While the World Sleeps

Well, from the sublime yesterday to the truly scary today. Sam Cohen worked with the original developers of the atomic bomb like Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller and went on to be the key scientist behind development of the neutron bomb. Bill Whittle interviewed him on Afterburner and he had several interesting things to say.

Regarding Iran, he thinks that all the talk about the centrifuges is a red herring and that they have more than enough "civilian" reactors already in operation to produce the plutonium necessary for 30-40 weapons at this point. Although he believes that the quality of the nuclear material would be inferior to that used by historic nuclear powers, it is nevertheless enough to make one heck of a bang. The centrifuges are just a diversion for the West while the real work goes on behind the scenes.

What is interesting about this scenario is that it makes sense of Israel's reluctance to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. Even well-connected observers of Israel have been puzzled at the failure to strike this obvious threat to Israel's existence. If Cohen is correct, however, and Israel has intelligence that confirms it, then a strike is probably out of the question except in a Doomsday situation, which may come soon enough.

Then there is Korea. Cohen believes that the Norks are stockpiling tactical nuclear weapons as fast as they can. The Norks have a million soldiers on the border with South Korea with massive numbers of tanks and artillery. U.S. strategy has always assumed our use of nuclear weapons in the first hour if this juggernaut rolled across the border. Cohen states, though, that all nukes have been pulled from South Korea. If true, and if the Norks used tactical nukes to wipe out key U.S./South Korean defense nodes, then within hours you suddenly have a "unified" Korean peninsula under the iron - and crazy - hand of Numb Nuts il-Jong. 

So much for "We're all basically alike." Americans like to think that everybody around the world is pretty much like us, they just want to live their lives and be left alone. While that may be true with the average Joe-in-the-hut, it is the Genghis Khans that make history and, as always, there are plenty of would-be Khans around to cause serious heartburn.

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