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#1 Sep 30 2011 at 4:36 PM Rating: Excellent
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The Hill wrote:
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) predicted the lower chamber would withhold all U.S. assistance to Pakistan at some point.
[...]
"We're all skeptical of the aid that we've given to Pakistan, that it's been used in the right way," Ros-Lehtinen told The Hill this week. "We look at Pakistan in a way that says, what have we done with all of that money? Everything that we've sold to Pakistan, all the intelligence we shared with Pakistan, it's all been called into question.
[...]
In July, the Obama administration withheld $800 million in aid to Pakistan's military as a way of showing its displeasure with the discovery of bin Laden in Pakistan, and so close to a major military training school. However, Ros-Lehtinen said she expects the House to ultimately approve language withholding nearly $2 billion in assistance.

Thank God. The Bush-era agreement with Pakistan was one of* the worst foreign policy debacles in the last forty-plus years. I was thrilled that Obama showed some balls with the Pakistanis where Bush/Rice couldn't capitulate to them fast enough and this is even better.


*I said "one of"; he has others on the list
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#2 Sep 30 2011 at 10:04 PM Rating: Excellent
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Condi rice was really the worst person they could have picked for the job. She didn't have the background or the requisite skills. On the other hand, as far as payoffs to keep nuclear powers from selling nuclear weapons to the lowest bidder go, we've paid more. I bet if we just go ignore the situation for a few years though, india will take care of things for us...
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#3 Sep 30 2011 at 11:57 PM Rating: Excellent
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Dread Lörd Kaolian wrote:
as far as payoffs to keep nuclear powers from selling nuclear weapons to the lowest bidder go, we've paid more.

Yeah, they just sold the technology to Iran and N. Korea instead of the physical items. Hell of a deal from one hell of an "ally".

Edited, Oct 1st 2011 12:58am by Jophiel
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#4 Oct 01 2011 at 12:37 AM Rating: Excellent
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Technically that occured before we started paying them off.
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#5 Oct 01 2011 at 12:57 AM Rating: Excellent
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Given their complete non-reaction and joke "punishment" of Khan, I'm not naive enough to believe that it all ended there. We were intercepting centrifuges shipped to Libya and N. Korea in 2003, after they became our supposed great ally. Even if we're to believe that it did, we just paid billions instead so they could actively subvert our anti-nuclear efforts in Iran and N. Korea by refusing any cooperation in getting information on what this "rogue" (ha) scientist sold them.

Edited, Oct 1st 2011 2:16am by Jophiel
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#6 Oct 01 2011 at 1:37 AM Rating: Good
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The interview Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar did the other day pretty much solidified my opinion that Pakistan is just trying to pull as much money out of us as they can.

According to her this war has cost them $68B, so the money were giving them is just reimbursement for money they've already spent.

So we're reimbursing them to deal with a problem they can't/won't deal with themselves? That's a bit backwards in my opinion. She even goes on to state flat out that this is Pakistan's fight, so why are we shipping money over there by the truckload?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/09/28/140860934/pakistans-foreign-minister-blame-game-is-counterproductive

#7 Oct 01 2011 at 2:10 AM Rating: Excellent
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Jophiel wrote:
Given their complete non-reaction and joke "punishment" of Khan, I'm not naive enough to believe that it all ended there. We were intercepting centrifuges shipped to Libya and N. Korea in 2003, after they became our supposed great ally. Even if we're to believe that it did, we just paid billions instead so they could actively subvert our anti-nuclear efforts in Iran and N. Korea by refusing any cooperation in getting information on what this "rogue" (ha) scientist sold them.

Edited, Oct 1st 2011 2:16am by Jophiel


And Germany managed to inadvertantly provide the controllers for the iranian centrafuges, which russia helped them install. China probably sold most of the rest of North Korea's nuclear program pieces to North Korea. It's like their Puerto Rico, except with more troll dolls in leadership poisitions.

A gas centrifuge is not a particularily complex machine, despite everyone considering them to be the holy grail of a nuclear fuel enrichment program. You have a tube deliver uranium gas to a spinning shielded metal cylendar. rotational forces and gravity move your uranium atoms to tbe bottom of the cylender, where another tube sucks out the now somewhat enriched gas, and eventually solids. Rinse, repeat 3 million times. The motor arrangement to the cylender is basically the same as most washing machines. You need really good welders, and decent engineers or CNC operators, but not anywhere near to the technical scale of something like building an implosion trigger for a plutonium bomb.

