Are We Giving Saudi Arabia Nukes?
No no, not the bomb. Strictly a peaceful civil program, you understand, just like the Iranians say they’re developing.
As Bush flew into Riyadh, the White House said the United States, the world’s largest energy consumer, had agreed to help protect the resources of the world’s top oil exporter and help it in developing peaceful nuclear energy.
"The United States and Saudi Arabia have agreed to cooperate in safeguarding the kingdom’s energy resources by protecting key infrastructure, enhancing Saudi border security, and meeting (its) expanding energy needs," a White House statement said.
"The U.S. and Saudi Arabia will sign a memorandum of understanding in the area of peaceful civil nuclear energy cooperation."
The announcement came as Bush ended a three-day trip to Israel where he vowed to oppose Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Tehran says its program is peaceful but Bush said it would be "unforgivable" if Iran were allowed to get the bomb.
So we’re giving Saudi Arabia nukes while still refusing to allow Iran nukes.
And for all that, Saudi Arabia isn’t even willing (though I question whether, at this point, they are able) to lower gas prices?
While Bush is likely to find common ground on Iran when he meets King Abdullah, the Saudi monarch is expected to rebuff for the second time this year Bush’s face-to-face call to get OPEC pumping more oil to world markets.
Wasn’t it just yesterday that Bush was decrying negotiations with evil dictators? Does giving them nuclear technology while getting nothing in exchange count as "appeasement"?
Remind me again. Weren’t most of the guys who attacked us on 9/11 Saudis?
Yes, they were, & the Saudi governing class is made up of people who are not our pals, no matter how much Georgie Bush might think it. It takes a President w/real skill to know how to deal with the Saudis to U.S. advantage. Enough said.
Fun factoid- Last night’s gas fillerup @ the closest name brand station to my house had $3.99 for regular, $4.49 for super. Happier every day I bought a Prius when I did.
My diesel Golf is getting driven by me, my wife and my son. It is accumulating miles rapidly, while two fairly new Subarus sit, accumulating dust.
Thanks ew.
Someone better explain to Congress that no one can refine radioactive crude.
OT, it’s a great “poison pill” for the Saudi royal family to extort loyalty. If anyone tries to overthrow the royal family, they’ll nuke their own oil fields.
I guess its the price they are demanding to not dump all of their worthless treasury holdings.
That’s part of my puzzlement about this.
I understand the realpolitik of this: we’re apparently unwilling to do what Saudi Arabia says needs to be done to prevent Iran from getting nukes. So we appear to be ensuring that Iran doesn’t have a strategic advantage over the Saudis.
But damn. What does it say about our negotiating position if the Saudis can demand this from us and still not pump more gas in exchange???? I can only guess we have become completely and utterly powerless to wield influence at all.
The relationship between the Saudis & GWB has always struck me as similar to that of Cheney & Bush- they tell him what to do & w/little argument, he does it. There is no negotiating process, no influencing from his side, nor does he really attempt any.
If Matthew Simmons , Kenneth Deffeyes, et al (see also here) are anywhere near on target, The Saudis may not be able to pump more oil.
Not that I disagree with MarieRoget’s sentiment @4, above:
The Bush/Cheney axis has been all about destabilizing the Middle East. How does this reestablish the balance of power? Iran suspended it’s nuclear program in 2003 according to the NIE. Giving a nuclear program to the Saudis is like poking a stick in the Iranians eye and a sure fire way to ensure that they will have a reason to restart their program.
Physical custody isn’t even necessary. Proxy control works.
Just like they control American banks and the Bush wing of the CIA and GOP. Through proxies.
Pakistani nukes and and al-Qaeda are two sides of the same “Safari Club” deal that GHW Bush made with Prince al-Turki in 1976. Saudis got the Bush CIA to look the other way while Saudi proxies developed nuclear and paramilitary capabilities in exchange for petrodollar funding for CIA black operations banned by the Democratic Congress. See, http://journals.democraticunde…..eveymg/280
Saudi Royals delegated the dirty work to others. Always have, always will.
This gift of nuclear power is just symbolic. The Saudis had an effective nuclear deterrent the moment that Pakistan had its first operational bomb.
I seriously doubt that Pakistan would open itself up to Israeli retaliation to defend the Saudi’s.
Boxturtle (They got their own interests)
Or our fearless leaders are simply too stupid to realize that there is no negotiation here.
