North Korea Orders UN Nuclear Inspectors Out

Will we be bombing North Korea before Iran? With the move by North Korea to restart their nuclear reactor, there probably is at least a possibility that we will destroy the plant before nuclear fuel is added to prevent the release of radiation after an attack, which must be in somebody's playbook on how to handle this situation. As far as I can tell it is probably the case that North Korea never intended to "forever" end its' nuclear program, but the Bush administration didn't help any by refusing to take them off the state sponsors of terrorism list last summer as promised, so blame can be laid at both countries doorsteps. Now real serious negotiations need to ensue to stop the start up of the reactor, and they should start today!!

The story at Yahoo News by George Jahn, an Associated Press writer is:
North Korea barred U.N. nuclear inspectors from its main nuclear reactor on Wednesday and within a week plans to reactivate the plant that once provided the plutonium for its atomic test explosion, the chief U.N. nuclear inspector said.

The North ordered the removal of the U.N. seals and surveillance equipment from the Yongbyon reactor, a sign it is making good on threats to restart a nuclear program that allowed it to conduct a test explosion two years ago. But the North's moves could be motivated by strategy as well. It could use the year it would take to restart the North's sole reprocessing plant to wrest further concessions from the U.S. and other nations seeking to strip it of its atomic program.

Coming amid reports that that leader Kim Jong Il suffered a stroke, the nuclear reversal has fueled worries about a breakdown of international attempts to coax the North out of its confrontational isolation with most of the rest of the world. North Korea officials have "informed the IAEA inspectors that they plan to introduce nuclear material to the reprocessing plant in one week's time," said a statement citing Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The statement said he told the the IAEA board that — acting on a North Korean request — his inspectors removed all agency seals and surveillance equipment from the reprocessing plant and its immediate area, in "work that was completed today." ElBaradei also said the North Koreans barred the IAEA inspectors from further access to the plant. North Korea in recent days had already signaled it would break out of a six-nation disarmament-for-aid deal, announcing that it was making "thorough preparations" to start up Yongbyon.

"We believe that for the North Koreans to do so, it would only deepen its isolation," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday. U.S. diplomats are talking this week with other nations bargaining with the North during this week's gathering of the United Nations General Assembly. Rice sees her Russian counterpart later Wednesday. "Everyone knows what the path ahead is. The path ahead is for there to be agreement on verification protocol so that we can continue along the path of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. The North Koreans know that and so we'll continue working with our partners on what steps we might need to take," she said. And in Seoul, Foreign Ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young expressed deep concern. But the comments were measured, reflecting fears that harsh condemnation would backfire by accelerating the North's move to restore its nuclear capacities.

The agency has been monitoring the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, which were shut down and then sealed as part of a North Korean pledge to disable its nuclear program. That move was meant to be a step toward eventually dismantling Yongbyon in return for diplomatic concessions and energy aid equivalent to 1 million tons of oil under a February 2007 deal with South Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan. The accord hit a snag in mid-August when the U.S. refused to remove North Korea from its list of states that sponsor terrorism until the North accepts a plan to verify a declaration of its nuclear programs that it submitted earlier. The Yongbyon plant was under IAEA seals in December 2002 when the North decided to order IAEA inspectors out of the country and to restart its nuclear activities, after the unraveling of a deal committing the U.S. to help the country build a peaceful nuclear program.

North Korea subsequently quit the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in January 2003 and announced it had nuclear weapons a little more than two years later. A U.N. official who demanded anonymity for divulging confidential information said Wednesday that other nuclear sites in North Korea remained under IAEA purview. She also said agency seals remained on the spent fuel rods that were removed from Yongbyon under the terms of the deal.

The fuel rods are key to producing the plutonium the North would need to restart its weapons program by separating the fissile substance out of the material released once the rods are dissolved within the reactor. The U.N. official said the three-member IAEA team was expecting that the North Koreans would also soon ask the team to remove the seals from the thousands of fuel rods in storage. More than 60 percent of those rods had already been removed under the six-nation deal. North Korea had agreed in February 2007 to begin dismantling its nuclear program in exchange for aid and other concessions.

