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North Korea and Iran - Case Studies Of Senator John Forbes Kerry's Profound Ignorance Of Nuclear Nonproliferation.

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No one disputes that a North Korea with nuclear weapons - whether to use or sell - is a very scary prospect.

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If North Korea chooses to use their weapons, their targets could range (on the conservative side, assuming delivery by missile, bomber, or deep in the hold of a freighter) from:

-???????? just over the Demilitarized Zone into Seoul (taking out both the government of the Republic of Korea - "South Korea" - and the US Eighth Army's headquarters units);

-???????? to Japan (having fired a missile over Japan, the North Koreans have made their point - it wouldn't be difficult for them to adjust their missiles to hit Japan with something nasty in their nosecones);

-???????? to any seaport on Earth, including those of the United States, assuming delivery by freighter and the availability of "supergrade," low Pu-240 content plutonium to North Korea with a low enough neutron flux that detecting a bomb using it from inside a 40-foot container would be difficult to impossible;

-???????? to even less rational targets, say, if Kim Jong-Il decided to foment trouble between (for example) China and Taiwan, or China and Vietnam, or China and the Philippines, or China and Japan (you get the general idea) by using one of his nukes in a way that suggests one innocent party had nuked the other innocent party - what is known in arms control circles as "catalytic war."

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What John Kerry is disputing, at least in the first debate with President Bush, is that we have exhausted all possible ways to dissuade Kim Jong-Il from (a) making nuclear weapons in the first place and (b) waving the things around in a threatening manner in order to extort money and other foreign aid - swag - from prosperous neighboring states and other countries with large stakes in a peaceful Western Pacific Rim, like China and the United States of America.

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In fact, John Kerry wants to sweep the carefully-constructed multi-party nuclear nonproliferation regime, in which most of the people who have a vital interest in containing North Korea (assuming that the Chinese aren't putting us on about this, and we sort of have to do that) are already in the loop, off the table in favor of bilateral talks with the North Koreans.

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The most obvious question - Why??

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As ineffectual as the multi-party talks (which Kerry seems to think are a cure-all everywhere but North Korea) seem to be, we've tried every other permutation of talking nicely to North Korea.?

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We've also tried threats - and the only threat that might really get Kim Jong-Il's attention, us using a bunker-busting nuke to zap him wherever he hides - or even better, take out his nuclear weapons and other WMD toys - is the one that Kerry loudly announced he was going to get rid of the second he took office.? John Kerry, Brainiac, discarding a pair of aces that we might need later on. Whose payroll is this jerk on anyway?

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The truth is that Kim Jong-Il seems to think he can hang around the Korean Peninsula and mug other countries by threatening to (a) nuke them or (b) sell nukes to people like Osama bin Laden who might nuke them.? Neither possibility is acceptable, so we pay.

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Kerry's right in one obvious thing - the current way of dealing with North Korea isn't working.? But he's dead wrong on every other opinion he's offered:

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-???? "bunker-busting nukes" offer us added - and perhaps badly needed - flexibility in being able to kill Kim Jong-Il and/or his nuclear stockpile without killing thousands of his innocent countrymen with the collateral damage that either area bombing or medium-yield nuclear warheads delivered by cruise missile or B-2 would cause.

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John Kerry doesn't see that or doesn't care - to placate Kerry's radical-left constituency, the bunker-busters have to go.? Kerry and the lefties he's catering to are immoral cretins on that issue, playing political games with our national security and the lives of countless innocent Korean bystanders;

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-???? Bilateral talks are a giant step backwards from the multiparty talks now in progress - especially in the unlikely event that Kerry means what he says about "global tests" and consulting with our allies and "partners."??

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John Kerry or whatever witling he sends to Pyongyang for negotiations will have to run around "consulting" with China, Japan, South Korea - all the people who now are in the loop from the get-go - every time that Kim Jong-Il makes a new demand, proposes another foreign-aid scam, or reneges on another agreement.

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There's also the lousy record Democrats in general have in dealing with North Korea and other would-be WMD proliferators.?