Really the only trick is having access to sufficeint power to spin up many of them, a computer controller to control the cycle, high speed ceramic bearings, gas pumps and tubeing, really good outrunner electrical motors, and decent fabrication skills in high strength / high temperature metals. I could purchase all of those parts on ebay in a matter of minutes. You need at least a thousand of them running constantly to enrich enough uranium to make a weapon in a reasonable amount of time though. In the grand scheme of things, having a prototype gas centrafuge is basically meaningless. Especially when a cursory search will turn up plenty of diagrams, pictures, and similar machines that can be easily reverse engineered without paying pakistan a dime. Personally I think Iran should ask for its money back.
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#8 Oct 01 2011 at 6:05 AM Rating: Excellent
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Dread Lörd Kaolian wrote:
And Germany managed to inadvertantly provide the controllers for the iranian centrafuges, which russia helped them install. China probably sold most of the rest of North Korea's nuclear program pieces to North Korea.

So it's a good thing we weren't selling Russia and China as our bestest allies ever, worth billions and billions in aid. And Germany, by your admission, wasn't intentionally setting out to fuck us over. Can't say the best for our esteemed bestest ally.

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A gas centrifuge is not a particularily complex machine

Well, no. The issue is manufacturing them sophisticated enough for weapons development. Which is a big enough step that having someone skip it for you is a big deal and not something you do via drawings on the internet. Hence, Pakistan sending over the physical components and not e-mailing drawings.
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#9 Oct 01 2011 at 6:31 AM Rating: Excellent
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Jophiel wrote:
Quote:
A gas centrifuge is not a particularily complex machine

Well, no. The issue is manufacturing them sophisticated enough for weapons development. Which is a big enough step that having someone skip it for you is a big deal and not something you do via drawings on the internet. Hence, Pakistan sending over the physical components and not e-mailing drawings.


Centrifuge design is trivial (Even for weapons design), and isn't the core stumbling block of a power attempting to use atomics.

The main barrier to entry on them is cost, not tech.

Edited, Oct 1st 2011 8:38am by Timelordwho
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#10 Oct 01 2011 at 10:10 AM Rating: Excellent
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Part of me would debate the point. Another part of me realizes that "Well, they helped Libya and N. Korea's nuclear programs while receiving US aid as an ally but they didn't do it TOO much..." is such a ridiculous argument that it makes my point for me anyway.
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#11 Oct 01 2011 at 10:50 AM Rating: Excellent
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You know which of your allies never shared nuclear technology with N. Korea or Iran? Canada.
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#12 Oct 01 2011 at 10:56 AM Rating: Excellent
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This is probably because the majority of your nuclear scientists wandered off into the majestic snow-capped mountains due to a severe misunderstanding about what "cold fusion" meant.
#13 Oct 01 2011 at 11:09 AM Rating: Excellent
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Irrelevant. The point is we've remained true to our allies.
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#14 Oct 01 2011 at 11:26 AM Rating: Excellent
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Uglysasquatch wrote:
Irrelevant. The point is we've remained true to our allies.

No debate from me. Pakistan is *** and our "alliance" with it was cash-siphoning bullshit to a nation that, under any other circumstance, would have been labeled as an enemy from the start. More aid for Canada!
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#15 Oct 01 2011 at 12:04 PM Rating: Good
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Wait, Canadia has nucular technology? I thought your power plants were all fueled by dried moose dung.
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#16 Oct 01 2011 at 1:48 PM Rating: Excellent
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Canada sold iran the recipie for Weaponized Poutine!
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#17 Oct 01 2011 at 1:52 PM Rating: Good
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That's called a donair platter.
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#18 Oct 01 2011 at 2:53 PM Rating: Good
Dread Lörd Kaolian wrote:
Condi rice was really the worst person they could have picked for the job. She didn't have the background or the requisite skills. On the other hand, as far as payoffs to keep nuclear powers from selling nuclear weapons to the lowest bidder go, we've paid more. I bet if we just go ignore the situation for a few years though, india will take care of things for us...


Condi was a good pick for dealing with Russia. She spoke the language and did her PhD on the country. The rest of the world, on the other hand... yeah.
#19 Oct 01 2011 at 3:06 PM Rating: Excellent
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The way she handled the S. Ossetia situation was nothing short of completely unremarkable.
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#20 Oct 01 2011 at 5:28 PM Rating: Default
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Jophiel wrote:
The way she handled the S. Ossetia situation was nothing short of completely unremarkable.


Did she do anything?
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#21 Oct 01 2011 at 7:58 PM Rating: Excellent
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rdmcandie wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
The way she handled the S. Ossetia situation was nothing short of completely unremarkable.


Did she do anything?


She didn't create an international incident. That's something.
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