Author: N.Z. Bear

Eric S. Raymond is back, and has penned an Manifesto.
I agree with most of Eric’s sentiments; while there are a few points where I might quibble the overall core is sound.
My concern, however, is that while the Manifesto is a fine statement of principles, it is sorely lacking in action. It is all fine and good to declare that “we shall fight the barbarians and fanatics, and we shall defeat them.”
But the fact is, I’m not going to fight the barbarians and fanatics; nor are 99% of those who read and sign Eric’s manifesto. At least, not directly. The fine men and women of my nation’s armed forces and law enforcement entities are the ones who will do the fighting, not I: only the most shameless poseur would pretend otherwise.
So what can I, and we, do? In the spirit of that question, I offer the following additions to Eric’s Manifesto:
WE SHALL study closely the statements and actions of our elected officials and candidates. Recognizing that this conflict is the defining crisis of our age and a danger which renders all other issues secondary, we shall judge our politicians first and foremost by their stance on this war. We pledge to cast our ballots for those leaders who we believe are best suited to guide our civilization through this crisis, regardless of disagreements we may hold with them on other issues.
WE SHALL seek the hard reality of facts to guide us in our judgements throughout this war, and will strive to spread truth wherever we shall find it. As webloggers, we have but one true power: to share information. Whether we reach a single reader or thousands, we each pledge to shine our own light into the dark corners of the web, the media, and the world. Where truth has been overlooked, we shall find it; where lies are piled high obscuring facts, we will sweep them away.
WE SHALL apply our powers of persuasion to the fight; pouring our passion into our writings and striving to convince those who still doubt. We pledge to argue not for the beauty of our own rhetoric; not for the applause and admiration of our colleagues, but to lend clarity to the critical debates that face our civilization. We shall strive to ensure that our conviction does not overwhelm our own humility, and will remember that sometimes, the path we initially believe is right will be proved wrong. Some questions which face us now present obvious solutions; with others, the course is less clear. Through honest, open, and impassioned debate, we will provide the heat — and light — in which our civilization’s decisions may be forged.
WE SHALL watch. We shall consider carefully, and argue wisely, to the best of our abilities. We will exercise the very rights which our enemies would see taken from us: to speak freely, and to choose leaders who will represent and defend us.
And it is those freedoms with which we will do our part to ensure the safety of our civilization, and the defeat of our enemies.

Flipping through the radio the other day, I came across a brief snippet of a quote that fascinated me. I never got the context; so I present it here in its splendid isolation:
“…this rush to war for the past year…”
Now it’s of course leaping to conclusions to conclude, well, anything without some semblence of the surrounding statement.
But isn’t it a beautifully concise summary of (one of) the inherent contradiction(s) of the anti-war crowd nonetheless?
*DR. DOLEN: Oh, was dying for years.
FLETCH: Sure, but the end was so sudden.
DR. DOLEN: He was in intensive care for eight weeks.
FLETCH: Yes, but the very end, when he actually died, that was extremely sudden.

Since I seem to be in consumer protection mode this week, might as well go with that feeling.
The website of the day here at TTLB is It provides a simple service, but one I’ve rapidly grown addicted to: identifying sales, discounts, and rebates on common products at retail (brick-and-mortar) stores in a given local area.
So you can tell it you’re looking for, say, utilities software in California, and you’ll get this list. Or you want a 2.4 Ghz cordless phone in New Jersey, and you get this one.
An especially neat feature is a per-state page that identifies what’s “free” after rebates that week. This week in California, for instance, SalesCircular tells me I can get a 50-pack of CD-R disks at Office Max for $15, with $15 worth of rebates. Or the “Nicotrol Step 1” smoking control kit for $29.99 with a $29.99 rebate at Walgreens.
Neat stuff. A word of caution, though: make sure you check the rebates carefully, as SalesCircular appears to simply rely on stores’ advertising and occasionally you’ll see listings that have too many rebates totalled up. And also beware that there is a habit of including comptetitive rebates in the final prices, which you can’t use unless you already have a competitors product.
Used carefully, though, I’ve found it to be a mighty handy tool, so give it a shot…

Scott Wickstein is blog designs. No rating for TTLB though, which of course I will interpret to mean that my design is perfect.

