The WaPo reports that it was Pakistan, not North Korea that sold uranium hexafluoride to Libya:
In an effort to increase pressure on North Korea, the Bush administration told its Asian allies in briefings earlier this year that Pyongyang had exported nuclear material to Libya. That was a significant new charge, the first allegation that North Korea was helping to create a new nuclear weapons state.
But that is not what U.S. intelligence reported, according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction. North Korea, according to the intelligence, had supplied uranium hexafluoride — which can be enriched to weapons-grade uranium — to Pakistan. It was Pakistan, a key U.S. ally with its own nuclear arsenal, that sold the material to Libya. The U.S. government had no evidence, the officials said, that North Korea knew of the second transaction.
Pakistan’s role as both the buyer and the seller was concealed to cover up the part played by Washington’s partner in the hunt for al Qaeda leaders, according to the officials, who discussed the issue on the condition of anonymity. In addition, a North Korea-Pakistan transfer would not have been news to the U.S. allies, which have known of such transfers for years and viewed them as a business matter between sovereign states.
Well, this is interesting. Read the rest on your own.
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61 Comments
i hate reading things like this. why should anyone believe bush/cheney anymore? they have lied to the american people to justify war in iraq, and now they’re lying to our allies to justify coming down on north korea.
isn’t the case for putting pressure on north korea strong enough without making stuff up? the u.s.a. is starting to become the boy who cried wolf. when we really are serious about something, they’re not going to believe us.
nora
b/c lied to the French and Germans only. American public including myself loved those “excuses” to topple a dictator and get the oil. And, change Iraqi society from backward Muslems to modern Christians. Many saw it my way; b/c re-elected even when the misrepresentation was out in the open.
However, on this one do not ASSME that b/c had a hand in it. It could from an over-zealous intelligence analyst justifying his pay.
And, how do you know conclusively that NK “did not know” about the final destination? Pakistan could’ve been just a stopping point.
They=democrates or EU? Don’t worry. People just believe what they want to believe.
If this half-baked accusation is used to bring down the horrible NK dictator and end the Chinese influence in the peninsula, I am all for it.
Are those “modern Christians” the ones who still don’t believe in evolution and murder abortion doctors?
hahahaha bluejeans
another idiotic statement from a dumbass!
At least Christians don’t buy a contract to bump off a “soiled” daughter.
Now evolution… this is a topic I can spend days to talk about. You wrote “believe” and that is a right word. Evolution is a religion.
I have a MS degree in Chemistry so I will write some argument against the evolution.
1) classical one : Where are the links? For example, what happened to the all in-between species between man and monkey? How come there are no half-and-halfs? One specie with a man’s head and gorilla’s legs? Why not?
2) DNA: how come all those billions and billions pairs of deoxy nucleo acids line up perfectly to form great organisms correctly? As a chemist, the second law of thermodynamics is Entropy. Things move toward randomness. How come things move toward order, from an earthworm to a human?
3) How come other scenarios like aliens’ making humans are never accepted? There are billions and billions of stars. Why can we assume aliens with super intellect designing all the species on earth? Why does it have to be one specie coming from another? Evolutionist are too dogmatic for me.
There are more arguments but I will stop here. Evolution is a religion too.
Murdering abortion doctors? Well, I won’t do this. Murder is a sin. There are some wackos in every group.
YoMo, as a European scientist I feel astonished what you just wrote down.
You must definitely read the very readable essays of few Stephen Jay Gould, which are exactly about the points you mention (if I can call this “points”). As a religious man, I am also astonished how you can write “Evolution is a religion.” Read Darwin, read Karl Popper, read Gould, read Penrose. Please read first and try to contradict ideas in a serious way, i.e. in a reasonable manner and don’t make a fool of yourself in public.
Now, because I don’t want you to think I only give lessons (this is what I do during the day, I must confess), let me just suggest some counter-arguments to your pseudo-arguments.
