Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Alias]

[Ya-ta Boy]

Just as the Norks can fire off missiles left and right and not get anything more than a frown from the Chinese, the Israelis can do pretty much what they want and not fear any more than a grimmace from the US.

[sundubuman]

The Iran-North Korea Connection
By Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 7, 2005

More than a year ago two able political-military analysts, former general officers Paul Vallely and Tom McInerney, wrote about a �web of terror� that crossed the artificial boundaries of nation, movement, organization, ideology, or geographical area. This concept of a vast network of deadly connections was outlined in their excellent work, Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror. It was a startling concept in large measure because the notion of such a deadly global network is contrary to America�s cultural, organizational, and political stereotypes.

We Americans are accustomed to labeling and categorizing: we like to say �a place for everything and everything in its place.� Such artificial organization - by ideology, nation, or locale - is dangerous when it obscures the reality of the strategy and tactics that our country�s enemies use against us. We ignored the Saddam-al Qaeda connection because we said they couldn�t work together. One was sectarian the other religious. We think that Shia and Sunni will not cooperate, that Arabs and Europeans produce different breeds of terrorist, and that non-Muslim Asians will have little or nothing to do with Islamic countries or movements. All this is patent nonsense. Unless we accept the reality of the situation and act accordingly, we are in big trouble.

For the past few months I have been completing a manuscript on these linkages � expanding upon the generals� brilliant web of terror concept - particularly in regard to North Korean demarches to the Islamofascist world and into the Western Hemisphere. The facts are that these linkages are much more extensive that previously thought. It may � as in the Oil for Food scandal in Iraq � take regime change and exposure of secret files before we ever understand the incredibly complex, comprehensive nature of the collaboration between and among these states, organizations, and movements. Of one thing we can be absolutely certain: this web of terror is bound together by a glue of total hatred directed at America, at our freedoms, and at the culture of the West. All terror masters are allied in that goal; they will settle differences among themselves after we are defeated.

Corroborating this deadly trend are the latest reports from Iran that detail how North Korea has supported Iran�s nuclear weapons program. Again, because of our cultural blinders, we have been reluctant to look much further east than Pakistan to seek those who are assisting Iran with its nuclear R&D. Sure, some observers say, we know that the North Koreans are there, but because of the differences we minimize the effectiveness of the collaboration. But think for a minute how ridiculous that concept sounds. Who, for example, are our two most solid treaty partners in Asia? Japan and South Korea share out geopolitical goals and participate in joint defense projects. Why can we handily bridge cultural gaps to produce credible results, but discount the notion that our enemies are capable of doing something similar?

North Korea has a several-year old relationship with the mullah regime in Iran that includes a technological spectrum of evil: medium range missiles, nuclear weapons, poison gas, and warhead guidance systems. It is possible, but not verified at this time, that the Kim Jong Il regime is also using the mullah�s Italian crime contacts to launder heroin. Regardless, the known degree of cooperation is sufficiently serious to warrant concern.

A recent report cited in World News Daily, notes that reliable intelligence sources have revealed that Iran has received plutonium components from North Korea. Supposedly these components are sufficient to allow Iran to assemble a plutonium-based nuclear weapon. The CIA heard as far back as 1994 about a North Korea-Iran plutonium connection but it was unverified until recently. That seems an extraordinarily long time to verify such as essential element of information, and is another indicator of how serious our lack of human intelligence gathering capability is inside both hostile countries.

Given the reports coming out of Gadhafi�s Libya that North Korea was a major supplier of partially processed uranium ore to the dictator�s weapons program, we ought not be shocked that Iran was in on the action also. According to Bill Gertz�s Geostrategy Direct, President Bush was �stunned� by the news that the North Korean plutonium supply had advanced Iran�s program dramatically. Not to be unnecessarily redundant, but these continual, repeated poor performances by CIA and State intelligence services are singularly unhelpful to the president and to the country. Drastic reform is overdue, especially at State.

Not to be outdone by US agency ineptitude, UN atomic �watchdog� Mohamed El Baradei issued a report � presumably from near Pluto where he maintains a house � praising Iran for its announced Wednesday decision �to continue suspension of its uranium enrichment program.� The crack UN inspector � last caught flatfooted over Libya�s announcement that it too had a nuclear program � also congratulated Iran for continuing talks with the �EU-3,� France, Germany, and the UK. With this level of performance why would we need a tough ambassador at the UN?

