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Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Bush on the N.I.E.

From CNN: Bush: Nuke-less Iran remains dangerous
"Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," Bush said, pointing out that Tehran continues to try to enrich uranium for civilian purposes and therefore develop technology that could be used for a weapon.
Assuming President Bush is correct, there is one aspect of this statement that is outstanding.

"...if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

The question that very simply comes to mind is - How do you remove the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon?

Does this mean that the scientists, engineers, universities, students, books, and all manner of people and things that contain information and knowledge on how to build a nuclear weapon, must be eliminated? How do you go about erasing knowledge from the scientific community?

Also how do you prevent knowledge from returning to the scientific community of any country for that matter, if in fact all knowledge has previously been removed.

Can we assume that 10, 50, 100, or 1,000 years from now that the knowledge to build a nuclear weapon can somehow be contained and kept from certain parts of the world?

Recall that back in the late 70s, Progressive magazine actually published the plans for how to build a nuke. That was 30 years ago, and the information was available to anyone including non scientists.

It occurs that one way to contain nuclear weapon development is through a vastly cooperative diplomatic and enduring positive process. I suspect that isolationism, threats, and impending war talk won't do the trick over the long haul.

No doubt you can bomb a country's nuclear facilities, but then what happens. Do you go about having a regular bombing maintenance program to remove suspicious buildings every 5 years or so?

A little help here, we're just not making much sense of the statement.

There is however one unfortunate interpretation. That would be the creation of an excuse, a 'reason to bomb' as it were.

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