Part II of my series on privacy tools; see I if you’re searching for ways to foil spammers of the telephone type.
E-mail spam is, of course, evil, and must, of course, be destroyed. After years of mostly ignoring it, I finally reached a point recently where I decided to do something about it, and, in typical Bear fashion, went on a hunt for the picks, axes, and implements of destruction that might aide me in my task.
I am sad to say that I was not impressed with the crop of spam-filtering software I encountered; at least, not with the ones I wouldn’t have to pay for. Unlike other product categories (say, firewalls) there didn’t seem to be a clear freeware tool that was widely recognized as robust and complete.
But I did encounter one commercial tool that integrates with Microsoft Outlook that struck my fancy, and which I’ve been trying under a 30-day demo. It’s called ValiMail, and it solves spam problems by avoiding entirely the idea of “filters”.
Instead, it takes the draconian approach of assuming that anybody you haven’t explicitly told it to accept mail from is a potential spammer, who must be stopped. If you get an email from a new, unidentified source, the mail is intercepted as it hits your Outlook inbox. ValiMail hides it from your view, and sends the source a preformatted message that gives the instructions on how to request permission to send you email (the instructions include a special step designed to ensure they cannot be completed by a machine).
If the source decides to comply, you get a request in your Valimail toolbar (which sits up on the Outlook bar) from them to be approved. You can either accept, or decide to block them entirely (both steps you can also take in advance right when you received the message, if you choose).
It’s fairly spiffy stuff, and I like the concept a lot. It is, however, fairly new, and that shows in a few limitations. Notably, if you are protecting multiple E-mail accounts, you need to make sure that your default Outlook mail account is OK for all your mail correspondents to receive notifications from — because that’s the one ValiMail uses to send its messages for all accounts. This is a problem for me, for instance, because I have my real-life personal mail, and my N.Z. Bear mail, and I don’t want the two to mix. And also: it’s Microsoft Outlook only; which I know makes it useless for many folks.
So, for the moment, ValiMail is protecting my personal mail, not my Bearmail. But I didn’t want to leave BearMail completely exposed — and I’ve got that nice big fat target of a mail link right below my picture on the front page here.
So I finally got around to checking out my friend Mean Dean’s Anti-Spam E-Mail Address Obfuscator . Dean provides a nice discussion of email masking techniques, and then shows his own tool: a handy little web form that generates an “a href=” link for your E-mail address suitable for use on a web page that, in theory, will confuse the devil out of any spambots searching for new victims. (If you want to go straight to Dean’s tool, use this link).
I just implemented it last night, so can’t vouch for its efficacy firsthand yet, but I figure Dean’s got friends in high places, so that will count for something.
I’d welcome more suggestions on folks’ favorite tools — I’m still particularly interested in any solid freeware antispam solutions. Look forward to hearing from y’all…
Update 10/16: Dean points out an interesting tool for those of you who don’t just want to stop spam — but want to hunt it back to its source…

VodkaGuy has provided guide for online advertisers, which reminded me of my recent efforts to protect my own privacy from those who would attempt to harass, annoy, and cudgle me into partaking of their products.
First, telemarketers. I am convinced that my primary mistake was to actually donate to my local police officer’s association. Bless the cops hearts, really, but whoever runs their charity should be locked up: they sold my name and number to everybody.
So what to do? Well, Pacific Bell is offering a promotion currently to its “best customers” — hint, I’ll bet you’re one of them too — to try out their Privacy Manager service for three months for free. (Other telcos have similar services). It combines Caller ID with a screening function: anybody who blocks their CallerID is presented with the voicemail equivalent of a big burly guy who says “Identify yourself, or You Shall Not Pass!” Folks can either unblock their CallerID, record their name, or go away. And all this happens before the phone even rings.
I then get to hear the name recorded, if that was their choice, and can either accept the call, hit “2” to say go away nicely, or hit “4” to give a formal (and legally binding), Go Away You TeleMarketing Slime and Take Me Off Your Damned List.
Only had it for a few days; unfortunately, not all telemarketers block their ID’s, so some are slipping through. So, further measures are necessary.
Enter Private Citizen, a group dedicated to fighting the good fight against telemarketing evil wherever they may find it. Sign up with them for $25 a year, and they send you a formal declaration to sign which gives them the power to request to have your name removed from a telemarketing company’s list. They then proceed to send it out in a mass mailing to 16,000 companies.
The fun part is that you may be thinking, well, companies will just ignore it. And indeed they might. But allegedly, if they do, they’re violating the law, and you can take them to small claims court. And Private Citizen’s mailing gives your case a little extra boost: rather than telling companies simply “Don’t Call”, they say: Call if you like. But you are hereby notified that from now on, my time is not free to you; but I will rent it at the price of $500 per call. You may signify your acceptance of this agreement by calling.
Fun, eh?
Anyway, I’m still waiting for the forms to go through, so I can’t vouch for Private Citizen’s actual effectiveness yet. But we shall see.
But lastly, what to do about those telemarketers that do actually make it through my telephonic barbed wire and electrified fences? They will have to deal with The Phone Butler.
A small gizmo that sells for about $30, it plugs into your phone line and sits there, lying in wait for the next unsuspecting telemarketing fool to wander into your lair. And when one does, all you need do is press “*” on your phone while the telemarketbeast is prattling away.
The Phone Butler cuts off the call, declaring — in a snooty English butler voice, natch — that he’s terribly sorry, but he must inform the telemarketer to go away, and by the way, please remove this number from your list.
Mine’s in the mail, so again, can’t vouch for how well it works, but it sure sounds like a lot of fun.
For more privacy-related info, check out AntiTelemarketer.com, which has lots of links and resources for folks who want to rid themselves of these electronic gnats.
Next post: E-mail spam, and an interesting tool for avoiding it without relying on the flaky logic of filters…

