Somewhere out there is someone waiting to collect a prize from me, nothing extravagant but sure to be enjoyable. All you have to do is submit a comment that shows you are a real person and have read one of the posts.
Let the rush begin.
***UPDATE Saturday 26th July***
Congratulations to Lindwurm’s tochter who made the first comment, she will be recieving her physics package in the mail in a few days.
Google news is carrying what may be best described as an amusing story today. The billing is impressive but unfortunately the substance is rather less so. The headline and key passage;
Another Former High-Ranking Iraqi Official Confirms WMD Went to Syria
RM: Why do you think Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction are in Syria? Why didn’t he use them or simply destroy them before the war?
IT: I know Saddam’s weapons are in Syria due to certain military deals that were made going as far back as the late 1980’s that dealt with the event that either capitols were threatened with being overrun by an enemy nation.
Clearly this story is part of the continuing effort in some sectors to paint Syria in the darkest colors possible while maintaining that the 2002/03 WMD justification for the invasion of Iraq was valid.
The problem is that this particular effort is simply ridiculous. The headline could easily lead a casual reader to the conclusion that the “official” was directly involved with the shipping of WMD to Syria, or at least the decisions supporting that movement.
Alas no, the blurb at the start of the interview tells us most of what we need to know.
Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti says he was southern regional commander for Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen militia in the late 1980s and a personal friend of the dictator. Units under his command dealt with chemical and biological weapons. He was known as the “Butcher of Basra” due to his campaigns and defected shortly before the Gulf War in 1991.
So essentially we are to accept that someone who defected prior to the first Gulf War is in a position to confirm shipments of WMD to Syria, not just a decision or intent to ship them, but actually confirm that items were placed on vehicles of some sort and transported across the border to Syria. However, we should not belabor this point as Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti has “discussed this in-depth with various contacts of mine who have confirmed what I already knew.” This might also be described as hearsay. Apparently his information, and that of his contacts was not as convincing for the International Survey Group as it was for his interviewer and the “article’s” original author, Mr. Ryan Mauro.
Digging a little further I am surprised that Google News even bothered to pick this up, but realistically it is probably the result of a machine search. I like to think, naively perhaps, that no intelligent editor would run with this story. However by far the worst thing about this item, and frankly it has to make you think a little harder about all such things that come up on sites like Google News, is that it actually dates back to early 2006. The interview was reposted by the Mr. Mauro on his website in June 2008 and then to the International Analyst Network webpage today which appears to be the reason that it was picked up. Essentially a bit of self-promotion by Mr. Mauro has resulted in this item rising from a well-deserved place in the news graveyard.
We can only hope that no-one else decides to give new legs to what might be best described as a zombie news-story.
The results from the latest talks between Iran and Western powers are emerging. lot of attention is being given to the direct involvement of the US government. The headline tells us all we really need to know about this situation however.
Iran rules out nuclear enrichment freeze
Joined by U.S. envoy, negotiators agree to resume talks in two weeks
GENEVA – Iran and the European Union’s chief negotiators agreed on Saturday to resume talks on suspending uranium enrichment in two weeks, after Tehran ruled out freezing its program in talks that included the United States for the first time.
The fundamental issue remains what it has always been. The US and to varying degrees, some of its key allies are concerned that Iran is working towards a nuclear weapons capability. In contrast, Iran argues that it has legitimate needs for nuclear energy and is well within its international rights to develop that capability. The key element in the debate is intent; perceived and actual.
The US sees Iran building the full Uranium fuel cycle from mining and processing of Uranium ore through to enrichment, fuel fabrication and re-processing and suspects that the intention is to develop a weapons capability. In response Iran argues that its intent is purely civilian. Iran’s oil and gas reserves will not last forever and using these to fuel Iranian electricity generation is a sub-optimal use of these resources. Better to export them and receive foreign exchange. Furthermore, since 1979 Iran has been a regular target of international sanctions, including a series of dubious measures intended to interfere with the construction of the nuclear reactors at Busher. As such it has learned that critical national capabilities, such as defense and energy generation, to name but two, should not rely on foreign suppliers.