1) Missing links. This is not a controversial issue. The missing links are a myth born out of a misinterpretation of the evolution theory (which means analysis of a seris of fact, which should be falsifiable and with well-supported hypothesis). Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_link (it’s not authoritative but gives you an idea). In particular, what biologist propose is a common ancestor to man an other species of monkeys/apes. The incompleteness of the fossil records makes you believe also in a discontinuous evolution, hence the so-called missing link. You remind me some creationists that say that man cannot descent from the apes since there are still apes nowadays. This claim is due to bad presentations in manuals: they show you on a line, first a fish, then an amphibian, then a reptile, then a little mammal, then an ape then a (white) man. No, evolution is a tree, not a line.
2) About entropy. I remember Roger Penrose writing something readable about exactly this. Your entropy, as YoMo, is low, right? But, surprisingly, it is almost the same as your parents, grand parents etc., even similar to a horse 2 millions years ago. How come? Because the miracle of life is a LOCAL low entropy. The food you eat is food because it is of low entropy. At the start of the chain are the plants, whose metabolism is among the lowest (not surprinsingly, then). Again, the key word here is locality. (Of course, by keeping a low entropy locally, you are increasing a lot the global entropy of the universe).
3) You say scientists are dogmatic because they do not believe in aliens… Science is a discipline in which, if you want to convince someone, you must bring strong evidences in favour of your claim if your claim has a low probability to be accepted in the field. If you claim that you can predict the past, science will accept that (one of the consequences of the general relativity theory explained the movement of Mercury, which was a good point, but a prediction of the present. Much stronger result were other _real_ predictions.). If you claim that you can predict the future, then you must bring stronger evidences. If you claim aliens exist, you must bring very strong evidences. It is not the method of science to disprove your claims, but it is up to you to prove yours (yes, science is conservative but not dogmatic because based on reason). But there is more at stake here. You seem to believe that, because science cannot explain, demonstrate, the creation of life (despite some nucleotids created a few decades ago in laboratory), then a bigger mystery, the Alien, God, Gods, magics, Santa Klaus better “explain” it.
Please read and think.
What does the article say? I fail to see the “revelations.” If you have an ax to grind with Bush or the US government, run with it. Fine. But, what does the article say?
The article itself makes it clear, even though it presses hard to satisfy the ax grinders, that the US even in the “bastard briefing” never said Kim Jong Il got on a plane and flew the stuff to Libya. It even says, albiet in the last third of the article, that in the very bastard, horrible, underhanded, damned briefing, the US said that the Pakistan had the stuff and that the Pakistan media is even reporting on it — “Pakistan was mentioned only once in the briefing paper, and in a context that emphasized Pyongyang’s guilt. “Pakistani press reports have said the uranium came from North Korea,” according to the briefing paper, which was read to The Post.”
??? Where is the call to arms? to moral outrage? The best shots the article takes is for the US being friends with Pakistan even after finding out such information. The basis for moral outrage for “lieing to allies” is too thin to even consider.
How “shocking” can this article be when even the Pakistani media was putting the information out?
The article makes some rather far fetched claims. 1st, that nuclear material sells between NK and Pakistan would not have been important to US allies since they would have been viewed as just one nation to another nation deal. Fine. I’m sure SK would stick to such an argument, because it will do anything to keep NK out of a corner, but to write such a thing as if it were the general consensus is BS. NK selling nuclear material abroad would not be greeted as “business as usual.”
2nd, the article argues that the reason NK hasn’t been in the 6 party talks or that it (most recently) said it wasn’t coming back to them was because of the Libya claim. Please. I guess we have to take at face value the claim by some in SK and even in the foreign press that NK started building nukes again was because Bush called NK names in the state of the union address a couple of years ago.
3rd, the article claims that South Korea and China have become “increasingly” unwilling to apply sanctions, because of “underhanded” intelligence lies. Again, please….It has been clear from the start both nations, especially SK, will not apply sanctions to NK, not becasue of “American lies,” but because they will not risk a collapse of the Kim Jong Il’s regime.
