion of 100 tons of conventional explosives." While Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov also said that North Korea has become a nuclear power and called it "a serious blow" to non-proliferation, Russian President Vladimir Putin said...

SPECIAL EDITION October 10, 2006 | Episode #34North Korea: What Comes Next?Global Crisis Watch convenes a roundtable discussion on North Korea and the next possible steps with Rohan Gunaratna, Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, counterterrorism consultant and author of "My Year Inside Radical Islam," and Josh Manchester, Marine Reserve Officer and author of TheAdventuresofChester.com.Link: http://www.GlobalCrisisWatch.com/gcw/gcw_061010.mp3 21 minutes | 9.8 Megs Global Crisis Watch is an independent and weekly 30-minute current affairs and news podcast focusing on the Global War on Terror, the War of Ideas, and indigenous pro-democracy efforts around the world. Hosted by Richard Lafayette in...

"...there is strong information that makes us suspicious but we lack conclusive evidence that the intended purpose of the underground site is nuclear related." --US Ambassador Charles Kartman, 21 November 1998 [1] What is Kumchang-ri? Kumchang-ri is an underground site located northwest of Yongbyon, North Korea's frozen nuclear complex. It has been speculated that the site housed, or was intended to house a nuclear reactor or reprocessing facility.[2] Construction of Kumchang-ri is estimated to be complete within two to six years, depending on the amount of foreign assistance received.[3] North Korea continues to deny reports that the site is nuclear-related...

President Bush addresees the nation from the White House 09:45AM ET