Author: Gordon Prather
Publication: WorldNetDaily.com
Date: August 31, 2002
URL: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28793
For the past decade, the warhawks
have been itching to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein. The excuse
for the invasion - by the U.S.-led Gulf War Coalition - was to have been
Saddam's continued desire to have his very own nuke stockpile. But, alas,
the Gulf War Coalition was shredded back in December 1998, when Slick Willie
unilaterally attempted to depose Saddam with a cruise missile.
But then came the horror of Sept
11. Congress immediately authorized President Bush to wage War Against
Terrorism. Secretary Powell assembled a powerful international coalition
- including nearly all members of the defunct Gulf War Coalition - and
set about eradicating Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.
So, the warhawk excuse for the invasion
- by the U.S.-led WAT coalition - became Saddam's continued desire to have
a nuke stockpile. Except, now the warhawks argue that Saddam will give
his nukes, once he has got them, to Islamic terrorists, so that they can
nuke us in our jammies.
However, almost every member of
the WAT coalition has warned President Bush that there can be no invasion
of Iraq unless a definitive link can be established between Saddam and
the terrorists responsible for Sept 11.
So who cares if one more U.S.-led
coalition is shredded? Well, perhaps you should.
You see, the Islamic terrorists
and their nukes are in Pakistan - not Iraq. Any attempt to prosecute the
loose-nuke problem in Iraq may be counterproductive.
Recall that May 28, 1998, was a
red-letter day in the Islamic world. In response to Indian nuke tests earlier
that month, the Pakistanis successfully tested several sophisticated boosted,
highly-enriched uranium implosion nukes.
Implosion? Boosted?
It had been assumed that Pakistan
had a few gun-type nukes. In a gun weapon - like the Little Boy we dropped
on Hiroshima - you just shoot one sub-critical mass of Highly Enriched
Uranium at another sub-critical mass. It hardly needs testing. We never
tested the Little Boy, which contained about 140 pounds of HEU but weighed
about five tons.
In 1993, it had been revealed that
South Africa had developed an indigenous cradle-to-grave gun-type nuke
capability. They stockpiled a half-dozen such nukes, each requiring 120
pounds of HEU, and each weighing about one ton. The South African nukes
were much lighter than Little Boy, but still too heavy to be delivered
by intermediate-range ballistic missile.
Now, a critical mass of Pu-239 is
considerably less than a critical mass of U-235, and is, therefore, the
fissile material of choice for nukes. But a gun weapon can't be made with
Pu-239. The two sub-critical pieces of Pu-239 can't be assembled fast enough.
So, in an implosion device, a sub-critical sphere of Pu-239 is surrounded
by high-explosive shaped charges, and is driven super-critical by imploding
shock waves.
We discovered after the Gulf War
that Saddam had tried - but failed - to produce a U-235- based implosion
nuke. He had a design, but he never had the necessary U-235. His design
probably wouldn't have worked, anyway.
But Pakistan did have the necessary
U-235 and their design did work. Furthermore, the Pakistani nukes were
boosted, as are virtually all nukes currently in the U.S. stockpile. You
can read about boosting in the Cox Committee Report. It's the secret of
warhead miniaturization that some mole at Los Alamos is supposed to have
given the Chinese Commies. The Pakistanis claim their boosted nukes are
small enough to be delivered by ballistic missile and there is no reason
to doubt them.
How could the Pakistanis have developed
such a sophisticated cradle-to-grave nuke capability? You hear allegations
that the Chinese helped them, technically, and that the Saudis bankrolled
them.
Well, what we do know is that virtually
all members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference - including Saudi
Arabia - view the Pakistani nukes to be "Islamic" nukes. The OIC supports
Secretary Powell and the WAT- coalition efforts to keep Pakistan's military
dictator, Pervez Musharraf in power, and the Islamic nukes under his control.
But all OIC members vigorously oppose any invasion of OIC member Iraq.
If the warhawks disregard the opposition
of the OIC and the WAT coalition and invade Iraq on the pretext of keeping
the nukes Saddam doesn't have out of the hands of Islamic terrorists who
aren't in Iraq, the chances of those Islamic nukes that really are in Pakistan
falling into the hands of Islamic terrorists that really are in Pakistan
will go way up. So will your chances of getting nuked in your jammies.
(Physicist James Gordon Prather
has served as a policy implementing official for national security- related
technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and
Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the
Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served
as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry
Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member
of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather
had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New
Mexico.)
