Terry Blanton wrote:
From: Jones Beene <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 2005/04/26 Tue PM 01:47:36 EDT
To: [email protected]
Subject: Heavyweight anachronism?
Something I do not understand . . . sources say Iran is producing heavy water. As I understand it, HW is used in the production of plutonium in a HW reactor. Sources also say that Iran is enriching Uranium. So, which is it? Are they building BOTH types of bombs?
Also, HEU for a bomb is 95% and 5% for a reactor. It should be an easy call to differentiate such a production facility.
It seems to me that the fact that we're totally tied down in Iraq (and that Iran whupped Iraq in the past and might be a little tougher to take on than Iraq was) is making it much harder for us to focus on the fact that they're obviously gearing up to make bombs.
Similarly, the fact that North Korea doesn't have any oil, coupled with the fact that we're already tied down in Iraq, makes it almost impossible for us to notice whatever it is they're doing over there.
Since Iraq had oil in abundance, and looked likely to be a pushover, it was amazingly easy to see that they were producing WMDs -- so easy, in fact, that we could see them even when they weren't there.
Beyond that, Iran has played a bit of a shell game with inspectors to assure that nobody gets hold of any of the stuff they've enriched, so there's no way to tell for sure whether it's 5%, 95%, or even actually enriched at all... hey, maybe they're just using those centrifuges for plasmapheresis after all. Wasn't there an incident where an entire facility vanished just before the inspectors got there? Nothing was left but bare dirt and some bulldozers.
I don't often agree with the current administration, but when they said Iran's desire to produce nuclear reactors to generate electricity didn't pass the "laugh test" I had to agree. There's no need for extensive proof that Iran is up to no good, since there's no other explanation for their interest in nuclear energy that makes any sense. But then we went and shot the wad in Iraq so here we are with the other two ends of the 3-pointed "axis" pretty much doing whatever they please.
