Two stories struck me Monday, the one was a link on Juan Cole's "Informed Comment", pointing to a Reuters' news drop about serious malnutrition among millions of children in Iraq.The other was from the Danish Radio about the necessity of Denmark huddling under the American antimissile umbrella.
The Danish Foreign Minister said that if we found out that some terrorists or if some rogue state got a missile with a nuked warhead, I imagine we'd be pretty happy to be under an umbrella.
Well, that's "cutting it out in cardboard" as they say in Danish. Or, as they also say, "If, if my ass was glass".
Despite "24 Hours" and "Spooks" the actual likelihood of independent operators getting their dirty little grabbers on a nuke is about nil. Making one on your own is a bitch of a techie problem. No state leader, in particular a dictator who has a few of these high-tech penis extenders is going to share them with anybody. Holes like that would rather take them to bed and fondle them.
Getting a nuke and a rocket to deliver it is less likely than zero.
As for "rogue" states, I hope you know that this is the "code of the day" for Iran. As we all know, very soon, Iran will be producing weapons grade uranium at an alarming rate, right?
No, wrong!
The technology for extracting U235 from virgin uranium is not something done in a high school lab.
Did you see the headline that Iran was setting up an array with 3000 centrifuges with a plan for 50,000 that would spin off U235 like burgers coming off a McBarf griddle just before rush hour? Well, the first 50 they brought on-line started spinning asymmetric and blew up.
Having the Bomb is first and foremost a status and power symbol, a "Don't Tread on Me" warning. No state, rogue or otherwise, would give it away, or use it in a moment of pique -- well, the Codpiece might, but no sane or normally insane person would.
On top of all that, there are a number of ways to deliver mass death, including nukes, which, true to tell are not as dramatic as a MIRVed warhead screaming right of hell down from heaven, but still result in a big hole in the ground and lot of dying people envying those who were lucky to die in the first flash.
By the way, they dying will also be cursing their fearless leaders who scurry like roaches and rats for safety in their underground shelters.
In the meantime, children are dying in Iraq because of malnutrition and some of those who live will grow up lacking in some of their higher mental faculties because of dietary insufficiencies.
True, this happens elsewhere in the world -- but they are not all lands we have bombed, destroyed infrastructure, invaded, occupied and set on a course of social meltdown worse than anything the world has ever seen such that "civil war" is but a polite euphemism.
We did this. We let our leaders do this. We continue to let do things like this in our name, in the name of Liberty, Justice and Democracy.
The Lady of Light on the Island barfs every night at the thought of the rough beast being born even as I write -- but no one sees her agony.
If graveyard humor of the worst sort is what you like, then the funny thing is that the highly promoted, obscenely expensive antimissile shield is actually a high-tech Maginot Line which can be gone around by low-tech means I hinted at before.
Furthermore, Russia, despite the assurances that this weapon is not directed at either them or China, is for some reason nervous about it. I don't understand, don't they trust the word of Uncle Sam? Whatever, Russian generals have pointed out that the infra structure supporting the antimissile systems is easily taken out by the bombers they already have -- and they are building better ones...
The bottom line is that the US is throwing more money at military weapons and systems than the rest of the world combined. If your definition of a "rogue" state is a nation threatening, even planning to use nukes, then the US, I am terribly terribly sorry to say is a "rogue" state.
Meanwhile, children starve and the world is going to hell in a hot tub.
No comments:
Post a Comment