The point of keeping nukes

Boston Herald ^ | 3/18/02

[kattracks]

The leaking of a secret report to Congress generated much misunderstanding of the nuclear weapons policies of the Bush administration. Now that Russia has firmly stated its understanding and support, maybe the panic-mongers will think again.
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Just before Vice President Dick Cheney set off on March 7 to solicit support for overthrowing the regime in Iraq, somebody slipped the report to the Los Angeles Times. The document, drawn up in January, said the Pentagon needed new earth-penetrating nuclear warheads and bombs to reach and destroy military facilities deep underground. It named Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Libya, Russia and China as places where they might have to be used.

This does not mean that the United States is planning to attack anybody. It means that the United States needs a credible deterrent against new developments.

The reason the United States maintains nuclear weapons at all is to deter their use by anybody. A regime like Saddam Hussein's or North Korea's could well calculate that current penetrators (like the B-61 gravity bomb) could be neutralized by going deep enough.

Seventy countries have 10,000 underground installations, most of them of little importance. But 1,400 contain weapons of mass destruction, missiles or command facilities. (We have them too.) Saddam Hussein is known to have buried biological warfare laboratories.

Russia's defense minister, Sergei Ivanon, told reporters last week after a visit to Washington that U.S. explanations ``satisfy us.'' He added, ``Being a defense minister, I understand well that the defense ministry of any country must plan any kind of developments.''

Now if we can only get op-ed writers and talk-show wizards to understand.

[Centurion2000]

I say that we start using them.

[Pushi]

What really troubles me is there is no outrage that some SOB in Congress, or some congressional staffer, leaked a secret and sensitive document. Why isn't something being done to find out who did it? I'd bet a dollar to a donut it was a Demoncrap. It is a holdover from the Klinton days when a security clearance meant absolutely nothing. I have held a Top Secret Cryptographic clearance and had access to Nuclear Weapons--I know the meaning of a security clearance, and I know what they used to do to a person when they committied security violations.