Adlai Stevenson - The Home Game

Looking for a new home-based business? How about analyzing Google Earth satellite imagery for intelligence information related to our national security? An article today in the WaPo (via Instapundit) describes the discovery of a new Pakistani nuclear facility:

The reactor, which reportedly will be capable of producing enough plutonium for as many as 50 bombs each year, was brought to light on Sunday by independent analysts who spotted the partially completed plant in commercial-satellite photos.

Talk about transparency. The dark machinations of rouge regimes can now be discerned by any yokel with a modem. Well ... not really. There needs to be some training. Telling a missile production facility apart from a Dairy Queen requires expertise - and mistakes can lead to messy results - but the raw information is available to anyone.

Rich Reynolds, a consultant at a security consultant group quoted in the Congressional Quarterly, suggests that Hezbollah positions can easily be spotted using Google Earth. And the trail back to the weapons suppliers - Iran, China, Syria - is also very obvious. Some specifics of our data collection methodology are too advanced for the general public (at least until some low-ranking official feels disgruntled enough to call the New York Times) but the bare fact of the role these countries play is well documented.

Iran is problem number one, and everyone knows it. But we have a political problem in convincing other countries. The article notes that an "Adlai Stevenson moment" - recalling the fateful confrontation of the Soviet Union's UN representative with evidence of Cuban missiles - is simply not in the cards right now. If we throw down the evidence on Iran we better be conclusive, willing, and politically able to act decisively. And despite the ongoing controversy the public relations failure on Iraq's WMDs is an obvious liability when it comes to making serious charges in front of the global community.

Meantime we're fast approaching the point where we can decide for ourselves by playing along at home, over the Internet.