Posting Towards Gomorrah

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop

eta: Spanky and club, I assume y'all are ready to admit now that you were wrong on this one, too.

I will admit that our intelligence community (and as Slave pointed out that is the same community that determined there were WMDs in Iraq) has determined that they were producing Uranium and not plutonium during the last years of the Clinton administration. However, since they were not supposed to be producing plutonium nor enriched Uraniuim (and they were) I don't see why this is such a big point.

When you say Spanky and club do you mean Spanky and Seargent Club or do you mean Spanky and "club" meaning Spanky and the other conservatives. If you mean the latter I doubt that the other conservatives would want me to talk for them because my credentials to be in the conservative club are always a little suspect.

I have been raising money to defeat both propositions 85 and 90, when the CRP and most of the conseravative organizations in this state have slated those as the most important measures to pass this year.

[SlaveNoMore]

Spanky
I will admit that our intelligence has determined that they were producing Uranium and not plutonium during the last years of the Clinton administration. However, since they were not supposed to be producing plutonium nor enriched Uraniuim (and they were) I don't see why this is such a big point.

The distinction is silly. They already had a store of plutonium. They then violated and continued to violate the Agreed Framework, ignoring the Carter/Clinton agreement at every turn. They then pulled a Saddam and threw everyone out - not that they were doing anything anyway. The only difference being that they then stopped being covert about it.

More importantly, China and the "Sunshine" South Koreans knew about it but let them do it for fear that 50 million starving North Koreans would come swarming over the border.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
The distinction is silly. They already had a store of plutonium. They then violated and continued to violate the Agreed Framework, ignoring the Carter/Clinton agreement at every turn. They then pulled a Saddam and threw everyone out - not that they were doing anything anyway. The only difference being that they then stopped being covert about it.

More importantly, China and the "Sunshine" South Koreans knew about it but let them do it for fear that 50 million starving North Koreans would come swarming over the border.

OK we will go with Slaves response. Disregard mine.

[Tables R Us]

Originally posted by Gattigap
"Additionally, Padilla was given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations."

Any reporter claiming PCP is used as a truth serum is a moron. PCP makes users violent and feel no pain. The subject is liable to break their restraints and kill themself or the interrogator.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
here's where we get back to whether you know what you're talking about or whether you're parroting what you have read from biased sources and written in the last year or so. sure as shit I ain't a troll and ain't slinking anywhere, but I do believe someone should. And the certainty that you bring to the quoted post just shows why you would benefit from leaving. The board would really benefit too.

Hank -- you've been talking smack about this for days.

Turns out your much touted 2000 documents were weak, and Ty just blew you up. Once you goaded him into documenting the issue, he pummeled you. Its not as bad as SEF's self-inflicted wound, but come on . . . .

While I do not have personal knowledge of this, I do understand that the U.S. (and similarly advanced nations) can monitor and detect plutonium production more easily than uranium enrichment.

The consensus is that NK did have plutonium by 1994. Putting aside inherent distrust for a regime of crooks and liars (no, not Bush) we have seen nothing to indicate that the North Koreans were continuing to create plutonium before they threw out the international monitors during the first term of the current President. Why wouldn't they? They knew we could detect it -- and they wanted their goodies.

You seem to get most upset by the _way_ Ty speaks -- with certainty, but on this one the evidence he mustered certainly rises to at least the normal standards applied on this informal discussion board.

On the substance, I'd say that reasonable people can differ about whether the 1994 Agreement was a good one, although I can recall a reasonably broad consensus supporting it at the time. No one wanted to fight North Korea then, but we came fairly close. I was among the many thousands of soldiers on 2 hour alert then, and our troops in South Korea were on a hair trigger and kissing their asses goodbye. (The war plan assumes they will be wiped out before we can reinforce.)

I'd also even concede that, while I think Bush's "F-You" approach has been counterproductive on this issue, and people much smarter and more credentialed than I (including his former Secretary of State) agree, reasonable people can also differ about that.

We can also disagree, I suppose about "whose fault" this whole mess really is -- although that kind of simplistic bullshit makes about as much sense as fighting over who "lost China" and why we lost the Vietnam War.

Bottom line is that Bush said early in his administration that this was a critical problem, which it is, but he hasn't been able to fix it. In fact, he spent a boatload of time and energy on other stuff -- including most prominently a war he started where he guessed wrong about WMD and then proceeded to thoroughly fuck up.

