THE GOP "24 DAY" LIE

THE GOP "BIG LIE" REGARDING THE IRAN DEAL

This morning I watched Gov. Chris Christie, hopeful Presidential candidate, as he repeated the GOP big lie on a CNN interview regarding the Iran Nuclear agreement (Thursday September 3, 2015). Christie's mendacious words aroused me to write this short piece.

What did he say? Christie repeated a GOP falsehood repeated ad nauseum by all the GOP candidates. I call it the "24 day phony Iran rant". The Iran Nuclear Agreement signed on to by China, Russia, The UK, France and Germany includes a stipulation that Iranian nuclear facilities suspected of prohibited activities may be inspected over a period that can under some circumstances stretch out to a maximum of twenty four days. The GOP and their foreign supporters, the Likudniks, homegrown neocons, and warmongers of various stripes have all latched on to this 'twenty-four day" time span as some catastrophic weakness in the agreement. It is NOT TRUE. Nuclear scientists and the informed public all know that it would not matter if the agreement stipulated 24 days, 24 weeks, 24 months, or even 24 years! If Uranium was present--even in ultra microscopic amounts...there WOULD BE NO WAY TO HIDE IT from inspectors. Uranium decays into other elements at a very, very slow and constant rate, as it does so it gives off hIghly detectible radiation . So slow and steady is this process that it is inconceivable that its presence could not be detected. Any Uranium left behind would be easily traced for near-eternity. Uranium isotopes have a half life (the length of time it takes for one half of the atoms to decay away) of 4.5 billion years! That period of time is as long as the earth is old.

A recent, well publicized case of British nuclear detective work reveals how difficult it is to conceal radioactive elements (like Uranium). On November 1, 2006, Russian spy(?) Alexander Litvinenko met associates in a London hotel cafe where he drank tea laced with the radioactive element Polonium-210. It was a tiny amount, but enough to make Litvinenko very ill immediately and to kill him within a short time. In an eventually successful attempt to track down the assassins, the London Metropolitan Police easily found the tell-tale traces of the poison used--radioactive Polonium. They tracked it in tiny amounts all across London. The perpetrators left traces in the hotel room and bathrooms where they stayed before and after the meeting with Litvinenko. The police easily followed the nuclear laced trail in the buses and vehicles they traveled in, in the hotel cafe, on the tableware, in the used tea cup, and utensils even after these were washed and stored away. There is no hiding a radioactive element. Yet this particular Polonium isotope has a short half life...one-half of it decays away in only about 138 days! Yet the Met Police had more than sufficient opportunity to find and document its traces all over metropolitan London. Compare that with the billions of years for Uranium....which would be searched for by the IAE in the confined space of a laboratory. A mere 24 days to track down long-lived Uranium is no hindrance for the nuclear watchdogs.

Christie's practiced repetition of the phony GOP LIE signifies that he is either ignorant of the science behind the agreement, or is simply spouting what his wealthy donors want him to say. The latter is more likely. His well publicized trip to Las Vegas where he journeyed, hat in hand, to kneel before casino-mogul and billionaire Mr. Adelson is where he was presented with this mendacious script. As a candidate for President of the USA one would hope that he would be more concerned with what is best for his own nation rather than spouting the policies handed to him by Mr. Adelson.

The truth is that the Iran Nuclear Agreement renders Iran incapable of a nuclear break out...for the foreseeable future. Christie's lie about the "24 hour" window and his sycophantic adherence to his "donors script" is probably one of the main reasons the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire see him for what he is, a puppet, and not his own man. That may be the prime reason he is unable to get himself out of single digits in the polls.

But let us not just single out Governor Christie. When the other candidates spout this Big Lie..they should be taken to task for it and perhaps have their mouths washed out with brown soap...like my Momma did to me when I told a whopper. Of course my whoppers had little potential to cause catastrophic world consequences such as another Mid East War like those of these GOP culprits. ( Just see the disaster and chaos we have wrought as a result of Mr. George Bush's past military misadventures in the Middle East).