Because we’ve hit the end of oil, and the Saudis know it.
Negotiate with what? We’ve been reduced to supplicants bowing at the feet of our masters pleading for handouts.
Bush’s “official statement” is to ask the Saudis to pump more Oil but his “unofficial/top secret message” to them is more likely not to pump more Oil … this way he and his Oil buddies can make out like bandits until next Jan.
Possibly. Doing one thing while saying another is mother’s milk to Shrub.
Bush has already semi-permanently reduced available supplies by bungling his occupation of Iraq. And we do need the oil itself, as do many others. We need it more than we might otherwise because Bush has spiked attempts in the world’s largest economy to develop and commercialize alternative energy technologies, a heady mix of which we rather desperately need. But such things provide neither the immediate profits nor the silver bullet that Lone Ranger Bush seems to crave.
When Oil started coming down in price in 06/07, he immediately announced that he was doubling or tripling the Reserve, sending prices shooting upwards.
BushCo is the Worst President in our eyes but he is a hero to the Oil & Arms Dealers …
and military contractors.
The guy just doesn’t want peace. He wants war. It’s good for business doncha know.
Agreed. The one aspect of Bush’s Saudi talks that might be called “negotiation” is that he seems to have persuaded them to buy more arms, solidifying the profits of his military contractor/outsource friends and the reputation of the US as the world’s largest arms dealer.
Just asking: how has bush “bungled” the occupation? I don’t disagree with the observation just the ongoing characterization of it everywhere. The “president” creates chaos on purpose. He is a crazymaker for a reason. Messy occupation means the conflict continues and he makes money.
He is not a president. He is a treasury robber baron.
In Ron Susskind’s book “The Price of Loyalty”, there was a strong inference that former Secretary of the Treasury Paul Oneil was “let go” just after he started digging into connections between Saudi $$$$ and 9/11. Another great read.
Yeah sale the Saud family nukes after 15 of the 9/11 suicide bombers were from Saudi Arabia, yet villify Iran because Israel wants us to.
Can anyone tell me what Iran has done to us?
Uh oh, you sound dangerously naive…j/k.
Isn’t Maliki’s govt guilty of appeasing the US? Cheney visits Maliki to ensure we get their oil which doesn’t belong to us. I think if we get it, that is appeasement.
to say nothing of all the subprime debt they bought.
So much for that “Why does Iran need nuclear power?” argument.
This is straight out MADNESS.
Madness of King George?
Excellent point and of course the morning talk shows are making a piece of it in their own airbrained (reading is bad) way:
Mica Brezinsky: Wow gas is high. The Saudis could help us lower the price. (Missing the nuke angle of course).
Most of the Kingdoms in the Middle East understand that Bush, Cheney and Condi are chumps who believe they are shrewd. Condi Rice long ago (about the time she served on the transition team after Sandra O’Conner made her collosally stupid swing vote) that whatever Bush wanted, dumb as it was, she would roll with it because she was thrilled to roll with a White House.
The Saudi’s have an egregious reprehensible policy of crushing women getting phony cover from their religion, and their people wallow in poverty and most of them are poorly educated, like Jordan while the “royal blood” (hard to understand because it has the same hematological makeup of a beggar lying in feces in the street, and it’s the same color when oxygenated) diverts the peoples’ money so that they can live like well, “Kings.”
As Pat Lang has put it on many occasions, the Persians are playing chess while we’re barely able to play checkers. You could apply that to the Arabs as well.
Yet another fricking misstep, putting us yet in the middle of another proxy war. First, between Israel’s Likudniks and the hardliners of Iran, now between Shi’a and Sunni worlds.
Stupidity of a magnitude I never dreamed possible: we’ve moved from a nation bent on non-proliferation, to one of the biggest advocates of proliferation.
Thinking of the Bushes and Cheneys as chumps doesn’t really explain things for me. What does work imo is thinking of them as kind of stateless persons, or meta-citizens, or however some smarter person might put that. I would say that of some of our own overmasters too, and certainly of the Saudi royal family — the particular nations they happen to be running and appear to belong to are more or less useful to them for the time being, but that’s not where their loyalties are, and when we stop being useful, they will move on. I would have to be talked out of believing, eg, that Cheney and the Saudi princes are not fairly well-matched and -balanced allies. And I doubt that anything of their negotiations that is reported in the msm is more than spin, even close to the truth.