As a result, Bush gets the heat on NK until it is fixed or he goes back to Texas. Fair or not, it goes with the job

[P.S. As a younger relative's third tour in Iraq gets closer, I get more upset about the whole thing. His quote: "I've lost so many friends, I have to believe in it." But he's struggling.]

S_A_M

[Tables R Us]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Bottom line is that Bush said early in his administration that this was a critical problem, which it is, but he hasn't been able to fix it. In fact, he spent a boatload of time and energy on other stuff -- including most prominently a war he started where he guessed wrong about WMD and then proceeded to thoroughly fuck up.

You're smarter than that SAM. You can't actually believe W thought Iraq had WMD. W went into Iraq because he wanted to go down in history as the Ronald Reagan of the 21st Century; the man who beat islamo-fascism by spreading democracy. The arrogance is simply amazing.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
The distinction is silly. They already had a store of plutonium. They then violated and continued to violate the Agreed Framework, ignoring the Carter/Clinton agreement at every turn. They then pulled a Saddam and threw everyone out - not that they were doing anything anyway. The only difference being that they then stopped being covert about it.

I don't think it is a silly distinction, because I'd much rather my enemies had lots of enriched uranium than more plutonium.

It may be a silly argument between Ty and Hank, but that's the argument they had both signed on for.

If your bottom line is that the North Koreans were cheating either way -- True. I think that we were pretty sure of that, and that's why we didn't give them all that the Agreed Framework called for. If you think that we were right to blow up the status quo and ditch the "agreement" because they were cheating, then I guess the distinction doesn't matter.

I'm not at all sure it was smart in the long run.

S_A_M

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
More importantly, China and the "Sunshine" South Koreans knew about it but let them do it for fear that 50 million starving North Koreans would come swarming over the border.

True. but I'm nort sure why its more important.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Tables R Us
You're smarter than that SAM. You can't actually believe W thought Iraq had WMD. W went into Iraq because he wanted to go down in history as the Ronald Reagan of the 21st Century; the man who beat islamo-fascism by spreading democracy. The arrogance is simply amazing.

I wouldn't say it quite the same way -- but both can be true. I do think he thought they probably had WMD, and that this was a damn good excuse for doing what he thought needed to be done anyway.

S_A_M

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
You called me "dishonest." But you can't back it up with shit.

From suggesting a few posts back that you know something real about the world which I know too, and which I am misstating, you have now retreated to suggesting that we can't know all that is going on in North Korea. As a philosophical matter, I'll admit that. The likelihood that North Korea was processing plutonium between 1994 and 2002 is greater than 0.

But if you know a quarter of what you pretend to know about this subject -- information you can never quite manage to put into a post -- then you also know that for various reasons we have much greater certainty about North Korea's processing of plutonium than we do about their attempts to refine uranium. I alluded to this earlier, on the off-chance that you actually would engage in the sort of high-minded conversation that you keep bitching about, but no. Anyone else who is interested in the reasons can find them discussed a few pages into the document -- a CRS study -- linked as #10 in my list above. Not the least of them is the cameras at the North Korean facility in question.

Go back. what is the argument here?

i'm not taking spanky's original position (I'm not sure spank actually said this either) that w/o the agreement there would not have been a bomb built. I think the bomb building was inevitable. one of your links suggests they might have existed before 94.

My position was that the agreement was a bad idea. You seem to think that it was a decent way to "buy time."

I linked to stuff from 2000 (before there was a Bush/clinton component to the controversy) that showed:

• 1 NK had enough plutonium for a few bombs anyway.
  
  2 We knew it was cheating with Uranium.
  
  3 People in the industry thought providing technical assistance and training NK people to operate a power plant was a really bad idea.

Your answer seems to be- "but they blew up a plutonium bomb so the cheating on Uranium doesn't matter."

As a lawyer I think that is an intellectually dishonest argument. We KNOW they are cheating on one type material, but since they didn't build their bomb from it we should not be concerned about the cheating?

Say you are Plaintiff in a trade secret case. You can prove 2 facts:

• D now has the technology in question AND D can be shown to have stolen a closely related technology.

You don't think that second fact raises flags?

As understood, you are comfortable there was no plutonium development because a camera was running where we would have expected the development. I would expect the development might have been centered where we wouldn't expect. I think a cheater is a cheater. AND I think that once it wanted to make a statement NK would be expected to bring plutonium development to light so we would know.