Making things even more unpleasant in the region is the caution by the CIA that Iran �could immediately assemble several nuclear warheads� for the mullah�s Shahab-3 intermediate range missile [emphasis added]. And where did this mysterious missile originate? From North Korea, of course. A series of reports from as far back as the late 1980s (the tail end of the brutal Iraq-Iran wars) tell that Iran has had serious interest in acquiring medium and intermediate range missiles. Confirmed reports place Iranian scientists and engineers inside North Korea in 1993 when the Nodong class missile was first tested and unveiled. Disquieting data provided by Iranian resistance members details extensive cooperation between Iran and North Korea in warhead development.

The Shahab class missile is simply Iran�s version of the North Korean Nodong. With improvements the Shahab-3 is rated at a 1,000 mile range with almost a one-ton payload. That is a tweak in capability over the Nodong�s originally announced 800 mile range. Even more troubling is that Iran is working with North Korea to extend missile capabilities into the Taepodong class. This could double the range albeit with a smaller payload. But how large does a nuclear warhead or a poison gas warhead have to be to cause unacceptable casualties?

These latest revelations concerning the Iran-North Korea connection raise extremely difficult diplomatic and political-military issues. Further complicating the entire issue is that this is simply one strand of the web of terror that must be addressed. Other deadly connections stretch from Pyongyang across the globe to Venezuela and to other Islamofascist or autocratic states like Syria, Egypt, and Libya. These challenges are global in nature. We must address them with global solutions that until now have been lacking.

Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu has been an Army Green Beret lieutenant colonel, as well as a writer, popular speaker, business executive and farmer. His most recent book is Separated at Birth, about North and South Korea

[sundubuman]

The Rise of a New Axis?
Washington may have cause to worry about a Pyongyang-Tehran nuclear alliance


Leonard S. Spector
YaleGlobal, 11 February 2005



A new nuclear threat? Collaboration between North Korea's Kim Jong-Il and Iran's defiant Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may provide new worries for President Bush

WASHINGTON: North Korea's abrupt announcement that it has manufactured nuclear weapons "for self-defense" and is suspending participation in disarmament talks underscores the dangers posed by its nuclear potential and seriously dims prospects that it will ever be eliminated.

Pyongyang's assertive new stance does not, in itself, change the facts on the ground. The United States has assumed for some time that North Korea has a nuclear arsenal of roughly eight plutonium-based weapons, and it is known to have production capacity for roughly one weapon per year. In addition, Washington believes North Korea has a program for enriching uranium, the second material that can be used for nuclear weapons. The status of that program, which received extensive assistance from the nuclear smuggling network led by Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, remains uncertain, but it could eventually enable Pyongyang to add several weapons annually to its stockpile.1


In September 2004, North Korea announced at the United Nations that it had transformed material for nuclear weapons "into arms," but the Bush Administration treated the announcement as less than definitive. Since the US elections, Washington has pressed North Korea to restart the "Six-Party Talks," which also include China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea. The talks are aimed at persuading Pyongyang to cede its nuclear weapons and production capabilities in return for US diplomatic recognition, substantial foreign aid, and assistance to its energy sector. The talks, launched in 2002, have been deadlocked over the sequence for implementing the bargain, the United States demanding that North Korea first eliminate its nuclear capability before receiving any benefits, and the North insisting on a step-by-step process, with benefits accruing at an early stage.

North Korea's announcement appears to end prospects for a negotiated elimination of its nuclear potential, although the United States and its Northeast Asian partners will undoubtedly keep the door open. Even Pyongyang has stated that it is "suspending" its participation in the talks, rather than withdrawing permanently from them.

North Korea's new belligerence comes at a moment when another development had greatly heightened US concern over that country's nuclear potential: evidence that North Korea was the most likely supplier of uranium hexafluoride for Libya's now renounced nuclear weapons program. The transfer, attempted 18 months ago, was interdicted through a US-led multinational effort, known as the Proliferation Security Initiative.

Libya had planned to improve the uranium to weapons-usable, highly enriched uranium in a gas-centrifuge uranium enrichment plant. At first, because the A.Q. Khan network had supplied equipment for the enrichment plant, it was assumed that the uranium hexafluoride had been produced in Pakistan and smuggled to Libya.