Iran is undertaking a massive and expensive technical effort that draws resources away from other possible uses of those resources. Although it has benefited from cooperation with other nations such as Pakistan the effort is still substantial. The US looks at this and is suspicious, especially given the secrecy of the effort until recently. It also notes the Iranian determination to proceed with developing the full fuel cycle even though this is economically nonsensical when international enrichment and fuel-fabrication facilities are operating at levels far below capacity and could easily supply Iranian requirements.
The inescapable fact is that once Iran has all of these facilities operating it will have ALL of the requirements for the development of a nuclear weapons capability including a nuclear weapon design. At a minimum Iran will become a latent nuclear weapons state, as are Germany and Japan. At this point whether Iran develops a nuclear weapon will be a matter of choice and the international community will be unable to have much, if any influence on that choice.
In this context enrichment is the critical issue. Until Iran begins operating of its light water reactors (LWR) and completes construction of its reprocessing facility its only available route to a nuclear weapon is through enriched Uranium. Once the reprocessing facility starts to operate the plutonium route to the bomb opens, and opens quites rapidly. In the meantime Uranium enrichment remains the key. Iran is currently working to produce Low-Enriched Uranium (LEU) suitable for LWR use. There is an argument that this is a perfectly legitimate activity.
However, historical example suggests that long-term production of LEU is a very series concern if a state is suspected of nuclear weapons ambitions. The most relevant example here is that of Pakistan which pledged to the USA in the 1980s that it would not enrich Uranium beyond standard LEU levels (3-5%). For a long time it held to this agreement but in amassing a large quantity of LEU it significantly reduced that time required to produce weapons-grade HEU. To work out the time saved a useful tool is this Uranium Enrichment Calculator from the WISE Uranium Project. With it we can quickly discover that by enriching to reactor grade now and then re-enriching to weapons grade later Iran could save as much as two-thirds of the effort during the critical final stage. To produce 41 kg of 90% HEU from 4% LEU takes 2681 SWU, but to get the same amount of HEU from natural Uranium feed takes 7916 SWU. Having said that, this figure is simply to illustrate the time-saving potential. Iran’s facilities can process much larger quantities of Uranium than is implied by the above calculation.
So it becomes clear why enrichment is so important, a point that unfortunately has not been made sufficiently clear to the general public. This is also why the negotiations and discussions with Iran cannot go indefinitely. The longer Iran is able to spin out the process of negotiation while it continues to enrich Uranium the less likely those negotiations are to produce a result that addresses the concerns of the US government and its partners. The more LEU the Iranians amass the easier it becomes for them to switch their efforts to the production of a nuclear weapon if they should choose to do so. Whether they actually choose to do this is actually less important than the capability to act on that choice. I find it hard to accept that this standoff, or stalemate if you prefer, can continue indefinitely.
As things stand the Iranians are getting everything they need by continuing this slow diplomatic process while the parties on the other side of the table are getting nothing at all.
It seems to me that there are a number of possible outcomes.
1) The US and its partners decide to abandon their efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a latent nuclear weapons capability.
2) The US and potentially some or all of its partners conclude that Iran is simply stringing them along until it has in its hands all of the components for a nuclear weapon and decide to do nothing. This may mean that they conclude that Iran is not attempting to acquire an actual weapon, or that they decide that Iran’s acquisition of a weapon is not so important as to risk a confrontation.
3) The US and potentially some or all of its partners conclude that Iran is simply stringing them along until it has in its hands all of the components for a nuclear weapon and decide to force a confrontation.
Historically, for all of the discussion of using force to prevent a country from developing or deploying nuclear weapons this policy option has almost never been pursued. For one reason or another it simply has not seemed worthwhile to take the risks inherent in starting a war over the issue. This suggests that ultimately the Iranian case will also see a lot of bluster, some discussion of the use of force and ultimately a grudging acceptance of the development of a latent capability, or even a weapon if that should be the course the Iranians pursue.
