Utterly Meaningless

Oh fer the love of Pete. In your version of the Boy who Cried Wolf, the townspeople see a mountain lions stalking their sheep, and still refuse to act, just to punish the Boy over the wolf incident.

By the way, Bush gave his ‘axis of evil’ speech in January 2002, a full year before we went back into Iraq.

Well, anyway – nobody in charge is talking about bombing Iran any more. There’s a big difference between making weapons-grade uranium, and having a functional nuclear weapons program. One gets you bombed, the other just keeps you on the bad guy list.

And which weapons-grade uranium producer have we bombed so far?

In reality, having a “functional nuclear weapons program” might keep a country “on the bad guy list,” unless your Pakistan, but it demonstrably keeps one OFF the bombing list, hence the motivation for such.

The USA has yet to bomb a country that possesses nuclear weapons, or for that matter a country simply enriching uranium.

Well, anyway – nobody in charge is talking about bombing Iran any more.

Bullshit! The leading contender for the GOP nomination (and his top foreign policy adviser) are still itching for a go.

Giuliani’s top advisor on Iran, Norman Podhoretz, recently said he had “dark suspicions” that the intelligence community was “leaking information calculated to undermine” President Bush after Podhoretz read the NIE report. Podhoretz also reportedly advised President Bush and adviser Karl Rove to bomb Iran in 2004.

Giuliani has said recently that he does not take the same position as Podhoretz’s “dark suspicions,” but wants Iran to know that in a Giuliani administration, the “military option is on the table.”

Yeah, they’re not “in charge” (Thank God). But there are still plenty of wackos who pray for the day that Bush pulls the trigger.

And the timing of the SotU address is irrelevant. You don’t still believe the decision to invade Iraq wasn’t already made by then, do you? Ever hear of the Downing Street memo?

I don’t actually know what I’m talking about other than having heard a piece on NPR about this, but isn’t the only real difference between uranium for weapons and uranium for power a matter of refinement?

Enrichment. But essentially yes. Same technology. The uranium is reacted with fluorine to form UF₆ which is a gas. The gas is spun in a centrifuge which slightly concentrates the heavier U-238 on the outside with the U-235 (the desired product) slightly concentrated towards the middle. Then the inner fraction is sent off to another centrifuge where the process is repeated. String several thousand centrifuges together and you can isolate quite pure U-235. Then all you have to do is reduce the uranium back to the metal and you have the makings for a reactor. Or the first baby step towards a bomb.