We’ll never help the Saudis get nukes. They don’t have any mangos.
Wait a minute – we’re going to give them nukes to help “meeting (its) expanding energy needs”? These are the guys with the oil resources. I think this is the Saudis saying to Chimpy McFlightsuit, “The Iranians have nukes…we know the Israelis have them also…we want nukes.” And because Bush has no one else over there who he THINKS he can put the elbow on about oil, I think he’s in a very tough spot here..
How quickly could this be done? Is it really too late for Bush to pull this off?
I am sorry. No matter which way I look at this, it is flawed. There is no way that the saudi do not have weapons all ready. They have purchased them from anyone that offered, because they have a lot of funny symbolic paper printed by their pawn, U.S.
Just because they want to use george’s “nukular” power now, doesn’t mean they do not all ready have a lot of weapons. They bribed the brit’s to sell them things they agreed not to buy by treaty.
let’s not assume any of this is anything but a cover. They have to show a “peaceful” way of adding the cover for their new “energy” program. Imagine having an inspector get access to the saudi sand?
We really need to think back through the cold war and realize that we have been asleep for a long time.
This of course was one of the great tropes thrown out by the far rightists against the Iranian nuclear program.
“They have some of the largest oil reserves in the world, why on earth would they need nuclear power.”
Now it is perfectly reasonable to consider a Saudi nuke program.
-GSD
My thought runs to the Iran end of the equation. Making such an obvious and splashy announcement couldn’t have any effect on the Iranians could it? Why, it’s almost like the Bush Administration was trying to goad the Iranians into ramping up their nuke program. And this, from a country that has repeatedly said we will attack Iran for doing so. Hmmm.
As a practical matter, to set up a nuclear weapons program, you need centrifuges, and lots of them, and scientists and engineers capable of managing the transformation of the nuclear stuff into bomb material. Then you need the infrastructure to actually manufacture the bomb.
The Iranians have all of this, and the Saudis don’t.
It’s acutally worse than that. First, you need a source of Uranium. Saudi Arabia has no local sources, so they could be cut off. Then you have to either enrich it or use a breeder reactor to get fissionables. Saudi’s do not currently have the technology to do either of these.
In terms of proliferation, I don’t think it’s a big risk. It’s just another trade we get the losing end of.
Boxturtle (If the Saudi’s wanted WMD, they’d go the gas route. They got everything they need already)
Bush gives irony a bad name: it’s not able to keep up with this blunderer who sows the seeds of destruction in his wake like George Appleseed. I especially liked this part:
Gobbledygook. The Saudis have “expanding energy needs” they can’t fulfill with their own resources? Uh huh.
As for its army, the Saudi regime is so unpopular its standing army is little more than a praetorian guard for its rulers and enforcers for its secret and religious police. America provides them billions a year in “aid” and carte blanche to do what they want in exchange for selling us oil at world prices. (And holding hundreds of billions of American IOU’s that Bush keeps writing.)
Saudi borders Bush has certainly made less safe. But like the unadmitted alcoholic he is, his obvious problems are the last ones he’ll help fix. He would make them worse if he helps the Saudis acquire more “nuclear technology”. I suppose the Saudis implied over coffee and horse racing that if he didn’t, they’d go to the French, which must have stirred the guppy in his codpiece.
From the Saudi’s standpoint diversifying their internal electrical energy supply away from oil and gas (primarily the latter as I understand it) makes great strageic and economic sense. When you can sell you’re probably-peaking supply capacity for $120+/bbl and LNG at some percentage less than that on an equivalent BTU basis, and it now appears, a steadily increasing amount in the future, it makes sense to sell the resource rather than burn it for internal use. The nuclear alternative has a much higher initial capital cost than does oil or gas fossil fuel generation, but its incremental fuel cost that of oil and gas, and even coal, at today’s prices.
Oops! The fingers jumped over what the mind intended. The last clause of the last sentence should read
I spewed my coffee this morning when I heard this news report on NPR. I wonder what secret information has already been handed to the Saudis by the Bush administration. I begin to think that Bush has allowed the USA to become Saudi Arabia’s proxy in their struggle with Iran. There is a specific name for the crime being committed here. It is time for our next President to start talking about charging the bastards with treason. Today Bush is at the king of Saudi Arabia’s private horse farm. I can only imagine what is being demanded of our dear leader in between buggery sessions with the king. Whatever secrets and concessions they are giving away will provide further fuel to the fire that will be sure to consume future generations of young Americans. When will we finally say “ENOUGH!”.
