A consensus seems to be emerging among intelligence and military experts that Iran's blustering president has, so to speak, gotten in front of his own headlights — that despite his threats to unleash nuclear Armageddon his country is at least 10 and perhaps 20 years away from having its first nuke.

Oh, really?

The United States invented the nuclear bomb, and the elapsed time from starting the Manhattan project to Hiroshima was four years.  During the six decades since then the knowledge about how nuclear weapons work and how to build them has become widely disseminated.  And with the advent of computers, manufacturing technology has become cheaper — and much, much faster.

Question for all these experts: Do you really believe it will take Iran five times longer to build a bomb in the twenty—first century than it took us to invent it and then build it back in the 1940s?

Are you sure?

Herb Meyer   4 16 06