But, based on extensive technical analysis, the new US assessment that the uranium originated in North Korea, proved more credible. Importantly, it provides the first publicly disclosed evidence that Pyongyang has become a player in the secret nuclear supply market. The development adds further urgency to efforts to constrain North Korea's nuclear capabilities because if Libya was its nuclear customer yesterday, Iran � already buying North Korean intermediate-range missiles � may be its nuclear customer today, or could become one tomorrow. And if North Korea continues to enlarge its own nuclear arsenal, it may have much more to sell, including weapons-ready uranium or plutonium � or nuclear weapons themselves. Now that Khan and his network have been shut down, North Korea is likely emerging as the rogue supplier of choice.

In Tehran, meanwhile, another nuclear negotiation, with considerably more promise than the Six-Party Talks, is under way. This bargain is being brokered by France, Germany, and the UK, with US engagement behind the scenes. In late 2002, it became known that Iran had pursued a clandestine uranium enrichment program for over a decade. Again with the help of the A.Q. Khan network, Iran developed the ability to manufacture enrichment centrifuges; set up a pilot enrichment plant; and was building an industrial-scale enrichment facility. Because Iran is a party to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, all of this work should have been disclosed to the International Atomic Energy Agency and placed under IAEA inspection to ensure it was not used for nuclear arms. (A uranium hexafluoride plant, initially assisted by China, was declared to the agency.) Although the IAEA detected traces of highly enriched uranium on some of the Iranian centrifuge equipment, it remains unclear whether Iran has in fact crossed this critical threshold. Iran claimed that the equipment was contaminated with highly enriched uranium produced by its previous owner, Pakistan, although Iran has not specifically acknowledged the Pakistani connection.

Iran argues that it is building its enrichment capability to supply low-enriched fuel for future nuclear power plants. But the evidence does not add up: Iran currently has only a single power reactor under construction, the Russian-supplied Bushehr reactor, and the contract specifies that Russia will supply all the low-enriched fuel needed for that reactor. Given the secret history of the Iranian enrichment program and its unconvincing justification, virtually all observers perceive the effort as a transparent bid to develop an Iranian nuclear weapon capability.


The deal being negotiated with France, Germany, and the UK would require Iran to freeze these activities, as well as those at a second set of facilities that appear designed to produce plutonium, an alternative material for nuclear weapons. The IAEA would monitor all relevant sites to ensure Iranian compliance. In return, Europe would lift trade restrictions, Iran would gain access to currently prohibited high-technology, and, possibly, the West would assist Iran with a truncated nuclear power program that would not include facilities for enriching uranium or separating plutonium. Tehran's missiles � capable of reaching Israel � would not be included, nor would the chemical weapons that the United States believes Iran retains.

The United States is uncomfortable with the nuclear deal. Its fundamental concern is that Iran will cheat and build new enrichment facilities at secret sites, notwithstanding the relatively robust IAEA inspections prescribed under the deal. Indeed, last month, Iran appeared to be protecting some nuclear-weapons related activities from IAEA scrutiny, restricting its access to portions of a site where Iran is allegedly developing the triggering components for nuclear arms.


As the IAEA monitors Iran's known nuclear facilities, the most effective way for Tehran to build a new clandestine enrichment capability would be with assistance from abroad. If the uranium hexafluoride sale to Libya is any indication, North Korea stands ready to help. Tehran, whose enrichment program is well advanced, may have technical know-how to trade to North Korea as part of the bargain. The two states are thought to have collaborated on intermediate-range missiles: North Korea � having accepted a voluntary moratorium on missile launches � most likely supplied the missiles and a production capability in exchange for Iranian missile test data.

With the end of Libyan and Iraqi nuclear programs, the "Axis of Evil" is not what it once was � but a North Korea-Iran nuclear axis seems all too likely. Now that North Korea has declared itself nuclear power and rejected negotiations to eliminate this capability, thwarting such connections will be more difficult than ever.

Leonard S. Spector is the Deputy Director of the Monterey Institute Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

1 Khan, known as the father of the Pakistani nuclear deterrent, acknowledged his smuggling activities in February 2004 and, in a prearranged deal, was immediately pardoned by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. He is now under de facto house arrest in Islamabad and much of his network has been rolled up.


