An Ill Wind Blowing
I got chills down my spine when I read this report. Looks like it may have happened after all:
North Korea said Monday it has performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test. U.S. and South Korean officials could not immediately confirm the report.
The South Korean seismic monitoring center confirmed that tremors felt at the time of the alleged test were not natural occurrence.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said information still needed to be analyzed to determine whether North Korea truly conducted the test.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said the underground test was performed successfully and there was no radioactive leakage from the site.
South Korean intelligence officials said a seismic wave of magnitude-3.58 had been detected in North Hamkyung province, according to Yonhap. It said the test was conducted at 10:36 a.m. (9:36 p.m. EDT Sunday) in Hwaderi near Kilju city on the northeast coast, citing defense officials.
North Korean scientists “successfully conducted an underground nuclear test under secure conditions,” the KCNA report said, adding this was “a stirring time when all the people of the country are making a great leap forward in the building of a great prosperous powerful socialist nation.”
The director of South Korea’s monitoring center that is watching for a test with sound and seismic detectors declined to immediately comment on the reported test.
“We don’t know whether it is a nuclear test or not,” an official at the earthquake center at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources said on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitive nature of the issue.
The U.S. Geological Survey said it had detected no seismic activity in North Korea, although it was not clear whether a blast would be strong enough for its sensors.
God help us…I knew they had the bomb, but still…I’m almost physically ill contemplating it. Nukes in those hands…it’s a catastrophe. Anyone still want to talk about Mark Foley?…
Kim Jong-il just ‘nuked’ the dems chances for 2006.
A massive diplomatic and strategic failure, soon to be followed by a similar failure on Iran. But look on the bright side: we didn’t anger the rest of the world and squander any more good will by taking a unilateral (some would add ‘belicose’) approach to the problem. No, we are happily sitting together with our Western friends wringing our hands in frustration. In fact, the right thinking among us blame President Bush for this situation because he did, you know, refer to North Korea using those three words: “Axis of Evil”.
It is an interesting thing to make a challenge like ‘axis of evil’.
I wonder what the effects would have been if Bush had declared in July 2001, that “UBL is the greatest, immediate threat we face.”