While you’re waiting for me to get off my ursine butt and post something intelligent, check out The Agonist’s site, where he’s rather publicly declaring the reason for his — well, agony.
Seems the State Department in its finite wisdom is delaying his fianc

Rumors of my demise have been completely fabricated.
All is well; I’ve simply been swamped in the triple terrors of refinancing my mortgage, jobsearch, and rearchitecting my home LAN.
If you want more TTLB goodness a little faster, you could always encourage the process and buy some stuff, sign up to advertise on TTLB, or better yet, offer me a job.
And if anybody cares to offer me a good mortgage rate or a new PC, then that would be nice too.

Tom Friedman’s got the quote of the day from interview on today’s The Connection radio program from WBUR:
“Yes, the Internet can make you smarter faster than any technology we’ve seen in history. But it can also make you dumber faster…it is an open sewer of unfiltered, untreated information…”
There’s a new motto for the Blogosphere in there, I think…

This morning’s Google News Headlines:
Funniest Joke Revealed
Microsoft now serious about bugs, says Ballmer
Ahem.

Rosenberg points out a “hypothetical conversation” which blogger Bill Spotz has between himself and a hypothetical “right-winger” regarding Iraq (“Assuming there exists such a person who wouldn’t resort to personal attacks or outright lies”, as Spotz says).
It is not a bad piece, arguing the case against war reasonably coherently. But I found myself noticing that throughout the piece, Spotz throws out alleged facts left and right, without even once offering a single hyperlink or source to back them up.
I extracted a list of them, which I present below. Note that I don’t necessarily believe each of these are false (some I’m fairly sure are indeed correct), but I do think its worth pointing out when assertions are made without evidence. And this is an observation that applies just as readily to some pro-war arguments as the anti-war ones. (And an observation I’ll attempt to remember myself; I’m sure I’ve thrown out an assertion or two without evidence now and again).
I’d welcome followup from Bill; if he’d like to respond and flesh out these statements with evidence, I’d be happy to include that information here.
Update: Bill responds, and provides a few sources here.
Assertions in “A Hypothetical Conversation”:
1) Given the Gulf War, the weapons inspectors and the embargo, any weapons that Hussein might have are of little threat to us.
2) [North Korea or Iran’s] weapons of mass destruction capabilities are far advanced over Iraq
3) [Saddam Hussein] is not a threat to America. His missile range is limited to 400 miles.
4) All [Bush] has given us is out-of-date reports and satellite photographs that don’t demonstrate what he says they do.
5) Hussein hates al Qaida, and the feeling is mutual.
6) In Iraq, if you follow the particular brand of fundamentalist Islam that al Qaida follows, you can be put to death.
7) To the terrorists, Hussein is as evil an infidel as we are.
8) [B]etween 1991 and 1998, UN weapons inspectors destroyed 95% of his chemical and biological weapons stores, along with the infrastructure to manufacture more.
9) [I]f elections were held [in Iraq] today, the Shiites would win with about 60% of the vote.

