Posted on 10/02/2004 12:15:23 PM PDT by Mike Fieschko
Proliferation is a BIG problem, indeed. However, you'd have to be very naive--as Kerry is--to think that aggressive, even insane, regimes or terrorists of limited accountability would decide against the acquisition of nuclear weapons because we set a good example. It makes more sense to be so far ahead of them in the force that can be delivered that it scares the daylights out of them.
The POINT missed is "Without the Bunker Buster" what leverage is left? NONE, thus no negotiating power. It is not about USING the bomb it is about BEING ABLE TO USE IT!
We'll probably let our allies, China and France, have the technology and face it here against our own nation.
Kerry: "Right now the president is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to research bunker-busting nuclear weapons. The United States is pursuing a new set of nuclear weapons. It doesn't make sense.
You talk about mixed messages. We're telling other people, "You can't have nuclear weapons," but we're pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using.
Not this president. I'm going to shut that program down, and we're going to make it clear to the world we're serious about containing nuclear proliferation."
Actually, the nuclear weapon system referred to by Kerry in the debates is NOT new, but a mature weapon system. The B-61 are free falling tactical nuclear weapons that have been around for many years. They come in 11 different modifications or "Mods" that are improvements or refinements of the basic system.
The latest modification (B-61 mod-11) are hardened for ground penetration. Kerry implies the U.S. is "pursuing a new set of nuclear weapons." They are not a new "set" -- but an old set that's being improved.
Again, Kerry stretches the truth.
It's an intelligent, well researched article and makes a very important point. Yet again, Kerry wants to cancel the one weapon system, which could be used effectively against today's threat:
"One of the most pressing threats posed by our potential adversaries in the international arena today is the proliferation of hard and deeply buried facilities capable of protecting nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons; the means of delivering them; and the leaders who would threaten the United States. Our current arsenal, developed in the Cold War, was not designed to address this growing worldwide threat."
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The one thing I would suggest is for the author to reread the article, and make a correction, because in this part, I am sure he meant to be quoting Kerry, but it comes across as a statement in the article.
KERRY SAID: "And part of that leadership is sending the right message to places like North Korea. Right now the president is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to research bunker-busting nuclear weapons. The United States is pursuing a new set of nuclear weapons. It doesn't make sense. You talk about mixed messages. We're telling other people, "You can't have nuclear weapons," but we're pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using.
Not this president. I'm going to shut that program down, and we're going to make it clear to the world we're serious about containing nuclear proliferation. "
PING to an excellent article on a topic mostly ignored by others, though it's extremely important.
The dictionary defines the word,"proliferate" as, "to increase in number".
Perhaps I don't catch the nuance, but how can the U.S., which already possesses a nuclear arsenal, increase the world nuclear proliferation problem by taking a number of nuclear weapon that it already has in it's inventory and
converting them to bunker busters?
Now are we strictly using weapons we already have and converting them, or are we producing more nukes (ie increasing the total number of nukes we have)?
That is the true question of proliferation.
If its the first option then no we are not increasing proliferation. If the second part is true than yes we are increasing proliferation.
That stood out to me too.
Thanks FO.
I am keeping this.
No Kerry, we're saying we may nuke countries that pursue WMD. Different message altogether.
"Thank you marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetica Corporation, 'Let's build robots with Genuine People Personalities' they said. So they tried it out with me. I'm a personality prototype. You can tell can't you?"
Thanks, Ping buddy.
Kerry says that he will track down and kill Osama Bin Laden and, presumably, other terrorists. Yet, he would deny our military forces the weapons most likely to achieve this goal. Why? He says because of nuclear proliferation. RESULT: More American lives will be lost as a result of our forces having to rely on conventional weaponry, including soldiers and marines on the ground. Just think what would have happened at the end of WWII if we had to invade the Japanese homeland. Kerry talks tough but does not back up that talk with the weapons we need not only to do the job and in a way that assures the least number of American casualties. Then, again, he voted against almost all the major weapons systems the military has sought over the last two decades. He claims that he would not send our military into battle without body armor. But, he voted against the funding bill that would have provided just that protection. Now, he has told us he will do the same with the tactical nuclear weapon intended to destroy terrorist bunkers and reenforced caves.
You are welcome.
I figured you'd be interested. This should get more publicity.
Most people don't realize that when hitting an underground biological or chemical weapons lab or factory, you need to hit it with something that will guarantee total incineration and obliteration of everything there. "Normal" bunker busters may not destroy everything and harmful substances could end up being released.
In this new war on terror, it is essential to have these nuclear bunker busters -- and Kerry would cancel them.
"John Kerry thinks America having nuclear weapons is akin to terrorists and rogue regimes having them. Think about it. To Kerry, the danger is the bomb itself, not the motives and agendas of the government that is holding it. Thus, a succession of American presidents commanding an arsenal of nuclear weapons as a deterrent against a Soviet missile attack were morally equivalent to the Mad Mullahs of Tehran who have been threatening to obliterate Israel just as soon as they get a nuke. "
Remember that Kerry was against Reagan's strategy, which ultimately won the Cold War. Kerry wanted a unilateral nuclear freeze. And if we had done that, we would all be speaking Russian, and wave the red flag with the hammer and sickle.
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