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Frankly, Jimmy Carter (who just gets worse and worse at making deals for America as time goes on) gave the store away during the Clinton administration, committing us and our negotiating partners to give Kim Jong-Il a lot of real stuff - oil, food, even several "peaceful" nuclear reactors to supply gigawatts to North Korea's puny industrial sector (more about that later) in exchange for... as it turns out, nothing.?

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Kim Jong-Il revealed - ta da! - a short while ago that his government was still very much in the nuclear weapons industry, and had nuclear weapons with plutonium which had to have been made - guess when? - on Clinton's watch.

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The Democrats have had their chance and been proven to be gullible clods at every turn.

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If Bush did anything wrong, it was in not repudiating Clinton's agreements as soon as possible and informing the North Koreans that any attack on our allies or strategic partners using nuclear or other special weapons would elicit the immediate destruction of the North Korean government and its facilities, using whichever weapons we find appropriate to the task.

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We also have the Airborne Laser Laboratory, a 747 with a huge weapons-grade laser inside, which was built to destroy ballistic missiles in boost phase.? Combined with Predator and other overhead imaging assets, the ABL is tailor-made for the North Korea problem - in a crisis situation, it can deploy from Japan and knock down North Korean missiles with any warhead before they escape North Korean territory.

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Of course, this is another program opposed at every step of its evolution by the Democratic candidate for President.? Way to go, Einstein!

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We don't have to indulge Kim Jong-Il's lunacy, because even with early-stage nukes and delivery systems he's still the Webelos den leader threatening the local cops with his dad's .22 squirrel rifle.?

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The only bilateral talks we should be thinking about are between our Joint Chiefs of Staff and the North Korean General Staff, about the puny, smoldering ashtray they're about to have for a country and how much better it would be if someone over there just took Kim Jong-Il out and shot him.

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But those are just my thoughts on the matter.

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-???? Kerry wants to give the Iranians nuclear fuel, just as Carter and Clinton wanted to do for North Korea.

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????? Let that statement sink in for a few minutes.? The Iranians have a Russian-designed and built reactor that is very efficient at making two things: electricity and weapons-grade plutonium.? Kerry wants to sell them fuel for it.

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????? Logically, is there any other word to describe Kerry at this point apart from "moron"?

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????? Technical background for those not clued in: (including Kerry, apparently): ?

-???????? Nuclear reactors, even "peaceful" ones, all make plutonium as a by-product!?

-???????? Plutonium is what you make nuclear bombs with!

-???????? We can't stop Iran from making nukes, but WE SHOULDN'T HELP THEM, SHOULD WE?

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Electing John Kerry President of the United States would be like handing a fully loaded assault rifle with grenade launcher to a chimpanzee.?

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No, that would only kill a relative few people.? I'm just stumped for an adequate metaphor to describe (shudder) a hypothetical Kerry Presidency.? A lying, clueless charlatan with control over the largest nuclear arsenal on Earth??

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No popular image even comes close to describing that - unless it's Martin Sheen's first time playing the President of the United States.

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In a prophetic dream sequence in The Dead Zone, Martin Sheen's character, an unprincipled Senator who lied, blackmailed and tortured his way into office, becomes President and bullies the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff into authorizing a mass ICBM launch.?? No consultation, no backing off and thinking about things - just turn that Swift Boat into enemy fire!

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How bizarre that Stephen King, who (as I understand from his essays) is somewhere out to the left of Ralph Nader politically, should have predicted what a John Kerry presidency could be like!

John Kerry inadvertently gave an issue away to President Bush - nuclear nonproliferation. It's an issue on which Kerry betrayed a fair bit of unforgivable ignorance for a Presidential candidate, and which he should just have made a quick stabbing attack rather than expose how little he knows on the subject.

Kerry made a long, rambling indictment about Bush's supposed failure to secure a huge amount of special nuclear material (although Kerry drifted off later in the debate and referred to the material as "nukes" - what is this stuff you're on about, Senator, special nuclear material or fully-formed nuclear weapons?) in the former Soviet Union.

