should be read.

But what about using the 20 billion to bribe Ahmedinejad et al to give up power? That would probably make the revolution itself much cleaner. What do you think about this idea?

weichi,

This won’t work. Unlike the jaded leaderships of Russia and China, Ahmedinejad is a true believer. The only viable option is to depose or kill him. Moreover, because he is merely the current front man for the ruling clerical elite, this must be destroyed as well.

It looks like the Bush administration’s shortsighted fear of bad press will soon result in an age of unprecedented nuclear proliferation and blackmail against the West by scores of Islamic terror groups. If you think that the West was overly timid in the face of cartoon jihadists, just imagine how we’ll be once they’ve gone nuclear. Assuming that there’s a limit to our submission, the West’s inaction now will surely lead to WWIII later. I now have some inkling of what analysts steeped in common sense must have felt during the 1930s.

I see you have been back, but still no comment on my idea of bribing Amhedinejad and his buddies to give up power. I still think it would be more likely to work than your idea of bribing Putin & Hu to allow us to foment a revolution. What do you think?

Those are the effects of nuclear radiation, ten years out.

‘A number of factors make large-scale decontamination useful in urban areas. Much of the area between buildings is paved and, thus, readily cleaned using motorized flushers and sweepers, which are usually available. If, in addition, the roofs are decontaminated by high-pressure hosing, it may be possible to make entire buildings habitable fairly soon, even if the fallout has been very heavy.’ — Dr Frederick P. Cowan and Charles B. Meinhold, Decontamination, Chapter 10 (pp. 225-240) of Dr Eugene P. Wigner, editor, Survival and the Bomb, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1969.

A one kiloton earth-penetrating “mininuke” used in a typical third-world urban environment would spread a lethal dose of radioactive fallout over several square kilometers, resulting in tens of thousands of civilian fatalities.

The time to walk away is short compared to the time taken to accumulate a serious dose for such a small weapon. The dose rises slowly, you can see the underground burst fallout hazard (not the radiation, the actual fused particles of fallout), so what’s the big deal?