The Erectile Dysfunction of Kim Jong Il.

And here I thought that after 1989 all that classwork on strategic weapons and nonproliferation was just a waste of the 12 credit hours. But no, because when I heard on CNN yesterday that the South Koreans were saying that Sunday's nuke test was about .55 kilotons and measured 3.5 on the Richter scale, I started scratching my head. That's barely moving the needle in the world of nuclear weapons. After all our first little Gadget, had a yeild of about 19 kilotons or like, 34 times bigger than that little fizzle. So, if I were Dear Leader, I wouldn't be calling too much attention to my teeny little tool.

And although I'm pretty confident I know what I'm talking about I'm glad to see that intelligence officials are quietly putting the word out on the street:

One intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said U.S. intelligence agencies detected an explosive event in North Korea with a force of less than a kiloton. Historically, the types of devices used in initial nuclear tests have yielded several kilotons of force. One kiloton is defined as the energy produced in an explosion of 1,000 tons of TNT.

"We cannot confirm if it was a nuclear explosion," the official said Monday morning.

Another U.S. government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of political sensitivity of the situation, said the seismic event could have been a nuclear explosion, but its small size was making it difficult for authorities to verify that.

The Arms Control Wonk is also a playa hata, quoting French sources (and like wine, they know a few things about nukes) confirming the 550 ton estimate. He also links to the way cool IRIS seismology data sets.

And while that is also beyond my skillset, Kevin Drum in the Washington Post appears to know some actual seismologists who confirmt that all signs point to explosive dysfunction .

Takeaways:

• The North Koreans could not back up the talk when it counted. Their "bomb" was a dud.


• The media has its collective head up its ass with regards to any science above about 3rd Grade level.


• While the ntelligence agencies around the world privately snigger behind their hands at Kim Jong-Il's impotence, the prudent thing for the diplomats to do is to treat this as if it were a real bomb. This way the crisis mode may move thus-far recalcitrant China (who has reacted very negatively to it's client's actions) and Russia to put the screws to the NORKS to and restart serious talks so that everyone can step down from the cycle of proliferation. In that sense, some good may yet come of this.


• Bill Clinton's greatest foreign policy failure -- for which we yet may all anwer to your eternal regret -- was allowing Pakistan and India to have the bomb and get away scot-free. This has set a precedent for any reasonably organized society with access to money and time to justify nuclear ambitions.