Then Kerry wrapped up with some red meat for his looney-left constituents - these horrible "bunker-busting nukes" we don't need but Bush might (gasp) use! Kerry probably shored up any softness in his "loony-left but haven't defected to Nader" voter segment with that last maneuver, but nothing else.? Never mind that a bunker-busting nuke might come in handy for killing Kim "Dr. Evil" Jong-Il in North Korea, which Kerry implied might have been a better use of money than invading Iraq, a while back.

Bush responded equably with an accounting of what his administration has done, including a substantial increase in funding for acquisition of former Soviet special nuclear material compared to the Clinton administration, then went on to skewer Kerry for wanting to undo what little progress we've made in causing North Korea to disarm (these problems being largely due to the combined ineptness of Madeleine Albright, Jimmy Carter, the Clinton State Department and the Democratic Party in general for having given the North Koreans what they need to stabilize their grip over their starving people in return for an unstable, unverifiable, unsafe - and we now know, non-existent nuclear nonproliferation regime in North Korea).

Could have been a big win for the W, if he'd just expanded on all the things Kerry's party did to make North Korean nuclear terrorism a fact.

And then... John Kerry revealed that he either doesn't know anything about nuclear proliferation or plans to become an even less competent Globocop than he says George W. Bush is by failing to make the crucial distinction the President made several times, between:
- nuclear proliferation among nation-states and
- nuclear proliferation among terrorist groups.?

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Trying to limit nuclear proliferation among terrorist groups makes the world safer. Bush cannot be faulted for not trying on this score - unless the person faulting the President is a reflexive liar who wants to replace him.

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In Thursday's debate, we saw a gap that could prove disastrous if Kerry is elected and forces his misunderstanding of how nuclear proliferation works on nuclear policy-making in his administration.

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During the debate, the President displayed a subtle but very firm grasp on the distinction between keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists and the more contentious issue of limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons among nations that do not yet have them.

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With his repeated and purposeful emphasis on terrorist nuclear weapons during the debate, the President showed that he understands the difference - for example - between a nuclear-armed Muslim country like Pakistan and a terrorist group like Al-Qaeda.??

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Having raised the topic of nuclear nonproliferation, Kerry failed to demonstrate that he had a clue about the realities of nuclear physics and nonproliferation treaties - which have made the proliferation of nuclear weapons inevitable in this new century.?

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Worldwide nuclear proliferation has been underway for a while, thanks to decades of misguided policies regarding the dissemination of nuclear technology, and a global climate of fear.? At this late date, it's doubtful that the proliferation of nuclear weapons from nation to nation can be stopped, or even limited in more than a cosmetic manner.

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As it stands now and has stood since its inception, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (or "NNPT," for short) has had a loophole that a semi-trailer truck could sail through at highway speeds without as much as losing paint.

"Non-nuclear weapon states" (ones that certify to the International Atomic Energy Agency that they don't own any completed nuclear weapons or anticipate making any in the future) are entitled to buy all the "peaceful nuclear technology" they can afford from other signatories to the NNPT - like the US, Germany, Brazil, the UK and France.

Unfortunately, while it's not easy to extract plutonium from spent fuel used in "peaceful" nuclear reactors, it's do-able. There effectively is no such thing as a completely "peaceful" nuclear reactor, because its operator can get at least a bit of plutonium out of the fuel after the reactors run a while. The issue isn't a matter of not getting any plutonium out of the used rods, but how efficiently you get it, and how much excess neutron source and other bad things are in what plutonium you get.

After a "non-nuclear weapon state" has accumulated enough plutonium to make a nuclear weapon or two (for tactical purposes, you'd want more than that) - or at any time - it can perfectly legally decide that its "overriding national security interests" are threatened by continued participation in the NNPT. 90 days after it has given notice of this finding to the IAEA, it may withdraw from the NNPT and start making nuclear weapons.

