← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Faust
Thread ID: 6833 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2003-05-21
2003-05-21 14:35 | User Profile
**Rumsfeld wants Casual use of nuclear weapons.
Rumsfeld: Study, Not Build, New Nukes NewsMax Wires
Wednesday, May 21, 2003 WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon is close to winning Capitol Hill's permission to study the use of nuclear weapons to target enemy facilities deep underground and to use low-yield nuclear weapons on the battlefield, but Defense Department officials Tuesday denied any immediate plan to develop the new bombs.
The erosion of the decade-long ban on a new class of U.S. nuclear weapons has arms control activists nervous; if the sole superpower believes there is a need for nuclear arms, convincing other countries to abandon their atomic aspirations becomes much more difficult.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted Tuesday the administration wants only the permission to explore the usefulness of such weapons.
"You make a study for a very simple reason: to learn whether you do believe that that is a need -- something that's needed, something that would be useful ... and many of the things you study you never pursue," Rumsfeld said.
"The only thing we've done that I know of is that we have proposed that the absolute ban on the study of a deep-Earth penetrator has been removed from the bill at our instance, because we do intend to study a variety of types of deep-earth penetrators, for very good reason."
The administration also sought a repeal of a 10-year-old law banning research, development and production of low-yield nuclear weapons, according to senior staff of members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees. Low-yield weapons are defined as less than 5 kilotons. The bomb that was used in Hiroshima, Japan, was approximately 15 tons.
Arms control advocates do not believe the Pentagon's intentions stop at research.
"They say they haven't made a decision to make nuke weapons but everyone knows that's what they'll do if research bears out," charged John Isaacs, president of the arms control advocacy group the Council for a Livable World.
Indeed, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear matters, Fred Celec, told the San Jose Mercury News last month that if a nuclear-tipped bunker-busting bomb can be designed, "it will ultimately get fielded."
The administration nevertheless maintains it is committed to reducing nuclear dangers. Secretary of State Colin Powell issued a statement in early May saying the United States intends "to reduce our reliance on nuclear weapons" and asserting "the spread of nuclear weapons would gravely destabilize our world."
Last year the United States and Russia agreed to slash their respective arsenals of strategic nuclear weapons to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads each within 10 years. However, just last month Los Alamos National Laboratory produced a plutonium pit -- the core of a nuclear warhead -- for the first time in nearly 15 years. It will be used to replace aging components in existing bombs, according to the lab.
Maintaining the Restriction
The House committee stopped short of granting the administration its wish, allowing research but maintaining the restriction on development and production.
The research latitude was approved in large part because the ban prevented the United States from researching other nations' low-yield weapons, a House source told United Press International.
The Senate committee went farther -- repealing the total ban as requested by the administration. However, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, inserted a last-minute amendment that says "nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing testing, acquisition or deployment of low-yield nuclear weapons."
The House and Senate bills are going to be debated on the floor this week and then will be merged into a single bill in a conference of the two committees.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers said Tuesday low-yield battlefield or tactical nuclear weapons would be useful when chemical or biological weapons are present.
Conventional explosives create plumes that can carry the pathogens or gases farther. Nuclear devices would incinerate them on the spot.
Anthrax Spores
"In terms of anthrax, it's said that gamma rays can, you know, destroy the anthrax spores, which is something we need to look at. And in chemical weapons, of course, the heat can destroy the chemical compounds and make them -- not develop that plume that conventional weapons might do that would then drift and perhaps bring others in harm's way," Myers said.
Rumsfeld rejected the notion that a low-yield weapon would open a nuclear Pandora's box. He said Russia builds tactical nuclear weapons every day. The size of the United States' arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons is classified.
"We already have theater nuclear weapons," Rumsfeld admitted.
"The Russians have many multiples of the numbers of theater nuclear weapons that we have. I mean, the idea that a study is going to change something in that regard is just nonsensical; it's just not a fact. They already exist. The Russians are making them. Every day, they make new ones. So, there's not some threshold that's going to be left over here. It just is a non sequitur, it seems to me."
In addition to research into low-yield bombs, the defense authorization bills would fund $15 million in research into the "robust nuclear earth penetrator." The money would be used to modify two existing nuclear bombs, the B83 at the Lawrence Livermore and the B61 at Los Alamos laboratories in California.
North Korea is believed by U.S. intelligence to have moved much of its war machine into caves and underground facilities, making it difficult for conventional weapons to have much of an effect on them in the event of a war or an attack.
"To the extent the United States is prohibited from studying the use of such weapons -- for example, for a deep-Earth penetrator -- the effect in the world is that it tells the world that they're wise to invest in going underground. And that's not a good thing, from our standpoint," Rumsfeld said.
Copyright 2003 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration [url=http://www.newsmax.com/hottopics/Bush_Administration.shtml]http://www.newsmax.com/hottopics/Bush_Admi...istration.shtml[/url]
War on Terrorism [url=http://www.newsmax.com/hottopics/War_on_Terrorism.shtml]http://www.newsmax.com/hottopics/War_on_Te...Terrorism.shtml[/url]
url: [url=http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/5/20/202122.shtml]http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2...20/202122.shtml[/url] **
2003-05-30 20:20 | User Profile
:gun: :gun: :gun:
2003-05-30 23:16 | User Profile
From his first days in office, Rumsfeld has inundated Washington with a blizzard of memos regarding foreign policy, not usually the responsibility of a defence secretary.
"There are literally thousands of them," said one frequent recipient of Rumsfeld's foreign policy ideas and advice. "The theme is control. He wants everyone to have to play on his field."
In an April 29 memo addressed to Bush, Cheney and Powell, Rumsfeld suggested that the administration launch information operations to destabilise the communist regime of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. Recently, Rumsfeld ordered the US military commander in Europe, General James Jones, to begin planning to close most of America's 96 military facilities in Germany and shift them to such "New Europe" stalwarts as Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.
Rumsfeld and his lieutenantshave made much of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's opposition to the war in Iraq.
Moving the bases would cost US taxpayers untold billions of dollars, and they would be in countries that only recently have emerged from communist rule, some of which can't yet be classified as democracies.
[url=http://afr.com/world/2003/05/30/FFXQCZ33BGD.html]http://afr.com/world/2003/05/30/FFXQCZ33BGD.html[/url]
2003-05-31 01:34 | User Profile
I happen to work in an arm of the dod. take your shots now.
Rummy's candor is refreshing. well, it used to be...
When i receive that kind of kandor i have 2 responses for pipple...
thank you for your candor. it is nice to know where u stand.
f**k u for your kandor. u arent responsible for half that doodah (a little 'song of the south' speak for ya) and quit the hell assuming u are.
it is enough to make one say he misses clintoon. almost. i tend to think one of w's plans is to let rummy shoot his mouth of so much that he can blame rummy and fire him if he needs a boost... the cryin shame about that is that the military DOES need a shot in the arm and rummy is one of the few guys who could actually do that...