Yes. SK finds a way to go out publically and deny anything that could raise the heat on NK in the global public opinion, even when it comes directly from the NK government. But again, the motivation to do so is not because they don’t believe the facts or that the US has “lied to them too much.” The reason they go to defend NK is because they want to defend NK.
Here is a better article on the subject oddly enough written by the same guy who supplied information for this one. Too bad they didn’t get him to write all of the new one. http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....5Feb2.html
The most meat on the bones of this story is what it says about Pakistan and the US being close to them today and not holding their feet to the fire. Even this is only as good as Pakistan is acting bad today.
If nuclear cooperation, material sells, and technology transfers are still going on between Pakistan and other nations while the United States is close to it, that is big news. If it was going on officially right under the US’s nose in the last couple of years, it is news, but even in this case, if the US working closely with Pakistan has stopped such things, then hasn’t the US done exactly what people who praise article such as this want them to do? Don’t some people want the US to rush to one-on-one talks with NK and even normalize relations with it because they believe it has a chance to curb NK’s bad behavior?
Anyway, read the other WP article I put the link to. It was written about two months ago and tells the story of the nuclear material much better than this one, and since it was telling a good bit of the same stuff about even the questions surrounding how “involved” NK was in Libya getting the stuff, that alone should make us wonder what is so astounding about the same news today
Unreliable whether lied or not, I think. Even without misleading allies about NK, the fact that the Powel went before the UNSC to make the US’s case and was completely wrong would make any ally and for that matter any country hesitant if Rice were to go before the UNSC and hold up little bottles in the air to make the case for invading NK/Iran/whatever.
I’m not even trying to attack anyone, Bush, neocons, or whoever. Just a sad fact. The wrong “intel” on Iraq makes it harder for the US to convince anyone of anything. Even Bush Admin knows that.
I can agree with what Oranckay said completely.
Even the fact that the intelligence agencies of France, Germany, the UK, and other nations with the resources and desire to gather intel on Iraq believed the same type intel doesn’t mean much.
Being wrong on Iraq’s stockpiles hurts and hurts a lot and will hurt for a long time.
And even “solid” proof later that a stockpile in a Syria or Lebannon at place X was once in Iraq at place Y before the war will not do much to repair the damage.
Christian,
The science keeps evolving. At the 4th century, the scientists then believed everything on earth was composed four elements, water, smoke, fire and carbon. Their argument, which was the cutting edge then, was that everything burns and generates fire. Only thing that does not burn is water. Ergo, four elements.
That was the perfect argument then. Nobody could argue against such undisputable and lucid explaination. This scientific theory was believed by all scientist that time.
You said the science need proof. Where is THE experimental observation of Evolution? Have anyone seen one specie changing to another? Evolution itself was accepted due to lack of other evidences. In other words, it is decided by circumstantial evidences which to me don’t hold water.
There are billions and billion of stars(these are suns) in the galaxy. Wouldn’t it be funny mathematically speaking that Earth is only place an intelligent being can happen? Be honest intellectually. If Evolution can happen on Earth, why not million other planets? And, none of them could space travel? None of them can make human-like robots? Saying that none of this can happen because you do not see the evidence is totally denying mathmatics and probability which to me are more sound logic than Evolution any time.
Go ahead and hold on to evolution. In about two hundred years, evolution will be laughed at by then-scientists. Science is like a music or an art; it keeps changing. “Atom” can be split further.
rowan…very true..your levelheadedness is much appreciated.
but yomo was just begging for a bashing. his chemistry MA is the most damning indictment of our system for higher education in this country
is evolution verifiable? frankly, i don’t give a fuck. makes no difference to me. just don’t cite education then try to refute it with brown collar mumble jumble.
it’s a response typical of most religious fanatics i’ve encountered.
just to keep things off topic…there are some very difficult questions that any ‘modern’ christian in this nation has to answer.
on abortion/euthanasia/censorship, is it divine edict to impose your own moral code on legal framework of a nation that claims to be secular?
on church/state, must government sanction a religion with specific reference, tradition notwithstanding? people bash france, but at least they try to separate the two
on evolution, does faith trump science? does some pseudo-theory held true by a religion have a place in public school curricula? for your children perhaps, but also mine?
more often than not the responses to these issue are laughably juvenile and irrelevant. you are right…there are huge implications and valid arguments for every which stance. the lack of intelligent debate is really the issue for me
on a final note…as one who needed church twice a week for a decade before discovering apparent contradictions in the holy book…would love to hear your point of view
Wow. A new record for going off topic.
