It's da bomb 2 -- Last update 2006.10.10.19:34
Contributed by Bill Faith
See previous: It's da bomb
Report: North Korean nuke test failed?
Allahpundit
Top of the page right now at Drudge. We were tossing this possibility around last night and then again this morning. Even a small nuclear explosion would yield a blast equivalent to a few thousand tons of TNT. This one was in the ballpark of 500.
Here’s what “NPP,” a retired munitions expert, had to say in the comments to the previous post: It’s definitely possible to make nuclear weapons with yields under 1kt, but it requires a level of expertise and knowledge the NK’s almost certainly do not have…
Fireworks
Bryan Preston
It’s looking more and more like the North Korea nuke test was a dud. If it’s true, that’s obviously very good news. We know from the July 4 launches that North Korea’s long-range missiles got no dong–they don’t work. NoKo scientists may have gotten good telemetry data even from the flubbed launches, though, and they’re undoubtedly studying that data to improve the next batch.
Now we see an apparently failed North Korean nuclear test. But like the dud missiles, NoKo scientists will learn from the nuke failure (if that’s what it was). They’ll use the data from this test to improve the next batch. That’s how science works.
We now know that we have a window of time in which to deal with a North Korea that has played its cards before the world: ...
Fizzlemas In North Korea
Ed Morrissey
Bill Gertz writes in tomorrow's Washington Times that the nuclear test performed by North Korea may not have been nuclear at all. American intelligence has begun reviewing the seismic data and are increasingly convinced that the test was either a failure or a hoax: U.S. intelligence agencies say, based on preliminary indications, that North Korea did not produce its first nuclear blast yesterday.
U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that seismic readings show that the conventional high explosives used to create a chain reaction in a plutonium-based device went off, but that the blast's readings were shy of a typical nuclear detonation. ...
North Korea Threatens Nuclear Launch
Kim Jong-Il either needs a hug or a straitjacket. North Korea followed its rogue nuclear test by issuing an explicit threat to attack the US with a nuclear missile unless we allowed Pyongyang to operate its counterfeiting business without interference: A North Korean official threatened that communist nation could fire a nuclear-tipped missile unless the U.S. acts to resolve its standoff with Pyongyang, Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday.
"We hope the situation will be resolved before an unfortunate incident of us firing a nuclear missile comes," the unnamed official said on Monday, according to a Yonhap report from Beijing. "That depends on how the U.S. will act." ...
Kim: Just Another Shrimp On The Barbie
The Australians have stepped up to the plate, as they always do when tyrants threaten global security, in the wake of the North Korean nuclear test. They didn't bother to wait for the UN Security Council to slap sanctions on the Kim Jong-Il regime, and told the UN that they had better snap to it themselves: Australia will impose a range of measures on North Korea, including curtailing visas and supporting any U.N. sanctions, in response to the country's nuclear test, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Tuesday. ...
"We were urging our friends and allies in the United Nations to pass a resolution imposing sanctions," Downer told reporters. ...
China Rethinks Its Alliances
The nuclear test by North Korea yesterday may have produced results which Kim Jong-Il did not anticipate. China issued an unusually harsh response to their client state, and the London Times reports that Beijing may reconsider its relationship with the impulsive Stalinist: CHINA responded with rare fury to neighbouring North Korea’s nuclear test, resorting to language generally reserved for imperialist opponents rather than communist friends.
Beijing’s response was unusually swift. “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has ignored the widespread opposition of the international community and brazenly carried out a nuclear test,” it said. ...
The result of no consequences
Michelle Malkin
The New York Sun weighs in on "The Axis Bomb:" To the extent that America needs to be particularly wary, it is of the danger that the North Korean test could be, like the war in Lebanon and Israel this summer, an Iranian-Syrian stunt aimed at diverting world attention from Tehran's own nuclear program. The North Korean test has prompted predictable calls for renewed and invigorated diplomacy, but America has been dealing with North Korea diplomatically since the 1994 "Agreed Framework," negotiated by our most hapless president, Jimmy Carter. In 2000, President Clinton went so far as to dispatch Secretary Albright to pay homage and clink glasses with Kim Jong Il, a toast that will live in infamy as one of the lowest points to which an American state secretary has ever sunk. North Korea has reveled in the diplomacy while moving ahead with its nuclear weapons program. ..
Saving Face
From Reuters: China, other powers say N. Korea should be punished. China, North Korea's most important ally, joined other world powers on Tuesday in calling for a tough response to the reclusive communist state's announcement of a nuclear weapons test.
China and Russia, which both border North Korea, met with other veto-holding members of the U.N. Security Council to discuss a range of sanctions proposed by the United States and Japan to pressure Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program. ...
Confirmed(?): No nuke explosion in North Korean test
Allahpundit
Michael Yon breaks some news. Or, at least, independently confirms the news broken by Bill Gertz last night in the WashTimes.
But he does add one important detail: The source stressed the importance of bearing in mind that though the explosion occured in North Korea — if it was actually a test and not merely a dictator clamoring for attention and influence — the test may have been by or for the Iranians. ...
[...]
Update: The Interocitor has a theory about why the NK test fizzled.
Try, try again?
Michelle Malkin
Reuters reporting: North Korea appears to have conducted another nuclear test, Japanese national broadcaster NHK said on Wednesday.
Japanese government sources had information that there was a tremor in North Korea this morning and they were checking on the possibility of a nuclear test, NHK said.
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