Years · 2006

August 2006

25 posts

Article

OSD Policy Reorg

Cross posted at DefenseTech.org So, imagine you are the Rumsfeld Defense Department. You are locked in a “global struggle against violent extremists” “stretching from Indonesia through the Middle East,”. You have 150,000 troops stationed in Iraq as the central front…

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IAEA/2006/53

By popular demand, I am telling everyone that ISIS posted the IAEA report: Lots of things causing heartburn, but everyone is pointing to this paragraph noting some HEU particles on some waste containers: 17. The depleted uranium targets which had…

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Heavy Water Plant Not Nuclear Reactor

I was annoyed that most of the major news outlets incorrectly described Iran’s heavy water plant (which cannot make plutonium) as a nuclear “reactor” (which can). I was thinking that an excellent blog post would point out that a heavy…

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TCB on The Fleitz of Fancy

I was contemplating a post on the House Select Committee on Intelligence’s extremely odd report, Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States, which Dafna Linzer reports was written by Fred Fleitz Yes, that Fred…

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Special Fissionable Materials

Only very rarely do I receive e-mail that makes me say: “Wow, that is an obscure question.” Eric Hundman from CDI e-mailed me to ask whether the term “special fissionable materials”—which appears in the NPT—had a specific definition. I dimly…

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Iran Ear Candy

For your information/listening pleasure: George Perkovich, Barbara Slavin, and Ray Takeyh shared their expertise on NPR the other day. Also, check out this podcast on Carah Ong’s blog of Trita Parsi and Jim Walsh talking to reporters. Carry on.

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Cratology

The study of the size and function of shipping crates seen on photographs (from various sources). The size and configuration of a shipping crate often will indicate what is inside. Center for the Study of Intelligence, Glossary of Abbreviations John…

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NORK Nuke Test Site

ABC News’ Jonathan Karl reports that North Korea is “unloading of large reels of cable outside P’unggye-yok, an underground facility in northeast North Korea [that] can be used in nuclear testing to connect an underground test site to outside observation…

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Mottaki: Suspension Illogical

Much of the international press—including the BBC, Reuters and AFP—quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki calling the Security Council call for the suspension of Iran’s enrichment activities “illogical.” Despite the giggling and Spock jokes, the transcript on the Iranian Foreign…

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Gerson's Iran Insights

Last week, Steve Clemons posted about an Aspen conference of foreign policy luminaries who discussed solutions to the Iran nuclear issue. I’ll be interested to learn what they came up with. Anyway, Steve wrote that …the single most important consensus…