And regarding the nuke material in Libya - what’s the diff? Why do the ends always have to have the right means? Why can’t we just off these badassas and call the world a better place without worrying about whether some i’s were dotted or t’s crossed? Saddam gone - let’s see, the world sux, let’s put him back.
Uhh, Kim Jong Il - great guy according to Bruce Cummings - gotta be true - leave him alone. It’s our fault his people are starving.
Ok, not as erudite after a number of brews. Be back tomorrow.
WaPo is once again putting out its spin on events. Pakistan served as a cutout, to disguise the final destination for the materials. But North Korea was the originator. This is no different from Syria serving as a cutout for Russian arms sales to Iraq. It was Russia that sold these weapons to Iraq, not Syria.
A better headline would be “WaPo misled public about NK-Libya sale”, alleging that the use of intermediaries implied that this was really a Pakistan-Libya sale.
If your shocked that the Bush adm. would lie to its allies you obviously have not been paying attention over the past 4+ years.
And once again, the BUsh defenders step up perfectly on cue to dismiss the Post story as “bias” while willfully ignoring the obvious: that we misled (some might say lie) our allies.
Much ado about nothing. Initial tests showed that the Libyan nuclear material originated in nK; hence, the assumption perpetuated by popular media was that nK sold the material to Libya. The press is so fond of jumping to conclusions in time to print the morning edition.
Brian,
I read the article. It has problems internally with what it says and what it wants to say. I also read some other articles on topic.
Where are the lies? Even the WMD in Iraq doesn’t match that argument. It was “obvious” they believed the WMD was there, and it was also obvious the other intel agencies in Europe believed the same thing, they just didn’t agree on what to do about them (if anything).
And they will continue to pay a price for being wrong.
I forgot, if anything, one of the things you can say about Bush is that he says what he believes too much. The arrogant cowboy label fits much better than liar.
I am shocked-you mean that the Bush Administration would actually willingly and knowingly mislead (read lie) to not only the citizens whose interests they are supposed to represent but the rest of the world-dispicable. First the Easterbunny, then Porn, now this… is there anything in this world of ours that is not a fabrication?
you have a pretty fuckin’ shitty understanding of entropy and science in general…in response:
(1) punctuated equilibria
(2) pls revisit your college notes on entropy. should you need help,
http://www.charleswood.ca/reading/evolution.php
(3) empirical evidence seems to jive with one theorectical framework better
it’s unfair that creationists are allowed to deflect the burden of proof while they hold science to a higher standard.
is the bible consistent with itself?
(1) God of the old testament is a vengeful, bloodthirsty, and racist creature…piss him off and he rains plague on you. disobey and you’re a pillar of salt. the world is black and white…his people, and all others.
(2) the new testament engenders a very different God. this one is all about love, sacrifice, and beautiful butterflies. all people are his children.
why the discrepancy? did he turn soft? is He fickle? midlife crisis? or simply moody?
in the end, there is only one conclusion…He is all too human.
as is the church.
the catholic church of the middle ages was nothing more than another scheming political faction, base as the rest of them. and the protestant church was formed to enable one man’s divorce.
religion is human. it reflects the course of our history and is shaped by our profane needs.
perhaps christianity, as redefined by jesus christ, had redeemed itself with that message of love. but you zealots of late have all but squandered that
can you say….’credibility gap’?
I am not cathartidae. He might be a great guy but, well, I’m a different Brian living in Korea.
