Free Republic

Botched CIA operations may have handed Iran vital information on how to make nuclear weapons and betrayed the identities of America's spies in the country, according to a new book on US intelligence. The latest account of American intelligence failures includes details of how the CIA allegedly tried to slip Teheran some Russian designs for an atomic bomb, which contained hidden flaws that would have made any device inoperable. The Iranians, however, were tipped off by the very agent sent to give them the documents. In a separate incident, the book claims a CIA officer mistakenly sent an Iranian agent...

A surge in oil prices last week to almost $70 a barrel on concerns about the restart of Iran's nuclear program only hints at what may lie ahead. Prices could soar past $100 a barrel, experts say, if the U.N. Security Council authorizes trade sanctions against the Middle Eastern nation, which the West accuses of trying to make nuclear bombs, and Iran curbs oil exports in retaliation. A sharp global economic slowdown could follow. That's the dilemma the United States and European nations face as they decide whether to act. But Iran would also pay a hefty price if the...

While visiting the military berthing facilities in Iran’s northern port of Bandar Anzali, president of the State Expediency Council Hashemi Rafsanjani said for the second time last week, “The danger is absolutely serious.” In his talk, he again warned of the “enemy’s mischief”, a reference to the Europeans and the Americans and their positions and statements regarding Iran’s nuclear stand off with them after Iran broke the seals on the research facilities in Isfahan. The weekly International Research wrote last week that “there has never a more dangerous situation for the world, the Middle East and Palestine as the one...

Saddam Surat # 2 - Saddam Was Within Three Months of A-Bomb in 1991. "The defection of Saddam's two sons-in-law in August 1995 was potentially the most damaging blow he had suffered since seizing power in 1979. For the first time two members of the Tikriti ruling circle had escaped Saddam's authority and were threatening to betray the regime's innermost secrets. Hussein Kamel, as head of Iraq's weapons procurement program, was particularly well equipped to provide Western intelligence with a treasure trove of detail about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction program. Hussen Kamel was full debriefed by both CIA and...

Nuclear weapons remain the most powerful force ever invented by humankind. They can be constructed with either highly enriched uranium (over 20% 235U) or plutonium. Most modern nuclear weapons rely on a combination of fission and fusion, using the initial nuclear release from a core of uranium or plutonium to ignite a secondary fusion of lighter elements. The first nuclear weapons developed by the US had explosive yields equivalent to 10-20 kt of TNT, while most of today's deployed weapons range from 100-500 kt in yield. In all, there are approximately 27,600 nuclear weapons in existence. Read More…About the author:...

August 6th marked the 60th anniversary of America’s use of an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. While some still argue that President Truman’s decision to use the A-bomb was “controversial,” they are afflicted with the scourge of our time, the loss of a sense of moral proportion and certainty. Unfortunately, those with relativistic morals will lead us to see the day when nuclear weapons are used again – this time to end once and for all the barbaric savagery of Islamism. Green Left Weekly (GLW) calls the U.S. putting a swift end to WWII – using atomic...

Robert Wilcox deserves the Pulitzer Prize in History for his excellent book "Japan's Secret War". The History Channel just had an excellent show called "Japan's Atomic Bomb". I encourage everyone to watch this show (It repeats in a couple of hours). Wilcox and the History Channel uncover new evidence showing just how far the Japanese really got with their Atomic Bomb. Everyone needs to understand that North Korea has it's own natural supply of uranium and that effects every American even today.

IDAHO FALLS -A former Iraqi nuclear scientist told a crowd here that Iraq was on the brink of having a nuclear bomb just before the 1991 invasion of the country by U.S. and allied forces. Mahdi Obeidi, who worked under Saddam Hussein, spoke to a full house gathered at the World Nuclear University Summer Institute Monday. "Iraq was on the verge of having a nuclear bomb," he said. "The world will never know what Saddam would have done." A centrifuge is a machine that spins at extremely high speed to enrich uranium, needed to build an atomic bomb. Obeidi spent...

Every August, there are some Americans who insist on wringing their hands over the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, so it was perhaps inevitable that such people would have an orgy of wallowing in guilt on the 60th anniversary of that tragic day. Time magazine has page after page of photographs of people scarred by the radiation, as if General Sherman had not already said long ago that war is hell.

August 6 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the devastating atomic bomb attack against the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. For the most part, up until the 1960s the predominant view was that the U.S. was justified in its decision to use nuclear weapons against the Japanese. There was a general consensus to accept, at face value, that American leaders had determined that Japan would not surrender, and that their determination to fight to the death against an invasion would have cost the lives of hundreds of thousands,...

