Here is some stuff from the Times this morn. Anybody feeling a little panicked can relax for a while. The letters are good too. I'm not so scared right now, but I am eager to pound away at the idiot foreign policy. The GOP is a world wide nightmare. We can boot them this november.
Even if Device Was Flawed, Test Crossed a Threshold
By Greg Miller and Karen Kaplan
Times Staff Writers
October 10, 2006
WASHINGTON — Shock waves emanating from North Korea on Monday probably came from the explosion of a nuclear device, but one that did not achieve its full potential because of a failure or a design flaw, U.S. intelligence officials and weapons experts said.
Analysts believe the explosion produced about 3% of the power of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki more than 60 years ago, raising questions about whether a bigger device malfunctioned, or the regime in Pyongyang was testing only a component of a larger weapon.
The combination of the low strength of the explosion and the failure in July of a missile test over the Sea of Japan is likely to reinforce intelligence assessments that North Korea remains years away from developing a nuclear warhead that could be fitted to a missile and delivered any significant distance, let alone to the shores of the United States.
Whole thing
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... -headlines
Bush policies triggered North Korean nuke
October 10, 2006
Re "N. Korea Declares Nuclear Test," Oct. 9
It is clear that the Bush administration has no desire to find a diplomatic solution to North Korea's nuclear testing. President Bush has ignored repeated offers by North Korea to hold talks about its nuclear policy. What hypocrisy! The U.S. demands that North Korea stop testing while we continue to expand our arsenal of thousands of nukes. North Korea is the world's eighth declared nuclear power, not the first. The only way to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons is for the U.S. to initiate global nuclear disarmament. That means banning all nuclear weapons in all countries.
TANJA WINTER
La Jolla
•
Suppose you were North Korea and President Bush put you into his "axis of evil," along with Iraq and Iran. You saw him invade Iraq, kill tens of thousands of its people and change its government. Then he began following the same pattern with Iran. Meanwhile, Bush refused to talk to you directly about your nuclear program. Wouldn't you develop and test a nuke to defend yourself? Thanks to Bush's dangerous policies, the chickens have come home to roost.
MARJORIE COHN
President-elect
National Lawyers Guild
San Diego
•
Since late 2002 — when the United States was still ratcheting up its rhetoric and getting ready to wage war on Iraq, when U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was flashing blurred pictures before the U.N. Security Council and when French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and France were the sole hope for sanity — it was widely predicted in international intelligence circles that a nuclear North Korea and a nuclear Iran would be the inevitable consequence of the Bush-led war on Iraq.
It was also inevitable that such a war on a largely secular state such as Iraq — which has not violated human rights much more than nations such as Pakistan, China, Russia and India — would set in motion a geographic expansion with a proportionate deepening of Islamic extremism and terrorism. Particularly as the epicenter of such terrorism and nuclear proliferation — Pakistan — was being entirely bypassed. As always, a hapless world must lie on a bed made by the United States and its staunch allies.
S. SUCHINDRANATH AIYER
Bangalore, India
?