It is actually worse than appeasement, because we are actually arming them so that they cann attack our enemies – as well as our friends and us. I have always said that Musharaf would be the next Saddam Hussein, but now that he’s almost there I guess it’s time for the one after that – Saudi King.
I think it’s worth being careful when we toss around loaded words like “appeasement”. Its meaning, and language generally, Bush has corrupted. A reader at Josh Marshall’s put it pithily:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
Capitulating to the Saudis, giving them greater military protection and access to more nuclear technology because we need their oil and their willingness to buy our debt in declining-value dollars, strikes me as the embodiment of appeasement. I don’t see us getting anything of value in return. We just get to buy Saudi oil for the same price as everyone else. Whoopdido.
One might call the Bush act negotiation in that we’ve persuaded a debtor to buy our debt. But we have little choice in the matter and I’m not convinced the Saudis are paying more for our IOU’s than anyone else would. As for the Bush family personally, I suspect it prospers in the wake of Bush tying American interests ever more closely to the Saudi regime’s, since it (via Poppa, the Carlyle Group, et al.) sells itself as the paid middleman in accomplishing that end.
Bush and McBush’s claim that it’s the Democrats who would engage in appeasement is subterfuge, a classic Rovian rhetorical reversal. It is, in fact, classic negotiation, something George is incapable of because he hasn’t the patience to assess the critical issues, or the necessary flexibility.
What Obama proposes is the essence of negotiation. It is Realpolitik, a practical application of the aphorism attributed to Roman emperors and Mafia dons, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”. (Which is itself a variation on Machiavelli, whose advice to his Prince is more subtle and principled than the colloquial adjectival use of his name implies).
Obama doesn’t propose capitulation. He proposes a cold assessment of interests, the exchange of value only for something of equal or greater value. (A notion Congressional Democrats have forgotten.) Because knowledge of the competitor/opponent/enemy is inherently inadequate, he insists on a mix of options he might give or accept.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, we used to call that statesmanship. In theory, applied to more mundane tasks, it’s no more than the wit one would use in buying a house or car, though at a much higher level of complexity, risk and reward. We’re too used to Bush, who either steals the car and sends you a letter prohibiting you from telling your lawyer or anyone else he’s done it, or he pays whatever the buyer asks.
FWIW, this news seems like a rough barometer of just how much dirt the Saudis must have on Bush, Cheney, CondiMaru, and just about every other member of the Bush admin.
Blackmail often parades itself as ‘policy’; wouldn’t be surprising if that were the case here.
I thought Hillary promised to protect any ally if Iran attacked…not just Israel. I remember he saying something about a defense “umbrella” in the middle east and the “obliteration” of Iran if they attacked any of those nations under that “umbrella”
Would Saudi Arabia be under that umbrella?
Yes, it would; that was the idea once you parse through the out of context reactionary response to her statement. Also, in fairness to Bush (hard for me), he was not talking about nuclear weapon technology, even defensive. And as others have pointed out, there does not appear to be time to actually accomplish anything in this regard anyway, so I think the whole BS statement was about two tactical goals. One, “appease” the Saudis (and appease is at least semi-correct here since nothing is being gained in return); and two, prick the Iranians into reactionary rhetoric and speeding up their nuke program, both of which give Bush and Cheney the cover to hammer on Iran. It’s crappy Kabuki.
This just in. Saudis tell Bush to shove it.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24660754/
Interesting comment on Iran’s nuclear program. Personally, I don’t think they are that serious about a nuclear program other than as a way to draw attention away from the supplies they are providing to Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere. Look at a map. The Israelis are increasingly surrounded by increasing numbers of small rockets/missiles manned by trained personnel who know how to use them. They are actually much less safe than they were before Bush came to office. I sure would like a good answer as to why Olmert went behind Bush’s back using the Turks to negotiate with the Syrians. I wonder if the Israelis have figured out the AIPAC/Likud/neocon infrastucture have been wrong about everything.
one would think this is the same thing as asking if water is wet
Barak is slappin the shit out of these morons on CNN.
MSNBC is choosing to talk over him.
They left when he went to farm policy. Now they have this oreo on talking about the “perfectly correct points” the two shitheads made.
that drove me crazy the other night on MSNBC. They aired Edwards complete speech live. But as soon as Obama was speaking Matthews, Andrea Mitchell and someone else started blathering as if we do not know what they are going to say. Quickly flipped over to CNN and Fox they were all blathering over what Obama was saying.
