Morning Funnies 10-12-06

It's a simple transaction, really, thanks to the Bush administration. (Oliphant)

Knock, Knock (Ben Sargent)

There Was a Vibration!

Why Do You Ask? (Lalo Alcaraz)

The Final in Nuclear Physics (Alcaraz)

There goes that noise again (Robert Ariail)

Happy Halloween! (Ariail

It's like waiting for Godot! (Tony Auth)

Stay the Course! (Auth)

Text Message for Help (Bill Day)

Help Comes (Day)

Just Like Old Times (Danziger)

In a crowded room (Danziger)

They're already there. (Danziger)

The President Will Never Lose Faith (Jerry Holbert)

There it is! At last! (Etta Hulme)

Homerism 101 (Luckovich)

It's All Political (Luckovich)
He Knows

More News on North Korea 10-11-06

Newsweek: North Korea: A Nuclear Threat The link to this article is titled "Did U.S. Provoke N. Korea?" and that is what appears on my blogger in the title bar. And in fact the article appears to answer the question "Did U.S. Provoke N. Korea?" with an affirmative. The writer, Selig S. Harrison is one to know. In other words the Bush adminstration failed us, again.

China says it will back sanctions, but indicates there are limits to what they will agree. Defying the Lil' Emperor? How dare they!

NYTimes: Bush Says No Plans to Attack North Korea There is a video linked to Washington Post articles on North Korea on a Bush press conference, but I can't stand to listen to his clownish speech patterns. (Why would we attack NK anyway? There's no oil there.)

Anthony Faiola, who did the best article on the Thai coup that I read (and posted on at the old blog), has and article, in today's Post titled 'N. Korea Wants U.S. to End 'Hostile Attitude' which confirms Mr. Harrison's assertion as noted above (or vice versa) and reports the the planned actions of other nations.

To take people's minds off their failure in North Korea the Bush administration has announced another year of reduced budget deficits. Funny but they announced the last year of reduced budget deficit just months ago. Anyway a New York Post (owned by News Corp) writer showed in 2004 that the Bush administration lies about its figures. Here's a copy of that article.

Faiola and Joohee Cho report on the effect the DPRK nuclear weapon test has had on the program that allowed the reunification for short times of families that had ended up on opposite sides of the North-South Korean border and showing that the test has created distrust with South Koreans. Interesting pattern here shows a hint of propaganda manipulation in Korea maybe. They certainly aren't getting all the facts on this, but as American we should understand how a government can "gin up a scare". and indeed the New York Times article linked above shows how South Korea is using this somewhat like their 9/11.
Excerpt:

But in Seoul, President Roh Moo Hyun told the South Koreans to brace themselves for a “prolonged” confrontation with North Korea.

Mr. Roh also called the North Korean claim that it has built nuclear weapons because of American threats a ``gross exaggeration.”

``The threat to security the North Koreans are talking about is either nonexistent or a gross exaggeration,” he said. ``It’s unclear whether the North Koreans are deliberately exaggerating the threat or they are ignorant.”

Has Karl Rove visited South Korea lately? Anyone know?

North Korea Crosses the Line. Bush Administration Steps Back and Draws Another Line

Well, Don't you cross this one then!

And check out the photo included with this article of the Upper Class Twits including John Bolton playing at being important nobs at the UN.

RE: "Diverted Attention, Neglect Set the Stage for Kim's Move"

Excerpt Los Angeles Times aricle (title indicated above).

Little more than four years ago, the North Korean nuclear weapons program was largely under lock and key, the threat seen as a fleeting crisis of a previous decade.

North Korea's main nuclear center at Yongbyon, 60 miles north of Pyongyang, was monitored 24 hours a day by U.N. surveillance cameras. International inspectors lived near the site. Seals were in place over key nuclear installations and a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon was gathering dust.

So what went wrong?

The story of Monday's announcement of a nuclear test is one of failed policies, neglect and missed opportunities...

Read rest at site.

The Washington Post notes:

Analysts say Kim has already succeeded in at least one way. With its declaration of a nuclear test, North Korea has made the price of a military solution to the standoff -- something Bush administration officials had largely dismissed given North Korea's arsenal of ballistic missiles and its million-man army -- even higher. Some suggested Monday that it may already be too late to turn back the clock.

Of course if the Bush administration hadn't botched the diplomacy this wouldn't have happened would it? Then again they had John Bolton in charge of WMD proliferation at State during that time. Some job to give a guy who helped steal an election for you isn't it?

RE: "Low Yield Of Blast Surprises Analysts"

Excerpt Washington Post article (title indicated above):

A senior intelligence official called it a "sub-kiloton" explosion detonated inside a horizontal mountain tunnel and said its low yield caught analysts by surprise. "For an initial test, a yield of several kilotons has been historically observed," the official said.

A U.S. government official said the North Koreans, in a call to the Chinese shortly before the test was conducted, said it would be four kilotons. The official said it is possible the explosive yield was as low as 200 tons. France and South Korea both issued sub-kiloton estimates, and officials dismissed as inaccurate an early Russian estimate that the blast resulted from a five-to-15-kiloton explosion.

President Bush said early yesterday that U.S. experts were "working to confirm North Korea's claim." By the end of the day, intelligence officials were still piecing together data and waiting to review intercepted communications that might shed light on what exactly the North Koreans set out to accomplish in the test and how it was conducted.

I was wondering last night if a nuclear test that only produced a 3.5 richter was anything to really boast about.

I should have written something so I could prove it.

We've have relatively small refinery explosions around here that have done more than 3.5 richter. (Small as in they didn't blow up an entire plant or even half of it.) (Actually, luckily we lived 15 miles away when those happened. I suppose I wouldn't be talking about them so calmly if I lived right next door. But what I'm saying is that we felt them 15 miles away, no special instruments needed. That is not the case with a 3.5 earthquake.)

