As promised, it has arrived! Scott Shane – New York Times | Wait, I seem to remember discussing Syrian use of chemical weapons. In April. (Does FYRP – Fuzzy Red Lines ring any bells?) We really knew about this back then, despite what the White House told Senator McCain. Assad blurred the red line into …
Iran and Secondary Uranium Sources
by | 2013-08-23 | 7 Comments
Near the end of what seemed a super-busy and seamless six-month transition from spring to fall without the respite of a summer silly season, a lighter tabloid moment arrived last week. The government of Zimbabwe proclaimed that a revelation in the London Times of a secret uranium deal with Iran had been breathed into life by …
The Absence of Ambition
by | 2013-08-19 | 10 Comments
As President Obama looks beyond the water’s edge in search of achievement and for relief from Republican hyper-partisanship, he sees a barren and smoldering landscape, with problems from hell in Syria, Egypt and elsewhere, a Putinized Russia, and a China that is asserting territorial claims in troubling ways. What’s a President to do? While trying …
Plutonium Mountain
by | 2013-08-19 | 12 Comments
David Hoffman and Eben Harrell have published an amazing account (“Plutonium Mountain: Inside the 17-year mission to secure a dangerous legacy of Soviet nuclear testing“) of the three operations to secure orphaned plutonium at the Semipalatinsk test site — Operations Groundhog, Matchbox and Nomad. (I had known only of Groundhog.)
