International Affairs: September 2003 Archives

Here's the test of President Bush's address to the UN. Some excerpts:

By the victims they choose and by the means they use, the terrorists have clarified the struggle we are in. Those who target relief workers for death have set themselves against all humanity. Those who incite murder and celebrate suicide reveal their contempt for life itself. They have no place in any religious faith, they have no claim on the world's sympathy, and they should have no friend in this chamber.

Events during the past two years have set before us the clearest of divides: between those who seek order and those who spread chaos; between those who work for peaceful change and those who adopt the methods of gangsters; between those who honor the rights of man and those who deliberately take the lives of men and women and children without mercy or shame.

Between these alternatives there is no neutral ground. All governments that support terror are complicit in a war against civilization. No government should ignore the threat of terror, because to look the other way gives terrorists the chance to regroup and recruit and prepare. And all nations that fight terror as if the lives of their own people depend on it will earn the favorable judgment of history.

The former regimes of Afghanistan and Iraq knew these alternatives and made their choices.

On another very important topic: sex slavery.

There's another humanitarian crisis spreading, yet hidden from view. Each year an estimated 800,000 to 900,000 human beings are bought, sold or forced across the world's borders. Among them are hundreds of thousands of teenage girls, and others as young as 5, who fall victim to the sex trade. This commerce in human life generates billions of dollars each year, much of which is used to finance organized crime.

There's a special evil in the abuse and exploitation of the most innocent and vulnerable.

The victims of sex trade see little of life before they see the very worst of life: an underground of brutality and lonely fear.

Those who create these victims and profit from their suffering must be severely punished. Those who patronize this industry debase themselves and deepen the misery of others. And governments that tolerate this trade are tolerating a form of slavery.

I like his closing (emphasis mine):

The founding documents of the United Nations and the founding documents of America stand in the same tradition.

Both assert that human beings should never be reduced to objects of power or commerce, because their dignity is inherent. Both recognize a moral law that stands above men and nations which must be defended and enforced by men and nations. And both point the way to peace; the peace that comes when all are free.

We secure that peace with our courage and we must show that courage together.

May God bless you all.

Donald Sensing directs us to help Chief Wiggles send toys to Iraqi children. Here are the details:

Some no no toys:

- Any guns of any kind
- No violent action hereos
- No violent toys
- No barbie dolls or dolls skantily dressed
- No toys that shoot something, no projectiles
- No water guns

Lets just keep it simple, simple toys, just the basics, these kids have
nothing.

Some other items that are nice are pencils, pens, paper to draw and color on.

Toothbrushes, toothpaste, floss, brushes, combs, etc.

Nice stuffed animals, other items.

Just use your good judgement, and if you are unsure, contact a local muslim group for help.

Here is the mailing address to send items to:

Chief Wiggles
CPA-C2, Debriefer
APO AE 09335

SDB writes that pipsqueek nations with nukes could deter the US from attacking them by threatening to sneak a nuke into one of our cities. But wouldn't the very act of making such a threat trigger an all-out nuclear attack by America against them? That's the guiding principle behind the policies of Mutually Assured Destruction and nuclear deterrence.

If a nuclear-armed pipsqueak nation saw indications that we were seriously contemplating such an attack, or saw us actually begin such a buildup, they'd either privately or publicly threaten us with massive consequences unless we backed down. They wouldn't threaten our troops; they'd threaten our cities.

Our only options would be to back down, or to go nuclear immediately. If we're still following MAD, we'd choose the second option. The point of MAD is to prevent any nation from blackmailing us with the threat of nuclear attack, and forces them to either just do it or keep their mouth shut.

BruceR over at Flit argues that Bush chose poorly by attacking Iraq before North Korea.

You can make a reasonable argument on logistical grounds that, with the conventional military forces it possessed, the United States can invade and subjugate one medium-sized country every three years at the moment. Action against Iraq in 2003 inhibits action anywhere else until at least 2006. Bush, in other words, could reasonably hope to pick one country off his "Evil" list in his first term. A logical criterion for such a decision would be the country that posed the greatest threat. It's becoming increasingly likely that, to paraphrase Indiana Jones, Bush "chose poorly." Iraq was clearly little threat at all, in retrospect.

However, which country "poses the greatest threat" is not the only critera that can be used, nor it is the best one. It was politically possible to attack Iraq, whereas in 2002 it would not have been possible to attack North Korea. Not only that, but the resources we'll need if we get into a fight with North Korea will be totally different than the resources we are using in Iraq.

For the fighting in Iraq, and the occupation, we are mainly relying on special forces, infantry, and heavy armor. In contrast, our participation in North Korea would be largely limited to air and naval support (plus the 2ID that's stationed there, but they probably wouldn't advance into North Korea).

