Nukes just another weapon
I am quite appalled at the news coming from the LA Times....our government is preparing for the possible use of nuclear weapons against Iraq! Have they lost all reason?
In today’s
editorial, William Arkin details how the government wants to give nuclear weapons a role in the new U.S. doctrine of ‘preemption’, meaning that for the first time since the Cold-War, we’re planning on unleashing the nuclear devil first. The situations that the government are discussing in connection with nuclear weapons are to assist in attacking Iraqi facilities
that are deep underground, and thwarting Iraq’s use of weapons of mass destruction.
The thing that bothers me the most is that preemption would most likely be a value judgment. Unless we have impeccable intelligence from very close to Saddam or the upper levels of the Iraqi military, how can we know for certain what war strategy they are planning to use? Whose judgment would it be?
In recent months, the Pentagon has quietly changed the oversight of nuclear weapons so that they are grouped with conventional military weapons. In the past, the nuclear arsenal has been in a special category, creating a firewall between nuclear and conventional forces. Now Rumsfield and the Bush White House have merged them into one command structure under STRATCOM. It is extremely alarming that the government can even consider the use of nuclear and conventional
weapons tegether. Where are the checks and balances, the discussion, the chance for dissent?
And once we let the nuclear genie out of the bottle, how are we going to stuff it back in? If we feel it is appropriate to use nuclear force in our dispute with Iraq, how do we stop other nations from using nuclear weapons in their disputes? Is this really the world that we want?
Read the LA
Times article, and be vocal--talk about this with everyone you know. The cowboy mentality in the White House is moving our world to a potentially disastrous future, and they’re counting on us to just blindly follow like herded cattle.
5:28:31 PM 
|
