To know that computers and technology are drawing much more power and that Cheney's estimate may be on the conservative side.

As family households have 1 and 2 and finally 3 or 4 computers all running at a gigahertz and higher - and as the solar warming trend continues ACs will be more popular than ever here in the US - watch the power grids surge!

High-tech comes with high energy consumption.

Fortunately, in AZ they are, even as we post, building more huge power plants not just for AZ but for California and especially Southern California as well. So the southwest will be covered for at least another ten to fifteen years. After that it's anyone's guess.

And as for hiding nuclear testing - it is done all the time!

Here's two of several methods of how they conceal the nuclear tests:

A) The disaster timed test.
Everything is ready to go for a test. They wait until an earthquake occurs within a thousand miles. Boom. Within hours one of the stronger "aftershocks" is really an underground test.

B) The intelligence leak test.
Russia, China or now Pakistan and India plan a big test. The date and time of the test is divulged through leaks, bribes and espionage. Boom. They time their test to coincide with the "known" test.

We have teams of scientists working round the clock trying to come up with new methods of detection other than seismic detection for this very reason. The former DSWA and now the DTRA is charged with this task.

Pakistan and India did catch us off guard. Iraq is no different and has as much or more financial resources than Pakistan and India!

The gulf war significantly delayed their progress. But "delayed" is not good enough when it come to megalomaniacs with nuclear technology. Now that there are more nuclear scientists than ever in these regions - it is simply TIME before he has nuclear weapons - how much time is anyone's guess and only his nuclear team knows for certain.

SDAI-Tech1