My 80 year old mother (a Hillary devotee) was laughing hysterically as I screamed at Matthews and Mitchell “shut the hell up” An hour later Olberman was telling Bush to “shut the hell up”
It wouldn’t have been so bad if Tweety, Andrea and Pat had anything interesting to say, but they didn’t …
Ot did anyone else watch the testimonies of the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) yesterday? Deeply disturbing. They talked about a great deal of indescriminate killing of the Iraqi people, the disregard for Iraqi corpses, placing weapons in the dead that had been killed etc etc. All of their stories backed up what I have heard from returning soliders in Ohio the last five years. Chilling stories. I believe these stories are the tip of a bloody bloody iceberg.
There was not a peep on the MSM last night about these hearings. Not a peep. At least C-Span was there. During the Iraqi Winter hearings I believe only Pacifica broadcast those hearings.
You can watch MSNBC from 5p.m to 10 p.m and not hear one thing about Iraq (although Keith went off the other night). It is 99% election coverage. When will Matthews and Olberman talk about these hearings? Who sets up the programming at MSNBC?
The link to the Winter Soldier testimonies
The Winter soldier testimonies
http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier/testimony
Here is a link to the testimonies of Iraq Veterans Against the War from yesterday at C.span
http://inside.c-spanarchives.o…..=202061800
When will the MSM mention these critically important hearings? It’s as if the Iraq war is over for the MSM
There wasn’t a peep about the first WS until we went to DC for Dewey Canyon III.
Not a peep on the MSM about yesterday’s hearings. Very serious
crooks and liars has a short post about the soldier who is not going to report for his stop-loss thingy.
thanks for bringing over some news on it. My response to all this is to start reading about the perps, victims, and bystanders of the third reich. I don’t want to be a bystander who says “well, what could I do?”
Why is the concern what the Saudi’s need to make bombs? They do not need to make them, they are being supplied by Brits, French, Russian, Chinese, US, Pakistan, India and by several former soviet suppliers. They need only cash to purchase. They have us all by the very short hairs and can demand whatever they want. Our governments fawn over them. They give people weapons instead of food.
Why be so naive here?
How does that go? Follow the $$$$
“Saudi Arabian leaders made clear Friday they see no reason to increase oil production until their customers demand it, apparently rebuffing President Bush amid soaring U.S. gasoline prices. “
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200…..sh_mideast
Guess that ‘jawboning’ thing is not working for you George.
Too bad Bush will not talk to Hugo. Or is it Hugo who will not talk to someone who smells like sulphur.
So it looks like $5 gas before November. I just want to thank FDL for every post that is pointing the MSM and anyone else in the direction of Democratic victories now and until November. Keep on keeping on.
Thank you FDL.
Whoa, you may want to check the video TPM has of Chris Matthews last night on MSNBC exposing an mind-boggling ignorance of a GOP mouthpiece.
Stunning.
This video ought to go in a time capsule, because it helps explain how we got into the trouble we’re in today.
The collasal ignorance of ‘Kevin James: Radio Talk Show Host’ is frightening.
“The Fisher King” may be one of the finest movies ever released in the US.
Kevin James should watch it about 500 times before he opens his mouth.
I think some reactor designs produce much less in the way of fissonable byproducts than others. If we are going to export this stuff, these are the reactors we should be selling. Also if it hasn’t been mentioned before, we started the Iranian nuclear program under the Shah.
The Ghawar field has almost certainly peaked. If the Saudis were to make a public announcement to that fact, then the price of oil would double in about two or three hours. This may be simple blackmail of the crudest sort.
This was a point I was making on another thread. It is not clear to me that the KSA can increase production by that much or do so for any sustained length of time. When you add in that almost all of the other oil producers in the world are in decline, what you come up with is that we are essentially at peak oil now and that supply is where it is now, may be sustained at or near that level for 2-5 years and then will drop by about 6% a year thereafter.
The Saudis won’t let anyone know the truth about their oil supply. It’s to their advantage for everyone to believe that it’s past its peak. Belief in scarcity can keep prices high. Whether it’s past its peak or not, the truth is that this nation has long suffered because we are beholden to the Saudis. Unfortunately, Republics like things this way.
