Wait a minute! Wait a minute!

There is a real good chance that the "nuclear explosion" that NoK has been bragging about was really an unimpressive Dud. First of all, how big is "BIG?" Well, let's compare it to the WTC and the Oklahoma bombing:

Despite shocks and explosions estimated to be equivalent to that of the 1995 truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City (about 400 tons of TNT), the towers remained upright.

OK, got that, a Ryder truck with fertilizer. (The tragedy of the Twin Towers is that the fire from the burning jet fuel burned out their support causing them to fall. It wasn't necessarily the explosion.) Now to the wonks:

Estimating the yield (of the NoK "cave bomb" - DrC) is tricky business, because it depends on the geology of the test site. The South Koreans called the yield half a kiloton (550 tons),

So, just to put this in perspective, the NoK's set off a big firecracker and everyone rushs to the conclusion that they're a nuclear power. Don't you think it should have been at least 20 kilotons (20 to 40 times what it was) to even get in the peanut gallery of the Nuclear Club?

Of course the political implications are vast. It distracts from the implosion of Denny and the Repugs, it makes everyone go crying to the U.N. to do something, and it strengthens the Bushite desire to BOMB IRAN. Not good.

Anyway, not so fast King Jong.