Rights:
� 2005 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

[sundubuman]

[Kuros]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Ya-ta Boy]

For the last 6 years, my gut has told me exactly the wrong message. 180 degrees wrong.

Right now, my gut is telling me that Bush and Co. will back off and find a way to rein in the Israelis. This tells me that Bush & Co. are on the phone right now telling the Israelis to ramp up the bombing.

Common sense tells me we are fully committed in Afghanistan/Iraq with nothing left over at our present stage of mobilization. Therefore the chances are Baby George is plotting full scale war on Syria and Iran and wouldn't mind throwing in Russia and other assorted countries.

[Alias]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

Saddam did in fact try to get Uraniaum from Niger and from Africa.

Joe Wilson is a liar.

http://www.slate.com/id/2103795/

Alias you spend too much time on antiwar.com




fighting words: A wartime lexicon.
Wowie Zahawie
Sorry everyone, but Iraq did go uranium shopping in Niger.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, April 10, 2006, at 4:43 PM ET
In the late 1980s, the Iraqi representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency�Iraq's senior public envoy for nuclear matters, in effect�was a man named Wissam al-Zahawie. After the Kuwait war in 1991, when Rolf Ekeus arrived in Baghdad to begin the inspection and disarmament work of UNSCOM, he was greeted by Zahawie, who told him in a bitter manner that "now that you have come to take away our assets," the two men could no longer be friends. (They had known each other in earlier incarnations at the United Nations in New York.)

At a later 1995 U.N. special session on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Zahawie was the Iraqi delegate and spoke heatedly about the urgent need to counterbalance Israel's nuclear capacity. At the time, most democratic countries did not have full diplomatic relations with Saddam's regime, and there were few fully accredited Iraqi ambassadors overseas, Iraq's interests often being represented by the genocidal Islamist government of Sudan (incidentally, yet another example of collusion between "secular" Baathists and the fundamentalists who were sheltering Osama Bin Laden). There was one exception�an Iraqi "window" into the world of open diplomacy�namely the mutual recognition between the Baathist regime and the Vatican. To this very important and sensitive post in Rome, Zahawie was appointed in 1997, holding the job of Saddam's ambassador to the Holy See until 2000. Those who knew him at that time remember a man much given to anti-Jewish tirades, with a standing ticket for Wagner performances at Bayreuth. (Actually, as a fan of Das Rheingold and G�tterd�mmerung in particular, I find I can live with this. Hitler secretly preferred sickly kitsch like Franz Lehar.)

In February 1999, Zahawie left his Vatican office for a few days and paid an official visit to Niger, a country known for absolutely nothing except its vast deposits of uranium ore. It was from Niger that Iraq had originally acquired uranium in 1981, as confirmed in the Duelfer Report. In order to take the Joseph Wilson view of this Baathist ambassadorial initiative, you have to be able to believe that Saddam Hussein's long-term main man on nuclear issues was in Niger to talk about something other than the obvious. Italian intelligence (which first noticed the Zahawie trip from Rome) found it difficult to take this view and alerted French intelligence (which has better contacts in West Africa and a stronger interest in nuclear questions). In due time, the French tipped off the British, who in their cousinly way conveyed the suggestive information to Washington. As everyone now knows, the disclosure appeared in watered-down and secondhand form in the president's State of the Union address in January 2003.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



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If the above was all that was known, it would surely be universally agreed that no responsible American administration could have overlooked such an amazingly sinister pattern. Given the past Iraqi record of surreptitious dealing, cheating of inspectors, concealment of sites and caches, and declared ambition to equip the technicians referred to openly in the Baathist press as "nuclear mujahideen," one could scarcely operate on the presumption of innocence.

However, the waters have since become muddied, to say the least. For a start, someone produced a fake document, dated July 6, 2000, which purports to show Zahawie's signature and diplomatic seal on an actual agreement for an Iraqi uranium transaction with Niger. Almost everything was wrong with this crude forgery�it had important dates scrambled, and it misstated the offices of Niger politicians. In consequence, IAEA Chairman Mohammed ElBaradei later reported to the U.N. Security Council that the papers alleging an Iraq-Niger uranium connection had been demonstrated to be fraudulent.