Peak Oil is a myth … the Saudis haven’t officially located any new Reservoirs but there’s lot of Black Gold available … scarcity drives prices up, so none of the oil producing nations will tell us how much they have …
Of course, we have to develop alternative power sources because of the impact to our environment … Jan 20, 2009 can’t come soon enough …
Yes, except this is not what they are doing. There are many reasons the Saudis do what they do but underestimating their reserves is not one of them.
Question: who is the top supplier of crude oil to the U.S.?
Answer
… and we’re looking to expand that 10X …
Damn skdadl, I was going to guess Mexico. It wasn’t that long ago that I think it was actually Mexico. At any rate, an excellent point you make. So what do you Canucks want, some nuke stuff??
We want our good Hockey Players back so we can win the Cup … *g*
No way. We want John Edwards.
We also have a lot more water than the Saudis do. Think about it.
Are you nuts? I live in Arizona, I think about the water problem constantly. Water is likely a bigger problem than oil long term. You can have the hockey players. I’ll even give you back our local coach/GM, some dude named Gretzky or something….
I probably shouldn’t have said that bit about the water out loud. I have a bad feeling that Dick Cheney has already had that thought, and he has some awfully compliant friends here who are likely to fall all over themselves opening the taps whenever the command comes. (Cheney has already visited the Athabasca oil sands [northern Alberta — when I were a tad, we called them the tar sands] and drooled over them, our major contribution to global environmental pollution.)
We already have quite a bit of nuke stuff; in fact we export it, raw material and CANDU reactors both. The only reason we don’t have teh bomb is that we are nice guys, or at least we used to be. This government, I dunno. Things are not all that good up here right now, although they are often funny, which helps a bit, I guess.
It is already in the Free Trade Agreement, that if America requires fresh water, Canada will share their enormous reservoirs … in fact we do so already, via Moosehead & Molson … *g*
Aye, and thanks for the refreshment.
We send y’all this stuff so we can have unlimited access to Belgian brew … *g*
The thing about the water — and please forgive me for being intense and earnest — but it would be wrong. It would be wrong for the planet, not just wrong for Canada.
We have to figure out better ways of coping with current crises than just stealing from the future, which is what mass transfers of water from Canada would mean.
I agree with that completely, and I am the one that is going to need the water. My point is simply that as a nation, and along with you and Mexico as a continent, we need to be working on efficiency, conservation and desalinization; and we need to do it NOW before the need is any more dire than it is. If there is one thing more critical than oil, it is indeed water.
Earl @94 – Well said. Screwing us at home and abroad; Bush is making the US the most untenable and non-viable entity humanly possible. An astounding record.
I agree with you that it is wrong but I would go further and say that in an extreme emergency, the Americans would forcefully take it away …
The next administration will do more for energy and water conservation, and healing a lot of rifts … ’til then, I’ll sit back and enjoy some chilled Leffe.
Isn’t it nice of summer to finally drop by … *g*
Keep the water, send the beer, thanks.
Maybe a few of those billions Bush lavishes on military contractors could be spent on improving the efficiency of seawater de-salinization processes. And instead of spending billions priming the aerospace industry’s pumps, keeping them busy building ineffective Star Wars devices, we could spend them on small-scale, community-based alternative energy devices.
We will need a mix of technologies to reduce our dependence on oil. Waiting decades for the magic bullet of fusion or the return of friendly space aliens (the minimum wage rubes Chertoff employs at Customs and Immigration wouldn’t let them in anyway), ain’t gonna cut it.
Erm, folks? I’m not sure that anyone up above really has much idea of what actually happens in the nuclear industry.
The situation in Saudi is slightly different from that in Iran. The start of the truth is in this comment:
“As a practical matter, to set up a nuclear weapons program, you need centrifuges, and lots of them, and scientists and engineers capable of managing the transformation of the nuclear stuff into bomb material.”
Quite. Now, a primer. There’s a number of different things.
1) Nuclear reactors. Under the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) any country which signs up has a right to develop nuclear reactors for civilian usage. They also have the right (yes, right) to call upon those nations wihch already have such to aid them in their program. This is part of the international law that I rather thought you liberal types were all so keen on.
What usually happens is that someone helps build the power plants and then also agrees to supply the enriched uranium necessary already loaded into fuel rods and to take away said rods for reprocessing when they are used. There’s a number of plants capable of doing this around the world, in the US, UK, Russia, Canada, China, France and no doubt a few I’ve forgotten.
