If you followed the arrest of the Roy Lee Oakley — the Oak Ridge contractor who took a couple of broken sections of a gaseous diffusion barrier home and tried to sell them rather ineptly to France (no, I can’t make this up) — you read some pretty damned fine reporting by the Knoxville News-Sentinel‘s …
Official: NIE Risks 2nd Yom Kippur War
by | 2007-12-15 | 14 Comments
Avi Dichter, Israel’s public security minister, said today that the Iran NIE could result in another Yom Kippur War. Dichter is referring to the surprise 1973 attack on Israel led by Egypt and Syria on Yom Kippur, the most important Jewish holiday. Israel ultimately clobbered the Arab coalition, although not before losing some early battles. …
Follow-On White Paper Rumor
by | 2007-12-14 | 2 Comments
I have mocked the living hell out of this forthcoming administration follow-on white paper to <a href="http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1587/maintaining-deterrence-in-the-21st-century. “>Maintaining Deterrence in the 21st Century, (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Fund the RRW). My teasing has been based, in part, on the lame list of myths that Administration plans to dispel. The myths were …
MAD nukes and Englishmen
by | 2007-12-14 | 10 Comments
Sorting out my accumulated junk that has, for the past few years, been slowly mouldering in my dad’s attic, I recently found my copy of Peter Hennessy’s brilliant The Secret State, a political history of British nuclear policy during the first half of the Cold War. In one memorable section (particularly relevant given recent revelations …