But this doesn't alter the plain set of established facts in my first three paragraphs above. The European intelligence services, and the Bush administration, only ever asserted that the Iraqi regime had apparently tried to open (or rather, reopen) a yellowcake trade "in Africa." It has never been claimed that an agreement was actually reached. What motive could there be for a forgery that could be instantly detected upon cursory examination?

There seem to be only three possibilities here. Either a) American intelligence concocted the note; b) someone in Italy did so in the hope of gain; or c) it was the product of disinformation, intended to protect Niger and discredit any attention paid to the actual, real-time Zahawie visit. The CIA is certainly incompetent enough to have fouled up this badly. (I like Edward Luttwak's formulation in the March 22 Times Literary Supplement, where he writes that "there have been only two kinds of CIA secret operations: the ones that are widely known to have failed�usually because of almost unbelievably crude errors�and the ones that are not yet widely known to have failed.") Still, it almost passes belief that any American agency would fake a document that purportedly proved far more than the administration had asked and then get every important name and date wrapped round the axle. Forgery for gain is easy to understand, especially when it is borne in mind that nobody wastes time counterfeiting a bankrupt currency. Forgery for disinformation, if that is what it was, appears at least to have worked. Almost everybody in the world now affects to believe that Saddam Hussein was framed on the Niger rap.

According to the London Sunday Times of April 9, the truth appears to be some combination of b) and c). A NATO investigation has identified two named employees of the Niger Embassy in Rome who, having sold a genuine document about Zahawie to Italian and French intelligence agents, then added a forged paper in the hope of turning a further profit. The real stuff went by one route to Washington, and the fakery, via an Italian journalist and the U.S. Embassy in Rome, by another. The upshot was�follow me closely here�that a phony paper alleging a deal was used to shoot down a genuine document suggesting a connection.

Zahawie's name and IAEA connection were never mentioned by ElBaradei in his report to the United Nations, and his past career has never surfaced in print. Looking up the press of the time causes one's jaw to slump in sheer astonishment. Here, typically, is a Time magazine "exclusive" about Zahawie, written by Hassan Fattah on Oct. 1, 2003:

The veteran diplomat has spent the eight months since President Bush's speech trying to set the record straight and clear his name. In a rare interview with Time, al-Zahawie outlined how forgery and circumstantial evidence was used to talk up Iraq's nuclear weapons threat, and leave him holding the smoking gun.

A few paragraphs later appear, the wonderful and unchallenged words from Zahawie: "Frankly, I didn't know that Niger produced uranium at all." Well, sorry for the inconvenience of the questions, then, my old IAEA and NPT "veteran" (whose nuclear qualifications go unmentioned in the Time article). Instead, we are told that Zahawie visited Niger and other West African countries to encourage them to break the embargo on flights to Baghdad, as they had broken the sanctions on Qaddafi's Libya. A bit of a lowly mission, one might think, for one of the Iraqi regime's most senior and specialized envoys.

The Duelfer Report also cites "a second contact between Iraq and Niger," which occurred in 2001, when a Niger minister visited Baghdad "to request assistance in obtaining petroleum products to alleviate Niger's economic problems." According to the deposition of Ja'far Diya' Ja'far (the head of Iraq's pre-1991 nuclear weapons program), these negotiations involved no offer of uranium ore but only "cash in exchange for petroleum." West Africa is awash in petroleum, and Niger is poor in cash. Iraq in 2001 was cash-rich through the oil-for-food racket, but you may if you wish choose to believe that a near-bankrupt African delegation from a uranium-based country traveled across a continent and a half with nothing on its mind but shopping for oil.

Interagency feuding has ruined the Bush administration's capacity to make its case in public, and a high-level preference for deniable leaking has further compounded the problem. But please read my first three paragraphs again and tell me if the original story still seems innocuous to you.



http://www.slate.com/id/2139609/




Anyway Alias Justin Romando is a lying whack job who loves fascists. and he thinks the wrong side won in the pacific in WW II.



He is not a source he is a disinformation artist.

[VanIslander]

You don't think they already have?

Gawd you're naive.

[The Man known as The Man]

It's time to carpet bomb Damascus.

[ddeubel]

OH MY GOD!

[Wangja]

[quote="Kuros"]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

Israel has said if the soldiers are returned and the Lebanese army takes control of the border that they will accept a cease fire.

Israel doesn't have to accept Hizzbollahs war. How about the international community really isolate and sanction hizzbollah? Any chance they would do so? Nope.