Now, if you follow this method then there is no possibility whatsoever of using these nukes to build nuke bombs. The uranium is insufficiently enriched and as the quote points out, you need a huge enrichment plant to make highly enriched uranium. You also can’t extract the plutonium because you’re sending the fuel rods off to be reprocessed in one of those other countries.
Just to repeat, under the treaty countries have a *right* to this.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Non-Proliferation_Treaty)
2) Enrichment or reprocessing plants. This is what makes everyone nervous. It’s also what Iran has insisted it also has a right to build. Various suggestions have been made, that Germany might supply the reactor ready rods and take them away again. There was even a suggestion that Iran would own a plant in Russia, which would be managed by Russians, to ensure that no highly enriched U nor any plutonium went missing. Although this would be much cheaper (Russia has spare capacity) Iran turned it down and went the more expensive route of building their own.
This is what has people worried. Build all the nuclear reactors you want, as Saudi appears to be thinking about. But if you start to enrich or reprocess, then we’ll all assume you’re trying to make bombs.
That’s why Saudi (and Hungary, and the Czech Republic, Estonia, well, there’s many of them) are different from the Iranian example.
The first group isn’t trying to enrich, the latter is, and that’s why we’re worried.
‘We’re worried’? Who is ‘we’? It doesn’t bother me at all.
Fixed you link: Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
Other notable exceptions: India, Israel and Pakistan and, of course, Iran
And here is the wikiscanner page.
You can exclude me from your ‘we’ as well.
Me too !
Maybe you ought to read the international law, huh?
You see, the NPT itself affirms Iran’s right to develop enrichment capability, and so long as they do so ostensibly for peaceful purposes and full disclosure, then they are completely within their rights. That may (rightly) make you nervous, but that doesn’t make it, in practice, illegal.
Problem is, of course, that Israel has a habit of bombing reactors in Islamic states anytime they start to develop–as permitted by the NPT–nuclear capabilities. Which kind of makes that full disclosure issue a problem. If Israel won’t allow Islamic states to enjoy the inalienable rights promised by NPT, then it’s a lot harder to expect full disclosure.
It would all work out so splendidly if it weren’t for that little Israel exception (to say nothing of Israel’s proliferation itself). And that’s why this is a problem. Because if we reaffirm the right of Islamic states to have nukes by giving them to Saudi Arabia–and Iran convinces (as they are close to doing) IAEA that they are declaring everything, then what are you going to do?
That Israeli nuclear threat has been “off limits” for far too long.
Iran, Iraq and several other nations have been begging Israel to sign the NPT for a very long time.
http://64.233.169.104/search?q…..#038;gl=us
http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/menwfz/index.html
The 1991 Madrid Peace Conference established a multinational mechanism to work on making the Middle East a nuclear weapon-free zone. The activities of the multilateral working group on Arms Control and Regional Security in promoting mutual confidence and security in the Middle East include establishment of a NWFZ. This mechanism, however, stalled in 1995 as a result of the Israeli position.
Obama and John Edwards have both spent some time talking about kick starting Nuclear Non Proliferation talks.
Bush is not negotiating with evil dictators in Saudi Arabia. He is begging for crumbs ther from the owners of his family.
You can hear the King now.
We don’t need to increase our productivity.
We are watching the freeway cams in Los Angeles and many of your foolish people are, how are you saying it, barreling down the road in their SUVs.
They are doing just fine, thank you.
Now, Mr. Bush, please to go away and let us work. We have business to do.
You sillyman.
New post on Obama’s speech at the mothership.
Before the invasion I remember hearing an inteview with Jeremy Rifkin on Talk of the Nation. He said something like “we were hearing the last gasp of the oil dinosaurs”
The oil coup
http://www.mymethow.com/~joereid/oil_coup.html
“Because if we reaffirm the right of Islamic states to have nukes by giving them to Saudi Arabia–and Iran convinces (as they are close to doing) IAEA that they are declaring everything, then what are you going to do?”
I’m of course going to do nothing. But as I said and you’ve confirmed, Bush offering nukes to the Saudis is entirely compatible with international law, indeed, it’s the sort of thing that international law encourages. The peaceful development of civilian nuclear power. As most of the people above seem not to notice.
Also, as you note, India, Pakistan and Israel have not signed the NPT so cannot be in violation of it. Further, Iran has, and the paragraphs before the one you quote shows that they were indeed in violation until very recently.