Past examples may not however be a satisfactory guide in dealing with this case and not only because the application of historical examples to present cases is at best an imperfect art. Simply put, just because the goalkeeper jumped left every previous time he tried to stop a penalty does not mean that he will this time.
War is a real possibility when it comes to dealing with Iran, although it is hardly an agreeable one. For now, despite some occassional sabre rattling the US appears committed to negotiating and the Israeli’s appear willing to allow the process to run its course. Given Iran’s unwillingness to accept a rollback of its nuclear fuel-cycle capabilities this negotiation process is incapable of providing the results that the Western powers ultimately seek. Accordingly it is possible that the US has allowed it to proceed as it has in part at least to prepare the ground diplomatically for a war to come by making it clear to its allies that Iran is intransigent and that the only remaining option for preventing an undesireable outcome is force. It seems likely that if / when war with Iran comes it will be more widely accepted by the international community than the Iraq war of 2003 was. This is not to say that it will be welcomed but that is another matter entirely.
Anyway, the main point is that this process of kinda-negotiating about the possibility of Iran temporarily suspending its enrichment activities can not go on forever. When the road that is currently being walked by the negotiators comes to an end watch out. Ultimately the goals of the parties are utterly incompatible.
Last Sunday in the wonderful land of Oz one of the major networks ran a quarter hour segment detailing the horrific story of US efforts to force Australia to allow live-agent testing of nerve agents in the rail forests of Queensland. The piece featured a number of former official, some current academics and “revelations” from a number of declassified documents. Emphasis was placed on the illegality of the proposed operations, the unreasonable pressure placed on Australia by the evil Americans, plans to “lie” to the Australian public and the dangers posed to the environment. Finally there were numerous references to the threats to the health and well-being of gallant Australian diggers (slang for Aussie soldiers) who were to be deliberately exposed to these extremely dangerous chemical agents. The overall tone is one of outrage with a hint of satisfaction that the truth has now been exposed. To wit, the presenter’s opening statement that “we can reveal plans to bomb Australia with deadly nerve gas.”
As far as I can tell all subsequent reporting seems to have been based solely on the broadcast by Nine News without any effort to do additional research. This is unfortunate as the original report is chock full of inaccuracies, false or unjustified linkages, anachronisms, and profound bias. Given the inflammatory tone of the report it is worth noting that no actual tests were conducted. It is also appropriate to question the efforts to link the proposals to the Vietnam War. The original proposals for the tests appear to date back to 1962, possibly even earlier, long before Vietnam became a major US concern. Nine News makes a big fuss about the revelations contained in newly declassified documents and posts several of these on the main article page to support its contentions. Unfortunately it does not post the bulk of the documents used in preparing its report, nor does it provide an easy way to locate them independently. This makes it much more difficult to verify or challenge the claims made.
Fortunately the blogger community has been active in this area and I would like to thank Bugs n’ Gas Gal for posting links to several rather large bundles of declassified documents in the Australian National Archives.
In part at least I think that the position being taken reflects the generalized distrust of the US increasingly common in the populations of countries such as Australia; NZ has a similar tendency. Beyond that however I suspect a number of historical experiences are providing a filter through which the the discussion of this latest “revelation” is being processed.
The most important of these filters is that produced by the use of Australian territory and personnel in nuclear weapons testing by the UK in the 1950s. Many Australian, and NZ troops were deliberately exposed to radiation effects during the various test cycles as part of the British effort to develop and understand the effectiveness of their nuclear weapons capability. After the tests had been completed there was a inadequate cleanup of the site that left significant quantities of plutonium and other contaminants littering the Australian desert where it had the potential to adversely affect fauna and local aboriginal inhabitants living off the land. A fresh effort at cleaning the area was undertaken in the 1980s and provoked considerable controversy. The result has been a serious (post-facto) mistrust of the motives and intent of great power allies that have engaged in, or proposed any variety of WMD testing involving Australia or its citizens.