THE 60TH anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has arrived with little of the fury that accompanied the 50th. A decade ago, a bruising battle broke out over the Smithsonian Institution's plan for an exhibit suggesting that the American use of atomic weapons had been a racist war crime and served no legitimate military aim. With a restored Enola Gay -- the B-29 that delivered the first bomb on Aug. 6, 1945 -- as a centerpiece, the Smithsonian's curators had intended to tell a story of American brutality and Japanese victimhood. ''For most Americans," their original script declared,...

REMEMBERING HIROSHIMA : AUGUST 6, 1945 All over the world today, people are coming together to tell us how awful it was we dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They have their memories – and I have mine. Sixty years ago, I was with my Dad and my brothers : haying in the hot August sun. We had a portable radio with us, and we stopped work to listen to the broadcaster – who spoke of a bomb – hotter than the sun – that had been dropped on, and that had utterly destroyed the entire city of Hiroshima....

The mind of the pilot whose B-29 dropped the first atomic bomb often seems more prisoner than resident of his bantamweight body wracked by injury, ailments and 90 years of living. In the months before today’s 60 th anniversary of his mission to Hiroshima, Paul Tibbets was hobbled by a pair of spills that fractured two vertebrae. For a while, his appetite disappeared, his weight dropped alarmingly, and he railed against the fates torturing him in his waning years. "I’ve never been incapacitated a damned day of my life," he groused two months ago, daily downing enough OxyContin to make...

Today--or August 6 in Japan--is the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, which killed outright an estimated 80,000 Japanese and hastened World War II to its conclusion on August 15. Those of us who belong to the postwar generations tend to regard the occasion as a somber, even shameful, one. But that's not how the generation of Americans who actually fought the war saw it. And if we're going to reflect seriously about the bomb, we ought first to think about it as they did. ...No surprise, then, that when news of the bomb reached...

HIROSHIMA, Japan (CNS) -- Mobilization out of Hiroshima 60 years ago to work in a weapons-manufacturing zone probably saved the life of Hayazoe Jo, then a 19-year-old student. Sixty years after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city Aug. 6, 1945, Father Hayazoe, now 79 and a Hiroshima diocesan priest, recalled the horror and the events that led to his conversion to Catholicism and, eventually, his priesthood. He spoke to UCA News, an Asian church news agency based in Thailand. "The explosion took place at 8:15, just when the tram I usually rode was crossing the bridge...

How many nations could genuinely say that they had the real potential to conquer the world or destroy it? How many nations had an arsenal capable of obliterating any other nation without risking retaliation? How many nations, with an army and navy superior to any others, an industry and economy capable of producing more weapons and material than any other, with forces already deployed for conquest, how many nations would try to conquer the world while they had such advantages? Sixty years ago, this was exactly situation in which the United States of America found itself. American military forces were...

Sixty years later, the debate still rages. Was America right to drop the atomic bomb - both bombs? Did it truly face the prospect of a full-scale invasion of Japan which some estimated would result in a million casualties? Or was Japan's imperial army, despite its astonishing savagery and unwillingness to surrender, on the brink of capitulation? Can the mass slaughter and irradiation of civilians without warning ever have been justified? The man who built the A-bombs, scientist Robert Oppenheimer, and the man who used them, President Harry Truman, are both long dead. But the men who were physically close...

{snip}The United States has wisely been very cautious about sharing nuclear technology – military or civilian. Just a few months ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The Wall Street Journal that any decision to sell civilian nuclear technology to India would have "quite serious" implications for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. So why did President Bush decide this week to help India build nuclear power plants and import advanced weapons? Certainly, a domestic civilian nuclear power program will aid India's economy and gives the United States another strong ally in the region against Muslim extremism, the emerging military and economic...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Philip Morrison, one of the inventors of the atomic bomb and an early leader in the search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, has died. He was 89. Morrison, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, died in his sleep at his home Friday, the university announced Monday. "Phil was a great physicist," said Marc Kastner, chairman of the physics department at MIT. "He was spectacular at explaining physics to the public, too." Morrison was the host of "The Ring of Truth," a six-part series aired by PBS, and a book review editor for...

Israeli soldiers Saturday discovered four bombs planted near Jewish towns in Gaza amid concerns that terrorists are "seeding" the area with land mines at the rate of more than one a day. The four bombs discovered in northern and southern Gaza Saturday weighed more than 200 kilograms (440 pounds). Terrorists also shot a Kassam rocket Saturday at the Gush Katif town of N'vei Dekalim and opened fire on soldiers in the area as well as near the Egyptian border. No one was injured and no damage was reported. "In the past three weeks, we have discovered an explosive device on...