South Korea has a sizable military of its own that could be used to fight on the ground, and it's unlikely that China would be pleased by a larger American troop presence. Our fighters and bombers would be used to support the South Korean soldiers, for strategic bombing, and the launching of cruise missiles. Our naval forces would be used for launching missiles, and for blockading North Korea's ports (which they rely on for food and fuel shipments).

BruceR may be correct in thinking that North Korea has always been a bigger threat to us than Iraq, but the circumstances would not have favored attacking North Korea instead of Iraq. (Even aside from the fact that North Korea doesn't appear to be as enmeshed with terrorists as Saddam Hussein was.) Additionally, our presence in Iraq uses different forces than would be used in North Korea, and so our operations in the Middle East will not hinder our response to North Korea, should one become necessary.

Donald Sensing has an awesome essay up about bin Laden's pathetic/non-existent plan for world-domination.

Strategy Page has a brief article describing how Japan has supplied North Korea with WMD capability (look for 9/15/03). Some through illegal smuggling, some through legal chemical and equipment purchases. Japan tries to shift blame for the policy to its major trading partner, South Korea.

It looks like Japan, as much as South Korea and China, was depending on the US for safety from whatever North Korea was going to threaten.

Apparently, some journalists for ABC News managed to smuggle depleted uranium into the Port of Los Angeles today in a shipping container from Jakarta, Indonesia.

The ABCNEWS project involved a shipment to Los Angeles of just under 15 pounds of depleted uranium, a harmless substance that is legal to import into the United States. The uranium, in a steel pipe with a lead lining, was placed in a suitcase for the shipment.

"If they can't detect that, then they can't detect the real thing," explained Tom Cochran, a nuclear physicist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which lent the material to ABCNEWS for the project.

Cochran said the highly enriched uranium used for nuclear weapons, would, with slightly thicker shielding, give off a signature similar to depleted uranium in the screening devices currently being used by homeland security officials at American ports.

Is Tom Cochran's assertion correct? The best comparison I can find online between enriched uranium and depleted uranium is on the Canadian National Defence website.

In nature, uranium exists as a mixture of three isotopes --- U-238, U-235, and U-234. These isotopes of uranium have different weights, but each has 92 protons in its nucleus. Uranium isotopes differ in weight because they have different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei. The isotopes U-238, U-235, and U-234 are present naturally in the proportions of 99.28 percent, 0.72 percent, and 0.0055 percent respectively. ...

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) defines depleted uranium as uranium in which the percentage of the U-235 isotope by weight is less than 0.711 percent. The military specifications designate that the DU used by the American Department of Defense contain less than 0.3 percent U-235. In actuality, DoD uses only DU that contains approximately 0.2 percent U-235. ...

The enriched uranium used in nuclear reactors contains about a 3 percent concentration of this isotope. Enriched uranium is also used in nuclear weapons. ...

Because of the high percentage of U-238 and its slow decay rate, naturally occurring uranium is, in fact, one of the least radioactive substances among unstable isotopes on the planet. DU can be up to 50 percent less radioactive than naturally occurring uranium depending on the degree of depletion. The material generally used by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is 40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium.

Based on this information, I calculate that 3% enriched uranium is approximately 275% more radioactive than 0.7% natural uranium, and 687% more radioactive than 0.2% depleted uranium. Using arbitrary units:

99.28x +0.72y == 100 (natural uranium)
99.8x + 0.2y == 60 (depleted uranium)

Solve for x and y, the radioactivity of U238 and U235 respectively, and you get:

x == 0.446
y == 77.446

The radioactivity of enriched uranium is:

97*0.446 + 3*77.446 == 275.6

So, enriched uranium is about 7 times more radioactive than depleted uranium. But, uranium isotopes primarily emit alpha particles, and alpha particles can be shielded with a sheet of paper.

All uranium isotopes are primarily alpha particle emitters. These alpha particles travel only about 30 micrometers in soft tissue and, therefore, are unable to penetrate paper, glass, or even the dead superficial layer of skin. The gamma emissions of uranium are rather low.

This fact makes all forms of uranium rather difficult to detect from a distance, considering that background radiation is always present. Uranium doesn't emit a great deal of gamma radiation above what is present in the background, either.

In the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists the authors tried to estimate the possible external gamma-radiation levels on the battlefield by assuming that 100 tons of depleted uranium had been distributed uniformly over a one-kilometer-wide strip along 100 kilometers of the "Highway of Death" between Kuwait City and Basra, a city in southern Iraq. The average dose for someone who lived in the area for a year would be about one mrem - or about 10 percent of the dose from uranium and its decay products already naturally occurring in the soil. The dose rate immediately around a destroyed vehicle could be about 30 times higher. But even that figure would only add about 10 percent to the natural background radiation.