This distrust has been reinforced by books such as Bridget Goodwin’s “Keen as Mustard.” This 1998 book details the experiences of Australian troops that were exposed to mustard gas as part of a WW2 effort to better understand the behavior of that agent in tropical environments. As was typical for the period the test subjects were not adequately informed about the dangers associated with their participation in these trials. What seems to be missed in Australia is that Aussie troops were not being uniquely mistreated by the oppressive British colonial masters. This is clearly demonstrated by the recent cases where the British government paid compensation to former soldiers who were experimented on with nerve agents in the 1950s.
To return to the Nine News segment however, the first issue to address is the characterization of the proposed testing. There are frequent references to its illegality or lack of justification. Firstly, I am not aware of anything that would have made this testing illegal in the 1960s. The only international measure in place at the time regarding the use of chemical weapons was the 1925 Geneva Convention which was very limited in scope. Signatories pledged not to use chemical weapons in war. They did not however pledge to refrain from developing, testing or stockpiling chemical weapons. The environment for chemical warfare testing and development has become much more restrictive since the mid-60s. Legislation to protect the environment has become much more stringent over time as have requirements governing medical experiments using human subjects. In addition the Australian, and most other world governments, have signed on to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) which has had the effect of limiting, though not eliminating defensive chemical warfare research.
Regarding the issue of justification for the proposed testing the report prominently features Dr. Chris Winder, (Professor in Applied Toxicology, School of Safety Science, University of New South Wales) observing that this testing was completely unjustifiable now or at the time. Prof. Winder is billed as an expert who has researched the history of chemical weapons adding weight to his assertions that ‘fears that communist Chinese or Russian attackers might have used such weapons in a third world war “doesn’t justify it now and I don’t think it justified it then.”‘ Rather quaintly the producers, or Dr. Winder have attempted to bolster his credibility by filming him beside a small stack of books on the history of CW. As far as I can tell Prof. Winder’s expertise is in the toxicology of hazardous chemicals which would include organophospates such as nerve agents. His ability to speak on the technical aspects of how chemical warfare agents affect those exposed seems more than satisfactory and indeed he is used in this capacity early in the segment. However his grasp of the history of the development and use of chemical weapons seems rather less robust and is clearly affected by what appears to be a strong moral objection to chemical warfare. This distaste for chemical warfare is not uncommon but it is also unhelpful when discussing the process of developing chemical weapons.
The simple fact is that in the 1950s the great powers incorporated nerve agents into their military arsenals. They sat there beside biological and nuclear weapons, all of which might well have been used against armies and civilian populations in the event of war. The German development of an entirely new class of chemical warfare agent during WW2 took a little while to be fully absorbed but once it was the discovery reinvigorated what had been an increasingly irrelevant and neglected part of the military arsenal. Although the US was active in the development and production of chemical weapons its activities were not unique. The Soviet Union also produced vast quantities of nerve agents, showing a particular preference for Soman, an especially nasty G agent, and was planing to use them in the event of a conflict. As a matter of prudence the US and its allies, which also had plans for the use of chemical weapons, had no choice but t test these weapons and become familiar with their battlefield characteristics. The most important chemical warfare lesson to come out of WW1 was that unprepared troops, and by this we mean inadequately equipped or insufficiently trained, suffer dramatically higher casualty rates than those who were well prepared.
In this context some environments are more challenging than others. One of these is forest, and tropical forests are a subset of this difficult problem. The most serious problem in protecting troops against nerve agents is the absolute need to avoid skin contact. The solution has been having troops wear protective suits that fully enclose the body using impermeable layers or absorbent materials. In either case the individual must also wear a protective mask and heavy impermeable gloves. Soldiers wearing these ensembles have proven to very vulnerable to heat stress, even in relatively mild climates. Using 1950s and 1960s style protective gear in a rainforest would have been difficult at best. Anything that could minimize the amount of time that a soldier needed to spend in such gear would have been welcome.