KQED public radio’s Forum program had a discussion on the infamous “School of the Americas” yesterday, which you can find archived online in RealAudio format from program page (the air date was 10/1/02). Listening to the discussion on this one tiny aspect of U.S. military and foreign relations, I was struck by the way it represented much of the debate surrounding America’s role in the world more broadly.
First, terminology. In 2000, the School of the Americas officially closed, and was soon replaced by a “new” school, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), which happens to be in the same location at Fort Benning, GA. Depending on who you ask, this was either a fundamental change in the mission of the facility, or a cosmetic filing-off of the serial numbers to confuse the clueless.
Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of School of the Americas Watch and one of the guests on the program, would definitely suggest the latter. And did, repeatedly. On the other side of the argument were two U.S. Army officers, one from the Pentagon (Colonel Marc Morgan, Division Chief for the Regional Politico-Military Affairs Division of the U.S. Army) and the director of the school itself (Colonel Richard Downie).
The battle lines were simple, and stark. Father Bourgeois and his organization want the school, whatever it is called, closed. Period. He believes with all his heart that graduates of the school are some of the worst human rights abusers Latin America has ever seen, and are responsible for a significant part of the mayhem that region has been subjected to over the past few decades.
Without claiming to be an expert on Latin American history and the United States’ rather significant involvement in it during the Cold War, I’m inclined to believe him on this charge. We did some nasty things and supported some nasty characters during that period, and my limited knowledge suggests that the old SOA was indeed one of the spots where the deeds were done. (On this point, I’d have to say I found the Army representatives to be less than completely candid.)
But… does that justify closing the school now? Is it really still the same old awful source of thugs and murderers?
Father Bourgeois’ answer was simple: it doesn’t matter. Some places and institutions are simply too awful to redeem; they can only be closed.
And that’s where I veered wildly off the Father’s course.
The central argument for the school’s existence seems fairly clear to me. In a nutshell, there are military and police personnel significantly involved in keeping the peace and protecting the citizenry of Latin America. We have a choice: we can help train them to be competent professionals who respect civil rights, the rule of law and civilian oversight, or we can just ignore them and hope it all turns out ok.
But, again: Does the current WHINSEC do that? Or does it train killers in torture methods?
Impossible to know for sure what goes on in a military facility from the outside, of course. But WHINSEC certainly looks like its doing the right things. They’ve published their course list on their website, and a fairly innocuous sounding list it is. “Civil Military Operations Course” might be a euphemism for Advanced Thumbnail Removal, “Human Rights Instructor Course” might describe how to instruct human rights protestors that it would really be best if they not protest anymore, and “International Operational Law Course” might be about how to get around it.
But frankly, it seems unlikely. Given the massive attention the old SOA drew upon itself, and the scrutiny that the new school is under, it would be the height of foolishness to allow even the slightest civil-rights-abusing shenanigans to take place at WHINSEC. To take a very cynical view: it is entirely possible some part of our government and military is still training nasty people in how to do nasty things. But I suspect that Fort Benning, GA is the exact last place you should look to find them. And if you’re still not convinced, they invite you to visit in person — -an offer which Colonel Downie repeated to Father Bourgeois during the discussion yesterday, the frustration clear in his voice, and an offer which the Father refused outright (again).
But even if he accepted that the school had changed its ways, it seems Father Bourgeois would still want it shut down. It has done evil things, and cannot possibly be redeemed.
A rather un-Christian view to take, if you think about it. And one that to me, sums up all too well the attitude of many on the left who oppose military action in Iraq, or the way we are prosecuting the war against terrorism more generally.
For people like Father Bourgeois, the United States is a sinner. We’ve committed crimes against the world; there is blood on our hands. But their solution is not for the U.S. to recognize the errors it has made, and actively work in the world to both fix past wrongs and do better next time.
It is to withdraw; to shut down, to simply accept that our crimes are too great to ever permit us to try to act for the good ever again. So it must be with the School of the Americas; so it must be with America itself.
I try my best to not ignore the crimes that America has committed in the past. I’ve written of some of them on this weblog, and will continue to do so.
But for me, the crimes of the past should not be used as a convenient excuse for inaction in the present. The world is out there; history happens every instant of every day and the future we will live in is being created all across the planet at this very moment. As it is with training Latin American military officers, it is with engaging the world as a whole: we can either learn from our past mistakes and try to do better, or we can just ignore them and hope it all turns out ok.
I choose the active course. It is the one with the greatest chance of sinning again; but it is also the only one that truly offers a chance at redemption.

Well, I’ve been wrong before, I’ll be wrong again, and it looks like was wrong this time:
U.N., Iraq Agree on Inspection Terms
I still suspect that my rope-a-dope scenario might well play out, but over a slightly longer timeframe. But again, we’ll see…
Update 10/2: OK, since I screwed up my first prediction, I might as well go for broke.
Doesn’t it seem a bit kamikaze-like of the U.K. and U.S. to be demanding that the inspectors not return until a new resolution is in place?
Unless… they already have reason to believe they’re certain to get that new resolution through the Security Council….