YoMo,
I understand that this is very off topic. Your, what about aliens point seems ot ask the question. If we didn’t evolve, aliens brought us here, how were the aliens made? I don’t think we need aliens to explain evolution but if you do need them, you’re just putting the evolution debate one removed.
A better place to argue your point would be:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/talk.origins
I would like to thank mcnut for his erudite refutation of my statement.
i think when you look at the creation/evolution topic (just to keep things off topic), it depends on your asssumption going in as to whether or not God exists. There is evidence, and a lot of problems both ways, and of course a lot of it can be interpreted in a way as to support your own argument.
Although i believe in creation, i’d say due to the fact that i believe in God, I don’t believe that there is convincing evidence to change your opinion if you believe in evolution, and vise versa.
as for the bible being inconsistent, i think that shows a lack of understanding. But i do agree about the church. I think that people often confuse the church and christianity when the two can be very different things (although they shouldn’t be).
donus,
well, feel free to shoot me over an email at: rowanmaxwell at yahoo dot com let me know where you see the contradictions in the bible and i’ll see if i have any insight, not that i have that many answers. there were some great topis for discussion there, which i don’t really want to fill the board up with…..
Bluejeans, Worry not about McNut’s unsophisticated attempt at a comeback. I guess some people get a little touchy when inconsistencies in their national myths are exposed.
I was not aware that God had anything to do with the role the US governement had in disseminating information on the sale of NK Uraniumhexaflouride-I thought that was the real of Islamic fundamentalists. I appreciate the fact that religion is a precious thing and free discussion of it even more so, perhaps we could stick to the topic and leave the hellfire and brimstone for the religous blogs?
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss [sic] Lewinsky.”
Another Brian,
As a scientist, I must say there should be several theories about human origin.
1) creation by God
2) creation by an alien from a different planet
3) evolution from organic mixture
4) other more esoteric ones..different dimension, time travel, etc
The point I was making to Christian(he was a totally non-Christian, a heathen) was the evolutionists are only insisting (3). Very, very dogmatic. They are so closed-minded that even (2) was rejected.
In next few centuries, as humans venture out to space far beyound our immediate solar system, we may meet some aliens. The (2) will gain more weight then and win over (3). Mathematically, it has to be.
Then oh..about 30th century, (4) will be more popular.
Science is a rock music. Bands and sounds come and go.
One more thing,
Even if humans can prove that we came from a monkey( I forgot the name for this monkey) and evolution is the truth.
How can that disprove God’s existence? God could have used evolution-ike mechanism to create human beings. That is his prerogative.
One is making a big, illogical jump when he assumes God did not make humans because he just proved evolution is true. God still made humans through evolution.
BTW, there is a creature called fruit flies. They go thru one generation in several hours. Scientists, especially evolution-believers, have been observing fruit flies for decades; this amounts to billions of human years. Nothing changed. The fruit fly today is no different from the fruit flies of 30 years ago. No evolution for billions of years.
Creation, Baby, believe it!
How the hell did a post on U.S. intelligence miscues on North Korea degenerate into a theological discussion?
its called evolution………evolution of the discussion topic.
My dear Marmot, in response to your question, I don’t know how or why but it is really tiresome to come here, expecting some interesting viewpoints on the posted subject, only to read such tripe from this “yomo” nutcase. If he or others keep this up, please consider banning the “monkeys”.
R. Elgin — your suggest is duly noted, and may go into effect shortly.
Rowan,
I don’t tend to laugh very much without first having alcohol, but your last comment literally had me rolling on the floor.
Amen brother…
http://www.yhchang.com/CUNNILI.....KOREA.html
Ah, the mind is a terrible thing…..
I’m starting to miss nationalistic rants about Tokdo!
May I please have the ten minutes of my life back for clicking on that URL?
Dear Marmot, I’d like to suggest you cover “Lee Hyolee Heads Korean Lipstick Wave” on your blog, and post the Chosun Ilbo photo of here holding the phallic stick-things. A man has his priorities, after all.