Scientists began disabling its reactor in November, and in June blew up the Yongbyon cooling tower in a dramatic show of its commitment to the pact. Eight of the 11 steps needed to disable the reactor were completed by July, North Korean officials said. But later that month, Washington made an additional request: detailed verification of the process, including soil samples and interviews with scientists. The U.S. pinned one of its concessions — removing North Korea from its list of nations that sponsor terrorism — on verification. North Korea rejected the demand, saying verification was never part of the deal, and threatened to pull out of the pact, if Washington continued pressing for verification.

A North Korean envoy confirmed on Friday that authorities had stopped disabling Yongbyon and intended to restart the facility. Experts say it would take about a year to restart the Yongbyon facilities after completely disabling it. Scientists reportedly have tested the reactor's ignition, and this week asked the IAEA to remove its seals.

Well have a Good Hump Day, as we have one more thing to worry about this week!! We will update this story as needed!!

Will Bush Bomb Iran?

I was just reading the following story at AlterNet, concerning the possibility of President Bush bombing Iran before he leaves office. This has been something that has been hinted at over the last few years, and would have already occurred if the war in Iraq had been successful when it was supposed to be. TIme has slipped by, and the time to bomb Iran is getting tighter and tighter. If Bush is going to attack, I think as this former CIA analyst that it will come in the late Summer or early Fall, but I also think that it will come after an Iranian "attack" of some sort against us directly, either here at home or at our troops in Iraq (which seems more likely) and will require a direct and immediate response.
This may not come to pass, but if it does, the following article may show how it might happen.

Bomb Iran? What's to Stop Bush?
By Ray McGovern, Consortium News. Posted June 20th, 2008.Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

It's crazy, but it's coming soon. The armed forces are working out details. Impeachment may be the only way to stop it.

Unlike the attack on Iraq five years ago, to deal with Iran there need be no massing of troops. And, with the propaganda buildup already well under way, there need be little, if any, forewarning before shock and awe and pox -- in the form of air and missile attacks -- begin.
This time it will be largely the Air Force's show, punctuated by missile and air strikes by the Navy. Israeli-American agreement has now been reached at the highest level; the armed forces planners, plotters and pilots are working out the details.
Emerging from a 90-minute White House meeting with President George W. Bush on June 4, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the two leaders were of one mind:
"We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat. I left with a lot less question marks [than] I had entered with regarding the means, the timetable restrictions, and American resoluteness to deal with the problem. George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and intends to act on that matter before the end of his term in the White House."
Does that sound like a man concerned that Bush is just bluff and bluster?
A member of Olmert's delegation noted that same day that the two countries had agreed to cooperate in case of an attack by Iran, and that "the meetings focused on 'operational matters' pertaining to the Iranian threat." So bring 'em on!
A show of hands please. How many believe Iran is about to attack the U.S. or Israel?

link to full story

Should We Really Bomb Iran?

Good Saturday morning! I was just reading a story by Larry Beinhart, on AlterNet, from today which asks and answers the Question~Should We Really Bomb The Iranians:

The author explains, "Iranians are among the most gracious and hospitable people I've ever met."
I'm in Shiraz, on the way to Esfahan.

It's good to get out of gray, smoggy Tehran, one of the least photogenic cities in the world, where black is the new black, from the hejabs on down.

One of the attractions of Shiraz is the tomb of Hafez, a Persian poet from the 14th century. It's thronged at night. Iranians bring flowers, then stand or kneel beside the sarcophagus and recite his poems. My personal reaction is, this is how writers should always be treated.

Iranians are among the most gracious and hospitable people I've ever met.
The question, of course, is whether we should bomb these people?


In America today, we tend to see things in Manichaean terms. That is, we divide things into absolute opposites, light and dark, good and evil, us and them.

We could, if we went back far enough, blame that on them. The word Manichaean refers to the Persian prophet Mani (from around 250 AD). The whole notion of good and evil, with man in the middle, having to make a choice, then rewarded and condemned in an afterlife, goes back to an even earlier Persian prophet, Zoroaster, from around 1,000 BC. Those ideas entered Judaism during the Babylonian exile and the liberation of the Jews by Cyrus the Great of Persia, and from there into Christianity.

There are still Zoroastrians and Jews in modern-day Persia, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
These are people with a rich and varied history. A very humanistic history.
The question is, why should we bomb these people?
The answer is that they are part of the Axis of Evil!
Iranians are somewhat confused by that designation.