Meryl has done some research into exactly what percentage of the U.N.’s attention Israel has received since its founding.
Big surprise: a bit of it.

Today, talks began between the U.N. weapons inspection team and the Iraqi government.
A brief refresher history: at first, there was the Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), established in 1991 right after the end of the Gulf War. UNSCOM was the “mean” inspection team: they took their mandate to mean search anywhere, anytime. These are the guys who you heard about having shouting matches with Iraqi guards and promising cruise missiles if they didn’t get access through that door right now. (That was inspector-turned-flake Scott Ritter, if I remember correctly, during his aggressive phase).
But UNSCOM fell out of favor, and finally withdrew its people from Iraq in 1998. Then, in December 1999, the Security Council created the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC). One key difference between UNMOVIC and UNSCOM is that UNMOVIC staff actually work for the U.N. — wheras UNSCOM personnel were paid by their home governments. This is a good thing or a bad thing, depending on who you ask.
At this point, it is interesting to note how much appears to lie on one man: Hans Blix, the lead inspector and Chairman of UNMOVIC . If Blix goes into these meetings with a hard line, then we may see Iraq’s bluff crumble sooner, rather than later.
And here’s where we get to the interesting part. The “common wisdom” assumption is that Iraq is expecting to get a nice cushy inspection regime back. In particular, one that respects Iraq’s insane demands to respect the large “Presidental Areas”.
The common wisdom also seems to suggest that because the inspection regime currently on the table is based on UMOVIC, it will indeed be a loose one. That’s why we need a new resolution, say Tony and George.
But look closely at the recent statements from Hans Blix, and something interesting emerges.
In this ABC News piece, he told reporters that he was going into the talks with the assumption that no area was off limits to inspectors — explicitly including the presidential areas. And even back in March, he was stating that he needed “immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted” access to accomplish his mission.
So I ask: Could we be seeing yet another example of rope-a-dope?
While Blair and Bush appear to be putting all their hopes on a new U.N. resolution that allegedlly tightens up the inspection regime, here’s mild-mannered Dr. Blix, who appears to have every intention of demanding full access anyway. And if, indeed, he does, and as everyone expects, Iraq refuses to provide full access…
Well then, all those countries who said no new resolution is necessary may well be proved right — but not in the way that they expected.
The Bear Predicts: First, we’ll see the inspection talks break down this week, and it will become crystal clear that a) Blix was no pushover and drew a hard line and b) Iraq misjudged the new inspection plan badly, assuming that it would be a kind, gentle one.
At that point, French, Chinese, and Russian objections to the new resolution will go “poof”, and it will pass within the next few weeks. And after that… well, next stop Baghdad, most likely.
And yet again, Bush will have gotten exactly what he wanted by appearing to give his opponents exactly what they wanted…
Update: Hmmmm. Full disclosure: this Financial Times story suggests that perhaps Dr. Blix may waffle a bit after all: demanding access to presidential sites, but only under the previous arrangement that put conditions on that access. But then again, this piece from the Sydney Morning Herald has the following encouraging quote from an International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman: “We are not going to be negotiating here. We’re going to be laying on the table the requirements we’re going to have as inspectors.”
Perhaps I’ll be proved to be overly-optimistic: that doesn’t happen often, so I suppose that’s ok. We’ll see.
Update Again: Instapundit kindly links, and contrasted my rope-a-dope theory with a piece by Michiel Visser in which Michiel declares “Inspections are Useless”.
I don’t disagree, actually, if you’re talking about the inspections themselves: I don’t think they can possibly work to actually find all of Iraq’s weapons, as I’ve written before.
But what I’m noticing is that while it has been commonly acknowledged that the charade of inspections helps Iraq, in this case, the same charade is actually serving the interests of those who want to abandon inspections once and for all…

Ha’aretz just reported that the seized uranium weighs in at “hundreds of grams”, not the 15 kilograms originally reported.
Well, that’s good news.
And hey, at least we all got to learn how nuclear weapons are built….
Update: Reuters has a little more information, reporting the actual weight of the uranium as 140 grams, and indicating what I suspected — that the 15kg originally reported included the weight of the lead container.
And more from CNN: Which has this story, containing the following odd tidbits: “The two men arrested with the material were released due to lack of evidence and have since disappeared, Dilek [the mayor a Turkish town near where the seizure occured] said…Turkish officials said they did not know whether the uranium was refined weapons-grade material or naturally occurring uranium, which would have to be refined before it could be used in a weapon. ”