This is how India and Pakistan joined the Nuclear Bomb Owners' Club - legally, but having misled the IAEA and thus rest of the world about their ultimate intentions all the while they were buying nuclear reactors and fuel from outside, and making secret copies of the "legal" reactors they now knew how to build somewhere out of the IAEA's sight. Brazil and Argentina were very briefly in the Club this way, then their leaders decided that they didn't need nuclear weapons as much as they needed other things, like cordial relations with the United States - and re-invested accordingly.

Most of the "We Have Nukes Club," including Israel, our most useful ally in the Middle East, Great Britain, France, China, for about 15-20 years the South Africans, the Russians and we ourselves just went out and made nuclear weapons without asking permission. We needed the things to destroy Tojo and/or Hitler, Russia needed them so we didn't decide they were "next" when Stalin decided to try to expand his Soviet empire, and everyone else seems to have had various self-esteem issues.

The South Africans and Israelis are the only members of the "Aw, Hell, Let's Get a Nuke Club" with actual reasons for wanting to have some, like the constant danger of being overrun by fanatical Arabs or other People Who Were There Before Us.

But in the 21st Century, more and more countries are either going to massage the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to get their nukes legally or just buy the things from the nuclear arms bazaar stretching from both Koreas to Iran, possibly as far west as Libya or even Brazil.

The job of the United States and Whoever's Speaking to Us This Year will be to casually look at other countries' nuclear weapons and drop a remark like "Cool warheads. Love the job you did on the initiator stage - didya use polonium there, or just rely on source flux from the Pu-240 in your fissile?"

"Hey, hate to harsh your deal, dude, but you do know that we will make you into glass roadside curios if you as much as threaten anyone with this baby, right? Thanks for understanding, dude. See ya around.... " In other words, we're going to have to act like REAL cops in rough neighborhoods.

The US essentially did this very thing to Pakistan in the late 1980s or early 1990s - even bringing a mock-up of the weapon Pakistan's Dr. A.Q. Khan and his agency were building to Pakistani leaders, based on intelligence estimates about Pakistan's nuclear technology purchases and technical expertise from the Department of Energy's top-secret nuclear spook shops near Livermore, CA.

So this is actually how the process works - as opposed to what Clinton and Clowns did later in North Korea, which didn't work.

That's the part John Kerry doesn't seem to get - that most of the UN General Assembly will probably have nukes in a few years, and that preventing nuclear proliferation among nation-states in this new century will involve John Kerry out in the tidal barrens forbidding the water from rising and ruining his nice war-on-terror-losing slacks and Topsiders.

If we want to maintain global credibility, all we can do is punish actual crimes, not restrict availability of the newest national fashion accessory. On the global street, a homemade 20-kiloton nuke is going to be the TEC-9 of world street cred.

And John Kerry's union thugs are going to be way outclassed in the job of taking those puppies out of the hands of Libya, and Somalia, and the Sudan, and... let's just say that Kerry wouldn't be dealing with middle-aged real estate agents and 3-year old girls any more.

The President, on the other hand, was focused from the minute he fielded Kerry's remark about nuclear nonproliferation on the part he could do something about - nukes in the hands of terrorists. Al-Qaeda and their likes have no national status, no sovereignty issues to consider - we can kill them where we find them. And three times during the debate, Bush stayed on that message - going after terrorist nukes, period.?? Kerry didn't take the hint, because he didn't have the necessary clue.

Keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists is not going to be easy to do, but that conceptually simple goal is much more feasible than trying to turn the world into a mostly disarmed Massachusetts, as Kerry implies he'll be able to do with his pie-in-the-sky global coalitions and his magic nuclear nonproliferation wand - the device that will make evil countries cave in without the use of force or the majorities and lack of Permanent Member vetoes in the UN Security Council the use of force would entail.

Think we have problems with our GIs coming home dead now? Just wait until John Kerry sends them into Iran to disarm the nuclear weapons complex at Bushehr.

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John Kerry has gotten in way over his FiberGlas^TM pompadour on the subject of nuclear nonproliferation.