On second thought, it does relate to the original subject of this post, which is political deception. It certainly misled me…. :-p
Michael, I second that emotion.
That’s odd that link should be listed.
I’m a fan of Young-hae Chang Flash works; they’re pretty funny, especially the “Samsung” bit.
Should I write about Christians again?
How’s about this. The United States has sold nuclear technology to China, which made it’s way to Pakistan. Does this mean that the US sold the stuff to Pakistan? No.
Does anyone know if the North Koreans intentionally sold the uraniam to Libya? With respect to some of the learned posters (really) I doubt that any of us do.
Will the six party talks work? I doubt it. But the US should tell the North that if any of their stuff ever winds up in a bomb in America, that it will be the end of their country. Come to think of it, they probably already have.
R.Elgin–I really like Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries also. They’re an artist duo based in Seoul (but maybe you know this). Check out their site:
http://www.yhchang.com/
Hi
I’m neither Asian nor American but I gotta say that your Blog is very interesting…..
Dancing With Tears In My Eyes
Matthias
Perhaps some Grace Park photos from this month’s Maxim magazine?
In lieu of a new interesting topic a little skin goes a long way
I don’t think Korea can take another two more years of Roh Mu Hyun rule without the entire country driven into ruin. This guy is fixated with past history instead of facing the future. There are many many problems that the country is facing that require urgent attention, but he’s too busy with bashing Japan and leading a witch hunt against families that are thought to be collaborators. He wants to break away from US/Japan alliance and join the China/North Korea/Russia alliance of evil. Pretty soon South Korea will be equated with North Korea at this pace of going. You know, I thought I’d ever say this but I wouldn’t weep if he dropped dead tomorrow.
Wow. Too bad the Bush administration didn’t just come clean and say this when the story first broke:
American and Asian intelligence officials say it is unclear whether North Korea knew that Libya was the ultimate destination for the chemical, called uranium hexafluoride. One senior official with access to the intelligence data said it was possible that the North Koreans only knew that it was transferring the fuel to members of Dr. Khan’s network. “We don’t know how much they produced, or if it was shipped elsewhere,” the official said. “It’s one of the questions we have to get answered.”
Actually, it did–to the New York Times on February 9, 2005. The WaPo story is a thinly-sourced, non-story editorial in drag. If the Bush administration “concealed” this information from its allies, you have to wonder why it let the New York Times in on the plot.
Of course, the Libya story first broke on (irony alert!) Groundhog Day, so it’s always possible–but not plausible–that the administration said one thing one week and something else the next. No actual, um, evidence supports that, however, and this statement from the U.S. Embassy flatly denies it:
The United States has not misled allies or anyone else about the matter. United States officials informed allies of the intelligence community’s assessment of the most likely source of certain nuclear material that was transferred to Libya through the A.Q. Khan network. . . . Whether the intended recipient was the A.Q Khan network or Libya is irrelevant to our proliferation concerns regarding North Korea.”
Yeah, I realize how unfashionable it is to believe anything the government says, even when it’s the most plausible and best-supported hypothesis in light of the NYT story. Let’s not forget the self-serving motives of China and South Korea to find some excuse to bail on the entire project to disarm North Korea, either. Indeed, the WaPo’s unsolicited editorializing that Bush alienated “allies,” presumably South Korea and China (since Japan doesn’t appear to be alienated), flunks the laugh test. Allies indeed. According to the story, those same “allies” were fine with North Korea selling UO6 to A.Q. Khan.
And as they say in Beijing, the North Korean and Pakistani nuclear programs were as close as lips and teeth. The fact that North Korea may have sold uranium recklessly or through a shadowy middleman rather than directly and intentionally is neither reassuring nor particularly relevant. The goal here is to protect ourselves from proliferation, not to choose between murder one and manslaughter. It is the presence of an unacceptable risk, not the intent, that matters.
What’s most telling about the WaPo story is the dog that didn’t bark–the Post’s anonymous sources confirm that North Korea was the original source of the UO6, which is a giant leap across the “red line” almost any way you look at it.
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