One thing that can reduce the amout of time spent in protective gear is the ability to accurately detect chemical warfare agents and decontaminate materiel, facilities and potentially terrain. It is also important to clearly understand how long the agents persist in the local environment. This last consideration can be highly variable and tropical rainforests present a difficult situation. The frequent intense rainfall may have the effect of washing away or diluting the agents more quickly than would be typical for a drier temperate environment. Equally the high heat and humidity are likely to affect the persistence of the chemicals. But, detection may be complicated by these factors as well. The dense foliage has the potential to provide many more surfaces on which chemicals may adhere, some of which will actually shelter the agent from rainfall effects. Furthermore the canopy has the effect of blocking out the sun, reducing the effects of sunlight on the deposited agent. There is an argument that simulants would be more than adequate for testing and training purposes but this argument overlooks the need to establish baselines using the agent or material that is being simulated in the environment in which it is to be used.
This post has gotten more than a little long and so it is going to be split into two parts with the second to follow.
END OF PART ONE
While doing searches at opensource.gov yesterday I came across an interesting report about activities in Yemen. When I saw “terrorist chemical attacks” I thought that i was really onto something important on the lines of a developing regional trend towards the use of chemicals by terrorists, follwing on from the attacks in Iraq in 2007. Admittedly including Yemen and Iraq in the same region is a bit of a stretch but it has been done before. Anyway, the article nd then a short discussion.
Yemen: Customs Step Up Efforts In Anticipation of Terrorist Chemical Attacks
GMP20080628416006 Alhadath (Internet Version-WWW) in Arabic 27 Jun 08
[Unattributed report entitled: Customs Imposed Tight Security Measures At Border Posts In Anticipation of Chemical Attacks.]
Text:
Sanaa — An official source said yesterday that the Customs Department deployed 270 chemists and physicists at all ports of entry to face any threats to the security and safety of Yemen and its people with chemical weapons. The source said in a statement to the press that the individuals mentioned above have been deployed in all Yemeni land, sea, and air border posts. They have been charged with the mission of detecting chemical or bacteriological weapons that some terrorist groups might be trying to smuggle into Yemen for the purpose of targeting the safety of its people and territories. The source added that these precautionary measures are in line with the regional security changes brought about by the deterioration of security in the Horn of Africa and Iraq. This situation, the source said, has generated concern among the countries of the region about the possibility that some of these weapons might fall into the hands of terrorist groups who will not hesitate to use them if they are given the chance.
The first thing I noticed in this report is that Yemen, and even more impressively Yemen’s customs agency, has 270 chemists and physicists to spare for this sort of activity. This seems a touch unlikely given that most developed nations do not have that many chemists and physicists deployed at their borders. I suspect that this is a classic example of poor reporting or alternatively a government trying to make its efforts look more impressive than they might actually be.
Unfortunately by making such a sensational statement the government official quoted in the report is missing the opportunity to highlight important achievements. I suspect that the point of the report is for the government to highlight that it has personnel trained to detect and respond to attempts to import hazardous chemicals or radiation sources. These may in fact be newly trained personnel but it seems more likely to me that these are retrained or upskilled existing personnel. They may have had as little as one short course introducing them to the question of chemical or nuclear weapons proliferation and transshipment combined with some training in the use of new detection equipment (most likely for radiation sources). This would be in line with ongoing efforts by the United States and other Yemeni partners to build the capacity of its customs agency, an effort that is not at all limited to Yemen.
Improving the capability of its customs agency to detect and interdict the movement of these materials is an important contribution to global efforts to reduce the risk of WMD terrorism. It has the further advantage of increasing foreign confidence in the ability of Yemen to administer its borders in such a way to reduce risk to trading partners which means Yemen will not be sidelined asa transshipment point. Of course the added benefit to the nation is that the improvements sponsored by developed world trading partners may signifcantly improve the ability of the agency to raise revenues.
It could be argued that a more alarming aspect of this report is that the Yemeni government believes there is a serious risk of chemical weapons or radiation sources being imported. This danger is probably being overstated by the spokesperson or the reporter. It is much more likely that a terrorist organization would be attempting to use Yemen as a transshipment point with a view to moving weapons closer to a more valuable target in Europe or North America. It is this transshipment concern that underlies much of the effort to support the modernization of national customs agencys.
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