So, is Tom Cochran correct? It looks like it. Although enriched uranium is up to 7 times as radioactive as depleted uranium, it only takes a tiny bit of lead to drastically attenuate radiation exposure. A mere 0.5mm of lead can reduce radiation exposure by a factor of 1000, depending on the energy level of the particles in question. Considering all the work that goes into finding uranium deposits, I don't have trouble believing that we couldn't detect this shipment of depleted uranium -- and that we'd be hard-pressed to detect enriched uranium under similar circumstances.

Update:
Clayton Cramer disagrees, based on U235's greater emission of gamma radiation. That's fine, as far as it goes, but as Tom Cochran claims that shielded U235 would "look" very similar to depleted uranium to the various radiation detection devices. I am not a physicist, but my dad is and he confirms that lead-shielded enriched uranium would look pretty much the same as lead-shielded depleted uranium -- that is, it would look like lead.

Update 2:
I oringally wrote "U238" in the first update in places where I meant U235, as Clayton Cramer points out in his update (and in the comments here). That mistake/typo/whatever did severely confuse my point, and make me look stupid. Sigh.

I'm aware that U235 emits gamma radiation, and the point of this post was to say that, from what I've read and from what my dad has told me, it would not take a significant amount of lead shielding to attenuate said radiation.

I linked to a site in the post that talks about attenuating gamma radiation, and indicates that less than a millimeter would be needed to reduce exposure by a factor of 50 to 1000. I don't know whether that level of attenuation would be sufficient to disguise the presence of U235, and Mr. Cramer indicates that it would not.

In a comment to my earlier post about dismantling the terrorist leadership structure, TM Lutas (from Flit) wrote that:

Well, yes and no. You're right that taking out leadership is the way to win the war on terror but the real leadership that ultimately has to be destroyed is the one that creates the religious framework that creates the terrorist structure.

I'm not sure I agree.

It appears to me that the whole religious aspect of the Western Civilization vs. Arab Muslims conflict has been built up artificially, and that the hostile (largely Wahabi) Muslim imams are nothing more than tools used by the Arab power-brokers to incite their Muslim foot-soldiers. The "Arab street" may see America as the Great Satan, but I bet those in power in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, and elsewhere are much more pragmatic. They want to maintain their power, and they prop up the Muslim death-cult as a means of furthering this goal.

If that's the case, then the critical component to winning the War on Terror isn't targeting this religious infrastructure. Even though the terrorists are using Islam against us in a powerful and effective manner, there isn't any real need to confront their schools, mosques, and religious leaders directly -- these aren't the fundamental forces driving our opponents. Arab/Wahabi Islam will have to be taken apart and rendered harmless for ultimate peace and prosperity to be secured, but I expect that such dismantling will occur naturally (and quickly)once the Arab despots are deposed and disposed of.

Strategy Page has a fascinating post with some operational details of the recent al Qaeda attack in Saudi Arabia. There aren't any permalinks, but the post I'm referring to was made on September 1st, 2003.

In the aftermath, several things became obvious. First was that the Al-Qaeda attackers used men on foot to force the gates. This had not been done in the past. The other two attacks, on the US Army headquarters of the Saudi National Guard Modernization Program and the Khobar Towers bombing, car or truck bombs had been used, but there was no associated ground assault.

This is why it's important to knock out terrorist leaders (as Israel is doing when dealing with Hamas), rather than treat terrorism as a law enforcement issue and intercept individual terrorist acts. Leadership and coordination are what win wars, and if we want to win the War on Terror we must dismantle the infrastructure and the intellect that supports it.

Never one to pass up the opportunity to do some actual reporting, I'll give you the obligatory-blogger-impression of airport security from my recent trip to Missouri. The security was mostly brisk and professional, and there were officers everywhere... ah heck, let's just cut to the chase.

Want to know what I found in the stall of the men's restroom at LAX?

Airport food-service ID badges. What's really odd though is that even if it makes sense for Jose to take off the badge on the lanyard while he's using the bathroom, why did he remove the tiny rectangular name-tag from (presumably) his shirt?

Update & Correction:
Some commenters have written that "MICROS" is the name of a food-service computer system that helps waiters keep their orders straight, and that this badge isn't likely to give access to anything other than the computer system at some nearby airport eatery.

Oh well! On one hand, my find is less impressive... but on the other hand there wasn't a terrorist plot taking place in the mens room. Too bad my first Instalanche was built on a non-story.