The United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, by a ragged group of conspirators called Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, headquartered in Afghanistan, where they were protected and nurtured by the Taliban. The Taliban were, and are, fanatical, fundamentalist Sunnis. They're the ones who put women in burkhas, those full-body coverings and veils; required men to be bearded; and banned all music, television, movies, photographs, statues, stuffed animals and dolls.
The Taliban came to power in 1996. They were supported by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
They were opposed by the Northern Alliance. The Northern Alliance was supported by Russia, India and, most of all, by Iran.

The United States was neutral from 1996 to 2001. After 9/11, we demanded that Afghanistan's Taliban government hand over Osama bin Laden. When it refused, we entered the war, primarily with air power, in support of the Northern Alliance. As Ray Takeyh wrote in Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic:
American links with the Northern Alliance were fragmentary ... Afghan opposition groups [were] suspicious of the United States. Tehran's mediation proved essential ... Iran also provided intelligence ... agreed to rescue American pilots ... allowed some 165,000 tons of U.S. food aid to traverse its territory ... [after the fighting] Iran was instrumental in crafting the interim Afghan government.
Iran's president Khatami said, "Afghanistan provides the two regimes [the United States and Iran] with a perfect opportunity to improve relations."
The Bush administration embraced the people who had given the Taliban and Al Qaeda safe haven (Pakistan) and money (Saudi Arabia and the Emirates) and declared Iran, who aided us in our war against the Taliban, as part of the Axis of Evil.

The question is, shouldn't we bomb them because, in addition to being one of the two remaining parts of the Axis of Evil, they are part of the Islamo-Fascist Alliance to rule the world?
We moved on from the pleasures of Shiraz, to Esfahan which is a treasure. A miracle.
In the 16th century, when Shah Abbas I made it the capital of the Safavid dynasty, it was probably the greatest city in the world. It has been designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, along with the Great Wall of China, the Statue of Liberty, the Taj Mahal, and the historic center of St. Petersburg.

There, we connected with a group of 20- and 30-something Iranians, all of whom spoke excellent English, and went out to dinner with them. They were students, medical professionals, and small-business people, four men and three women. Because we were in public, the women wore the required headscarves but managed to make them fashion accessories. They constantly adjusted them with graceful gestures that drew attention to their beauty and femininity. It is worth pointing out that while women in Iran are not as free as in America or Western Europe, they have more freedom and participate more fully in public life than in the rest of the Islamic World.
The conversation was lively and fluid and touched on politics, world affairs, the regime, America, religion and even disbelief.

In the first ten minutes of almost any conversation with an Iranian, he or she will point out that they are not Arabs, they're Persians. They may even say that they don't like Arabs, or, more emphatically, "I hate f**king Arabs."
They liked Americans. They didn't like the regime. They didn't think they could do anything about the current government.


The question is, shouldn't we bomb them to help good people like that? Won't bombing them make them blame their leaders for forcing us to attack them, so they will rise up and change the regime?
A lot of people dislike the regime. And with good cause.
At times it seemed that this was a country where everybody went to prison. Everyone who thought, wrote, had opinions, was political, who had property that could be taken -- save for fervent supporters of the regime -- had gone to prison. Or worse, been tortured and executed.

People who had lovers and who danced, possessed illegal music, stood up for academic freedom, and were members of minority religions or clergy who didn't support Khomenie's radical re-interpretation of Shia'a Islam, were arrested, harassed, beaten, and thrown out of windows, and lost their jobs and careers, and went to prison. The country also has inflation, unemployment, underemployment and low wages. Heroin addiction is widespread and growing. Opium use is routine, even, according to gossip on the street, in the highest levels of government. Corruption is rampant and everyone knows it.

However, even their opponents gave the regime credit for certain things. Making Iran self-sufficient. Keeping a country of Persians, Kurds, Turkomans, Azerbaijanis, Pashtuns and Arabs together in spite of the centripetal forces of ethnic and tribal loyalties. It's a safe place. There's very little street crime. There are no car bombings. No terrorist incidents. No kidnappings.

