Scoblic on Bush on North Korea
I’ve often jokes that the axis of evil wasn’t a phrase, it was a menu. Now that we are past the soup course, Bush doesn’t seem to know which fork to use. Peter Scoblic is the former editor at Arms…
September 2004
20 posts
Debate thoughts
From an arms control perspective, the debate was mildly interesting. Bush hit Kerry over his support for the International Criminal Court, something the PIPA’s voter studies show should be a losing issue for Bush if Kerry sticks him to it.…
A Democratic National Security Strategy & Arms Control
Large majorities of Bush supporters also support a variety of arms control agreeements, such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the International Criminal Court and the Ottawa Convention banning land mines, that Bush himself opposes: This is a huge missed…
North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons
I was struggling for something interesting to say about North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Choe Su-hon’s claim that S2R* had “already reprocessed 8,000 wasted fuel rods and transformed them into arms.” [*Secretive Stalinist Regime. Apparently respectable news outlets think this…
Missile Defense Errata
MDA (operating in its little know role as a 527 for the Bush Administration) is sticking interceptors in the frozen tundra of Alaska and calling it a missile defense. Not that the thing works: MDA has delayed the next flight…
High quality work over at MDA
The GAO just released a shocking report, Diploma Mills: Diploma Mills Are Easily Created and Some Have Issued Bogus Degrees at Government Expense to Federal Employees, that finds “28 [GS-15 (or equivalent) and above] employees [from eight agencies] listed degrees…
Who says China is not transparent?
I was reading the Jiefangjun Bao (PLA Daily) when I came across a most unusual column. It appears that someone felt that a CCTV program called “The Missile Brigade Commander” lacked realism. So, in case you had any questions, this…
Prospects for Peace and Security in Outer Space
On October 21, 2004, Dr. Arms Control Wonk will be on a panel, “Prospects for Peace and Security in Outer Space,” hosted by Jonathan Dean and the Union of Concerned Scientists at the United Nations. In addition to Ambassador Dean…
Cuba BW Effort Revisited
Continuing the Cuba BW thread, The Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq contains the backstory on Undersecretary Bolton’s effort to distort intelligence regarding Cuba. The New York Times contained…
Minimum Means of Reprisal Revisited
After some adventures in pagination, I successfully submitted the final copy of the dissertation, The Minimum Means of Reprisal: China’s Search for Security in the Nuclear Age, today. For my defense, I dispensed with a powerpoint presentation. Edward Tufte, in…