Author:
Publication: WorldNetDaily.com
Date: December 28, 2002
URL: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30219
The warhawks have recently had to
revise their shucking and jiving routine on television. It turns out that
Kim Jung Il has nukes and Saddam Hussein doesn't.
Until recently, the warhawk jive
was that Saddam had resumed his nuke programs as soon as the International
Atomic Energy Agency inspectors departed Iraq four years ago. They said
Saddam would give those nukes to terrorists with orders to nuke you in
your jammies.
But, the IAEA inspectors are back
in Iraq and will shortly report to the U.N. Security Council that they
can find no evidence that Saddam has resumed his nuke programs.
In any case, even Iraqi defectors
insist that Saddam would not give nukes to terrorists. He would closely
hold them to deter U.S. and Israeli aggression - and to save his donkey.
The warhawks implicitly agree. They
have to invade Iraq, now, because they dare not, once Saddam acquires a
few nukes. And they don't dare invade North Korea because Kim Jung Il already
has nukes.
But you're right to worry more about
terrorists getting nukes from Kim than from Saddam. North Korea may be
the only country in the world that would make nukes a "cash crop" - to
be sold to the highest bidder, including terrorists.
At the moment, their chief cash
crop is ballistic missiles. They developed from the basic Soviet Scud missile,
the 150 km-range Scud-B, the 500 km-range Scud-C, the 800 km-range Scud-D
and the 1,300 km-range NoDong. They are reported to have more than 500
Scud derivatives deployed opposite South Korea and Japan, and have sold
hundreds of them to Egypt, Iran, Libya, Syria and Yemen for cash. Most
ominously, they have recently sold ballistic missiles to Pakistan in exchange
for uranium- enrichment technology and equipment.
Kim recently admitted to us this
exchange, but Pakistan reportedly told us about it several years ago.
Now, there was nothing illegal about
this on the part of Pakistan. Pakistan is not a signatory to the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, nor is it a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
Hence, Pakistan was under no obligation to tell the IAEA or anyone else
about the exchange.
But North Korea had signed the NPT
in 1985 and had executed in 1992 a Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA covering
a Soviet- built reactor in operation and two under construction, a fuel-reprocessing
plant and a spent-fuel storage facility.
Under the terms of the Clinton-Carter
zillion- dollar bribe of 1994 - the so-called Agreed Framework - North
Korea was to receive two free 1,000 MWe nuclear power plants in return
for "freezing" their safeguarded plutonium- producing reactors and related
facilities.
The plutonium-producing reactors
used natural uranium as fuel. North Korea has uranium-ore deposits as well
as mining and milling facilities for producing natural uranium fuel.
The Clinton-Carter reactors require
enriched uranium as fuel. It is conceivable that North Korea sought uranium-enrichment
technology and equipment from Pakistan so as to be self- sufficient when
it came to reactor fuel supply.
Whatever their intent, under the
IAEA Safeguards Agreement, North Korea was obligated to inform the IAEA
about it, but didn't. Strangely enough, even though we knew North Korea
was in violation of its Safeguards Agreement - as well as with the Agreed
Framework - we didn't tell the IAEA, either.
However, for some reason we did
confront the North Koreans a few weeks ago and the kimchi promptly hit
the fan.
The North Koreans have not only
unilaterally cancelled the Agreed Framework, they have attempted to unilaterally
cancel the IAEA Safeguards Agreement. They have torn off the IAEA seals,
removed the IAEA padlocks, disabled the IAEA monitoring cameras and instruments
at all safeguarded facilities and have formally announced withdrawal from
the NPT.
They are restarting the 5 MWe plutonium-
producing reactor, reactivating the spent-fuel reprocessing plan and have
begun reprocessing the plutonium-containing spent fuel.
Now, Kim may - or may not - have
intended to enrich uranium for use in nukes. And, Kim may - or may not
- already have several plutonium nukes.
But he unquestionably will have
within in a few months enough weapons-useable plutonium to make 10 or 12
nukes, and the nukes and/or plutonium will be for sale to the highest bidder
if we don't do something.
What do the warhawks intend to do?
Why, invade Iraq, of course.
Fortunately, it will take more than
a new shucking and jiving routine by the warhawks to get you soccer-moms
to worry more about Saddam Hussein providing nukes to al-Qaida than Kim
Jung Il.
(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.)