An underlying thread became clear through all these conversations. The number one hot-button political issue in Iran is standing up to foreign powers. Their history, since Alexander the Great invaded and burned Persepolis, is one of being invaded, threatened, exploited and subverted by outsiders. As for the 20th century, the British exploited their natural resources, then the United States overthrew their democracy and put a compliant king in charge, and as soon as he was deposed, they were invaded by Saddam Hussein. He received support from America and other Western nations. That war lasted eight years, and Iran had somewhere between 750,000 and 1 million casualties.

The notion that bombing Iran will make the people overthrow the Supreme Leader and the Council of Guardians makes as much sense as imagining that a new 9/11 will make the American people thank Al Qaeda for their inspiration, then rise up and overthrow our president and senate with a government more receptive to Islamic ways.

There is one real argument. It is that if Iran gets nuclear weapons, it will use them. Specifically on Israel.

Iran is, ultimately, ruled by the Supreme Leader. He is deemed to be infallible. In 2003 he issued a fatwa, a ruling of holy law, against the development and use of nuclear weapons. This is when, according to the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, Iran stopped such developments.

Iran claims it only wants nuclear energy. Countries that produce nuclear energy include Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, South Africa, Czech Republic, Mexico and Brazil. At least 56 countries have nuclear research reactors.

So the argument goes back to intentions. That Iran is more dangerous than Russia, more of an enemy than China, more unstable than Pakistan, more warlike than Israel, and more likely to have aggressive leaders who will launch a pre-emptive war than the United States.

If they had nuclear weapons and used them, especially if they used them aggressively, as a first strike, then Israel and the United States would retaliate with far more force and effectively destroy Iran. What we are likely to have in reality is the sort of mutual stand-off we had with the Soviet Union for 50 years.

In addition to Esfahan's astonishing beauty, its historical value, its vibrant culture, arts and crafts, it is home to a nuclear research reactor and it's where uranium is processed toward producing nuclear fuel.


If Iran is bombed, Esfahan will undoubtedly be a target. One of hundreds. Those lovely people that I had dinner with will likely die. If not them, their parents, children, brothers and sisters. The student of English who sat and talked to me about Hafez for two hours. The man who makes the hand-printed table clothes in the bazaar. The mason working on the reconstruction of the great mosque.

I like to think that America can somehow overcome what's happened these last seven years. The unprovoked invasion of another country, the embrace of torture, the assault on civil liberties, the looting of our own economy, the failure to rescue the people of New Orleans and to rebuild it. Somehow.

But bombing Iran because it postures and provokes on the world stage will be a disaster that we won't live down. We might try to say it's something that our leaders did, we had no part in it, we could not stop them. If that's true, and it may be true, that's sadder still.

Something to think about~~Hopefully, someone in Washington is reading this story and asking the same question~before We Bomb Iran!!

Did Bomb And Karma Catch Up With Terrorist

Is the death of Imad Mughniyah a karmic act for his past deeds, or just another assassination of someone to take attention away from real threats, and terrorists.

It took the assassination of Imad Mughniyah for the world to finally get a glimpse of what this most elusive and ruthless of Islamic militants actually looked like. He lived in the shadows of Middle Eastern violence his entire adult life, allegedly altering his features through plastic surgery, travelling on an Iranian diplomatic passport on unscheduled flights and never giving interviews or releasing video-taped statements. The only pictures of Mughniyah, 45, publicly available were a few grainy black and white snaps from the 1980s, portraying a serious, sallow-faced young man with a black pointed beard.

Hours after announcing his death in a car bomb blast in a Damascus suburb, the Shi'ite Hizballah organization's television channel, Al Manar, broadcast a more recent picture of Mughniyah. It showed a plump, middle-aged man wearing combat fatigues and a forage cap and sporting a thick beard streaked with grey. His wire-framed spectacles gave him a benign, almost professorial, look, belying the fact that Mughniyah stood accused of killing more Americans than any other militant before the attacks of September 11, 2001.

It will be interesting to see "who" actually killed this "terrorist", and also to find out if all of the events he was blamed for committing, were actually his handiwork, or if he was just a convenient scapegoat to drop everything on. We shall watch and report if anything substantive comes of the investigation!! So did Karma catch up with this alleged "terrorist", or was it just a bomb??!!


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