And as you pretend to ignore, regardless of whether this was legal, it was fucking stupid as shit, because it means we’ve lost all ability to influence what Iran (to say nothing of a bunch of other Islamic countries who only seem to be allowed nuclear technology if they get in bed with the USA, which itself violates the intent of the treaty) does going forward.
Not surprisingly, given his personal limitations, Bush seems blind to the need for credibility, whether as a predator or a negotiating partner.
He is reducing the power of the US government to act abroad by exhausting its resources, just as he is reducing its power over private capital at home. He wants to go it alone, unmindful of our resource limits as he is disdainful of domestic or international laws. He seems unable to view the law as anything but a grasping tax hand on his family’s trust funds.
The result is a much less powerful American presence, dependent on nominally American corporations both at home and abroad. Is that Disaster Capitalism or capitalism instead of government?
For those who don’t believe in peak oil, you have about 5 years tops before production declines become obvious even for you. Even if I were to accept the cornucopian view which I don’t, we would still have to move away from carbon based fuels because of global warming. So take your pick, scarcity or climate change, you still end up in the same place.
There you go again, asking lil’ George to think ahead when jus’ thinkin’ makes his head throb. The Saudis are good little brown people. They’re heathens, they don’t whore or drink except in them gold tents in the desert next to the herd of Rolls-Royces and Ferraris, but they make Poppa Bush and his military contractor frien’s richer. Sometimes, I think that Cheney forgets that the rest of the world is not as blind to gross hypocrisy as the Base.
“And as you pretend to ignore, regardless of whether this was legal, it was fucking stupid as shit,”
Upholding international law now is stupid as shit?
“Article IV: 1. Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.
2. All the Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate, and have the right to participate in, the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Parties to the Treaty in a position to do so shall also co-operate in contributing alone or together with other States or international organizations to the further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty, with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world.”
Sorry, your reading problem is apparently causing you some problems.
Yes, it was legal.
But it was stupid.
By your argument, we should give Iran the “scientific and technological information” so that it could enrich uranium itself, because it “upholds international law.”
That would be stupid too.
Just to lighten the mood: a little Tom Lehrer.
The middle east arms race is a likely undertone in the ostensibly peaceful but imagistically macho deal to provide electric generation technology. The quantum escalation around the time US started providing AWACS in that region was an early parallel, except instead of arms merchants the beneficiaries are energy sector. The energy generation industry knows it is facing the need to morph as times change with the emergence of global warming. If reactors remain a tough sell in continental US, hawking them overseas to select strategic partners is a probable next most lucrative way of providing for steady increase in CAGR, compound annual growth rate. In the backwater places where there is still wilderness, the energy sector is at work cutting corners avoiding protective legal shields to obtain licenses for extracting fossil fuel deposits while Bush’s term is in its waning hours. Consider the complaint just filed in AK against the MMS minerals and mining service and Department of commerce, for the granting to Shell and BP a license for undersea airgun-based mapping of deposits BEFORE the EIS is written; the court papers linked on that page are lengthy primers in the marine biologic impacts of the airgun technique; essentially nearlly half of marine life is turned deaf and dies; the sound is louder than a rocket launch, and is conducted continuously for months, driving most mammalian sea life and much of the fish population away, physically damaged. And, speaking of the arid SW, there is an energy sector gambit in CO which will require lassoing a lot of the CO river water to feed a processing facility for extracting oil from shale, river water about which AZ and CA have long been at loggerheads. The processing of oil shale also consumes vast amounts of electricity. For the least moral businesses corrupt science is a tool to subvert law. Bushco has practiced the nefarious arts of gumming the lawworks with hodgepodge science or simply brashly suppressing science since day one in office. Now the state of AK has placed an offer for corrupt scientists to write rebuttals to the new but belated listing of polar bears as endangered. The booty AK is offering is only $2. million for information that leads to hiring of the scientists willing to author the report; one writer declares the Conclusions section already is written. The AK promoters of this scheme might be using the DowningStreetMemo approach.
Wow. Bandar Bush sure does have him some leverage over the rest of the Bush clan, now don’t he?
Little Georgie must have gone into that very very private palace and pranced for Bandar and begged by offering every orafice he could.
Crude, but necessary. Some one please explain to me why Bush is not being investigated for impeachment. Please. Can we at least do this starting November 5?
ITMFA