So Jude Wanniski and Gordon Prather were not so far off saying that NK doesn't yet have the technology to properly explode Plutonium.

Still, even a couple of hundred TNT tons of exploding plutonium dropped into Seoul would be a major concern with the fallout I assume. This is not something they can fight off the US with, but still they could do enough damage to our allies nearby to deter us from military action.

The Washington Note's Steve Clemons also points the finger at John Bolton for screwing up the talks with North Korea.

Breaking; North Korea Claims Successful Nuclear Weapon Test

This is about that lousy missile test isn't it?

You see in the old days our leaders knew how to work diplomacy and knew that each nation needed to keep it's sovereignty and pride up.

They would know that the nuclear test was necessary because the long range missile test on July 4th was such a failure.

That's the only reason we survived the Cold War. If Bush had been president the US would be trying to evolve back out of the stone age, because the USSR could have really destroyed a lot of the United States unlike terrorists, Iran or North Korea.

In the old days our leaders let other leaders play the "crazy part". Because the nation whose leaders played crazy usually got big time problems coming at them in the end.

Now our leaders are playing the crazies. That's what's scary.

And remember how just months ago the idea NK having nukes was so embarassing to the Bush administration that they denied the fact that the rogue nation had them?

Well, Mr. Bush they have them. And I guess Prather and Wanniski were wrong about whether they could get the plutonium to explode. They can.

Ball's in your court Mr. Bush.

I see in the Washington Post article that our leaders are going to be acting somewhat reasonable over this. After all it is an election month.

Either that, or, like I surmized before, maybe a green light for an easy time was shined NK's way for a test right now in the pre-election month.

Ah! North Korea

Remember when we were first alerted to a supposed 2nd nuclear program from our old buddies in North Korea?

It was October 2002.

I'd just like to use this post to think about the significance of that date.

Yes, just about 4 years ago.

October.

Just before a midterm election.

The last mid term election.

Kind like Osama popped up with a message in 2004.

In October.

Even many mainstream cartoonists show they are very suspicious about the timing of messages from Osama and/or his people. It's as if al Qaeda and the Bush administration had a special deal to keep each other in their respective places of power.

But North Korea?

Surely not North Korea.

But here it is October just before a mid term election.

I'm not saying that the Bush people and Kim Jung Il are any kinds of buddies, but something could have been sent on the quiet to the effect that deals could be made if NK kept the news media as busy as possible during the month of October.

October 2006.

Just before another mid term election.

What better October surprise to keep part of the news media busy than a threat to test a nuclear bomb.

Here I have a post about Rumsfeld's rumblings over NK and some analysis from Fred Kaplan who believes a cocktail party mumbling were an admission of a second nuclear program and that NK could produce a plutonium bomb.

Here's a post from our non beta Pendragn blog on an analysis by the late Jude Wanniski about NK and why he and Gordon Prather don't believe that NK has a 2nd nuclear program nor that they could produce the much more difficult (according to their assessment) plutonium bomb.

Though these men disagree on whether NK has a second nuclear program or could explode a plutonium weapon, they both agree that the Bush administration (thanks to our current UN ambassador John Bolton) thoroughly messed up even their feeble attempts to negotiate with and/or control North Korea.

Rumsfeld Blames the International Community for Failure over North Korea

What a blooming hypocrite!

Your honor I would like to place into evidence an analysis by one Fred Kaplan about the Bush administration complete failure in the North Korea nuclear crisis that they have managed to stretch out for four years and make worse with every passing season.

.

..the North Koreans had another route to nuclear weapons--a stash of radioactive fuel rods, taken a decade earlier from its nuclear power plant in Yongbyon. These rods could be processed into plutonium--and, from that, into A-bombs--not in years but in months. Thanks to an agreement brokered by the Clinton administration, the rods were locked in a storage facility under the monitoring of international weapons-inspectors. Common sense dictated that--whatever it did about the centrifuges--the Bush administration should do everything possible to keep the fuel rods locked up.

Unfortunately, common sense was in short supply. After a few shrill diplomatic exchanges over the uranium, Pyongyang upped the ante. The North Koreans expelled the international inspectors, broke the locks on the fuel rods, loaded them onto a truck, and drove them to a nearby reprocessing facility, to be converted into bomb-grade plutonium. The White House stood by and did nothing. Why did George W. Bush--his foreign policy avowedly devoted to stopping "rogue regimes" from acquiring weapons of mass destruction--allow one of the world's most dangerous regimes to acquire the makings of the deadliest WMDs? Given the current mayhem and bloodshed in Iraq, it's hard to imagine a decision more ill-conceived than invading that country unilaterally without a plan for the "post-war" era. But the Bush administration's inept diplomacy toward North Korea might well have graver consequences. President Bush made the case for war in Iraq on the premise that Saddam Hussein might soon have nuclear weapons--which turned out not to be true. Kim Jong-il may have nuclear weapons now; he certainly has enough plutonium to build some, and the reactors to breed more.

Yet Bush has neither threatened war nor pursued diplomacy...

Read rest at source (Link above).

A Washington Post article says:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday if North Korea successfully tests a nuclear weapon, it will show weakness on the part of the international community.

"And that failure ... is something that the international community would have to register and ask itself how comfortable are we being that ineffective in this situation," Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon during a visit by Croatian Defense Minister Berislav Roncevic.

His comments came as U.S. officials warned North Korea anew not to test a nuclear weapon.

"It isn't in their interest and it isn't in anyone's interest," Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the top U.S. negotiator on the communist country's nuclear program, told AP Television. "We will not accept a nuclear state."

But they don't say what they will do about an actual test.