Update 9/29, 8am: It looks like the story below is now proving to be inaccurate: Ha’aretz is reporting that the amount seized was in the hundreds-of-grams range, not 15 kilograms. See their story
Glenn is first off the mark this morning with some breaking news: Turkish authorities are claiming to have arrested men carrying more than 33 pounds of weapons-grade uranium.
Although there is no official indication (yet) as to what the smugglers’ final destination was, we can all take a pretty good guess, I think.
More as it develops…
Update: In Glenn’s original post, he commented on the amount of uranium seized: “That’s critical mass folks — enough for a bomb all by itself”
But then I noticed this UPI story on the matter, which says: “While substantial, 15 kilograms alone of enriched uranium is not quite enough to make a “proper” nuclear bomb, according to U.S. government information. Twenty-five kilograms is considered the standard threshold to ignite such a device’s searing force. Nuclear bombs also require at least least 8 kilograms of plutonium.”
So who’s right? Well, I did some research and dug up some information. Please note up front, however, that this is the product of a bit of net surfing, and nothing more: I’m learning this as I go, so read the primary sources yourself and make your own judgments.
Here are the sources:
This paper from the Center for Contemporary Conflict (CCC), associated with the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, says “Approximately 25 Kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU) is needed to build a gun-assembly device” (A gun-assembly is the same kind of weapon as ‘Little Boy’, the bomb which the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima).
This page on the history of the Manhattan project states that the total quantity of uranium used in the ‘Little Boy’ weapon was about 140 lbs (64 kg), considerably more than was seized. One would assume, however, that Little Boy was an inefficient design and a modern one would require significantly less uranium.
This page by the Federation of American Scientists has a number of relevant statements embedded within it, including the following:
– A uranium bomb could be constructed using an implosion-sphere design with anywhere from 15 – 56 kg of weapons-grade uranium. (‘Fat Man’, the weapon used on Nagasaki, was an implosion-sphere design, except it used plutonium rather than uranium. Note that my understanding is that an implosion-sphere design is significantly trickier than a gun-type design, and would not be a good choice for a terrorist or government without the means to perform testing. It is possible, however).
– The nuclear weapons developed by South Africa were gun-type designs, and each used 50kg of uranium.
This PDF file, a 1993 report entitled “Technologies Underlying Weapons of Mass Destruction: Technical Aspects of Nuclear Proliferation” from the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, has a great deal of information on weapons development and various designs, and also states the following: “Significant quantities of nuclear materials have been defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is charged with ensuring that these materials not be diverted from peaceful uses into weapons… [t]hese thresholds, which the IAEA considers sufficient for processing into a weapon, are 8 kg of plutonium (total element) or 25 kg of the isotope uranium-235 in highly enriched form…”
This citation appears on page 55 of the document. (Note that I attempted to find a direct citation from IAEA, but their website is a nightmare and I was unable to find a relevant document. ) This document also repeats the same information as above — that an implosion sphere design would require 15-56kg of uranium — but appears to me to be quoting from the same root source as the FAS document.
So what’s the bottom line? Well, you can decide for yourself, read the sources. But my conclusion is that the 15kg seized in Turkey is not enough for the sure-fire gun design which you could be pretty sure would work the first time. But it is apparently just barely enough for a weapon using the tricky implosion-sphere design that isn’t sure to work without prior testing. So Glenn squeaks by!
UPI, on the other hand, isn’t so lucky. Leaving aside their estimate of uranium required, note that none of the sources above suggest that plutonium would be required in addition to uranium to devleop a nuclear bomb. So I would conclude that the UPI story was incorrect in its statement that “Nuclear bombs also require at least least 8 kilograms of plutonium.”. (That sounds suspiciously like the amount of plutonium required for a plutonium-only bomb, actually: so perhaps UPI confused an “OR” with an “AND” in this case).
As usual: Advantage, Instapundit!
As I said in my preface, I just learned all of this with a bit of web surfing, so please review the primary sources yourself and make your own judgements. And by all means, if anyone has any additional information or feedback, send it my way and I’ll share with the class.
Another Update: Another relevant question, given that we presume (or fear) that Iraq was the intended destination for the uranium, would be, “What types of weapon designs do we know Iraq has worked on?”
Handily, the British government helps us out here. The recently released Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government (PDF) states that, pre-Gulf War, “Iraq