Your other point, that it served to buy time, is the strongest argument for the deal being a bad idea. You point out the plants never were completed so no harm- BUT 2 types of harm are likely:

• We had to back out of a deal. We had to accuse the NK of cheating (n.b. one of your "solid" links (2) seems to imply that the evidence of cheating was contrived- EVEN though NK admitted it).

Sorry, but the backing out of a deal and accusing NK puts the 2 countries into a very bad relationship- worse than if no agreement had been made. Especially when the agreement, even if sucessful, left NK with enough Plutonium for 2 bombs.

AND given how long the agreement was in place, I find it difficult to believe that a good deal of know-how was not given to NK. We likely trained NK personal in nuclear technology. and that was the damage my one document evidenced.

At best your position, "we never actually followed through on the deal" misses the point that clinton didn't stop the deal AND if Clinton's defense was he knew the deal would get stopped, that's double fucked. He knowingly dumped and worsened the problem.

Your 10 links (actually 9, 3 doesn't open) don't change any of the above. Clinton made a deal to get him out of the White House. Gore or whooever could clean it up.

Originally posted by SAM

Hank -- you've been talking smack about this for days.

Turns out your much touted 2000 documents were weak, and Ty just blew you up. Once you goaded him into documenting the issue, he pummeled you. Its not as bad as SEF's self-inflicted wound, but come on . . . .

This is an example of what I am talking about. Blind acceptance of anything Ty posts as truth- "Dear Leader has won."

At least I know Penske and spank are talking shit half the time.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
I will admit that our intelligence community (and as Slave pointed out that is the same community that determined there were WMDs in Iraq) has determined that they were producing Uranium and not plutonium during the last years of the Clinton administration. However, since they were not supposed to be producing plutonium nor enriched Uraniuim (and they were) I don't see why this is such a big point.

See the NYT article from yesterday about how the bomb was made from plutonium.

When you say Spanky and club do you mean Spanky and Seargent Club or do you mean Spanky and "club" meaning Spanky and the other conservatives.

I meant sgtclub -- he doesn't capitalize his name, which I try to respect.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
The distinction is silly. They already had a store of plutonium. They then violated and continued to violate the Agreed Framework, ignoring the Carter/Clinton agreement at every turn. They then pulled a Saddam and threw everyone out - not that they were doing anything anyway. The only difference being that they then stopped being covert about it.

More importantly, China and the "Sunshine" South Koreans knew about it but let them do it for fear that 50 million starving North Koreans would come swarming over the border.

They didn't make more plutonium for eight years. Eight years. If you think that's meaningless, I'd rather you spent your time on the Amish/Mennonite civil war.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
They didn't make more plutonium for eight years. Eight years.

Originally said by Hillary Clinton
Bill never cheated.

[Replaced_Texan]

I was having dinner with a friend last night, and he mentioned a mutual friend of ours who has become a New York Times bestselling author. I had no idea.

Last time either one of us had seen Rory, he'd needed to be rescued from Dallas because the corvette he'd bought upon hitting US soil so he could see the country property had died. Last I heard, Rory was doing something stupid like walking across Asia.

Anyhow, this is the New York Times review of his book. I absolutely adore Rory, though I haven't spent much time since we were in school together. I think, though, that a lot of ya'll would probably find what he's been through to be very interesting.

His previous book I think ya'll might find interesting too.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Radar magazine's ten dumbest politicians on the Hill:

• 10) Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY)
  9) Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI)
  8) Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT)
  7) Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA)
  6) Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH)
  5) Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
  4) Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ)
  3) Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)
  2) Rep. Don Young (R-AK)
  1) Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL

Unfair to Bunning - isn't he about 80 and ill?

Also, where is my friend Maxine?

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
You called me a liar and you are full of shit. Here are ten sources saying that North Korea was cheating with uranium -- not plutonium -- between 1994 and 2002: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Meanwhile, you don't have anything. Nothing.

I know you're not leaving, but it was a mistake to pay attention to you.

eta: Spanky and club, I assume y'all are ready to admit now that you were wrong on this one, too.

You continue to focus on the Uranium/Plutonium distinction like it was some sort of smoking gun. I frankly don't think it matters which one it was. The point is that they were pursuing nuclear technologies in violation of the Framework.