Posted on 10/02/2004 12:15:23 PM PDT by Mike Fieschko
Soon after the 9/11 attack on America, the Bush administration and the nation's defense establishment began to mull how the nation could be defended against terrorists who might seek to attack armed not with hijacked airplanes but with a nuclear or other weapon-of-mass destruction acquired from a rogue nation such as Iraq, Iran, Libya or North Korea.In the years since, the rogue regime in Iraq has been removed and its efforts to develop WMD interrupted, while Libya's leader voluntarily gave up his nuclear and other WMD programs and weaponry. Libya's former nuke program sits in crates under heavy guard in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
But Iran and North Korea continue their programs to develop nuclear weapons - and do so in facilities intelligence experts and defense analysts routinely describe as "hardened" against an airstrike. The Pentagon's solution: developing weapons capable of penetrating deep into the earth to deliver an underground nuclear blast to destroy such hardened facilities.
Underground explosions are said to be 10 to 15 times more effective against buried facilities than a bomb detonated above the ground. The military already has conventional bunker-buster bombs which are dropped from high altitude and hit the ground at enormous speed, punching through dirt, rock and concrete before exploding. A nuclear version would generate a far more powerful shock wave, increasing the depth of its destructive effect.
Without such weapons, the United States will have no way to preemptively destroy an enemy's nuclear weapons or other WMD or WMD production facilities stored below ground in such hardened bunkers.
As U.S. Navy Rear Admiral John T. Byrd, Director of Plans and Policy for the United States Strategic Command, testified on June 12, 2002, before the House Armed Services Committee's procurement subcommittee:
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. There are facilities today which we either cannot defeat, even with existing nuclear weapons, or must hold at risk using a large number of weapons. As a result, both the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, through the Nuclear Weapons Council, have approved a study of how to effectively counter this threat. This study of a Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) will evaluate modifications to existing nuclear weapons that do not require nuclear testing.
The ideal outcome of an RNEP study would be a recommendation to proceed with selective modifications to existing weapons that would ultimately strengthen deterrence by improving the credibility of our strategic forces against hard and deeply buried facilities. As you are well aware, our efforts to strengthen deterrence involve denying sanctuary to our adversaries. This may mean making our nuclear weapons more tailored to the target type, which is not equivalent to making them more likely to be used. Tailored weapons strengthen deterrence, which in turn makes them less likely to be used. Also, a robust nuclear earth penetrator is only one piece of the overall solution for targets contained in these types of structures. Other capabilities such as advanced conventional, information operations, and special operations capabilities must be developed as well. A full spectrum of capabilities strengthens deterrence and maintains the nuclear threshold by developing a range of options for the President to counter the growing hard and deeply buried target set.
It only makes perfect sense that having the ability to destroy such weapons caches and weapons facilities of rogue regimes such as Iran and North Korea would make America safer. We don't currently have that capability. And yet John Kerry doesn't want us to have it.
John Kerry thinks nuclear proliferation - not terrorism - is the greatest security threat facing America. He said so last night. He said President Bush hasn't shown leadership on that issue.
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.
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.
The truth is, John Kerry's opposition to nuclear bunker busters would make America less safe if he is elected and able to kill the program. But it is entirely consistent with Kerry's anti-military ideology.
Just as he now opposes development of a weapons system that could be crucial to defending America against a WMD attack by terrorists or a rogue regime, two decades ago he was fighting to cancel a series of weapons systems ranging from state-of-the-art combat aircraft to defensive missile systems to battlefield weapons that, all, are being used today by today's American military to wage the War On Terror.
Even if they aren't ever used, just having them available would scare the feces out of anyone thinking about pulling some B.S. I don't mean SeeBS in this case. :')
Kerry's stand is easy for me to accept though it would be the ruin of this country as we know it. Peaceniks always think this way. Peaceniks hate weapons that hurt people, even one's acknowledged enemy... and Kerry is a peacenik... peace at any price. He describes that as peace achieved through "negotiation" or "summit".
The basic premise that is missed in this, or any similar stand taken by Kerry, is that he is a socialist, one world, communist at heart. I don't say that as a far out complaint. His history from youth through adulthood, ingrained in him by his father, is the proof.
Think about almost every speech, every vote, every stand he has taken over the past thirty-five years. He preached a message of brotherly communism in high school and college. He enlisted in the Navy as a means to a political end. His opposition to funding weaponry and intelligence budgets is because he does not want the US to be any stronger than any other major country.
He is opposed to the US being a threat to the world and he considers the US as a current threat.
His rhetoric during the debates about "pursuing the terrorists and destroying them" was simply a means to gain votes. Nothing in his history should lead one to believe that he will actually pursue that promise. Rather, if he is elected, it is my belief that he will immediately take action to ensure that US forces are withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan and begin a program of propaganda in an attempt to convince the populace that it is in our best interests to let the UN handle foreign powers. At such time as is convenient he will attempt to place the US military under the control of the Secretary General of the UN.
He has so stated this purpose in the past. He has taken no action in the past 30 years that leads me to believe he has changed his mind.
I really am in no position to know for sure and neither, I'm afraid does Kerry. This makes his assurance during the debate that the first thing he would do if elected would be to kill this program such a reckless threat to the security of the U.S. It's almost certain that Iran and North Korea have their uranium enrichment/nuclear weapons assembly program far underground. If it becomes necessary to take them out, Kerry will have killed the only weapon program capable of doing so.
Iran's mullahs have already urged their scientists to finish their first atomic bomb by January and, in other statements, have promised to turn the U.S. into, "a sea of fire" once they have the means. I take them at their word but Kerry is dangerous because he doesn't seem to realize the danger to the very existence of America.
I'm sure that once a major US city or two has been converted into a sheet of glass with hundreds of thousands dead and the economy completely shattered for at least a decade if not more, President Kerry will consider the necessity to "retaliate" after first of all restarting the bunker buster program so that he might have the means to do so.
Our cousin was a young soldier on a troop ship heading for Japan toward the end of WWII. His commanding officer had them line up. He told them, "Look around you. Be prepared. Out of every ten men ready to launch this invasion, there will only be ONE man left of the ten after we invade." - While they were on the way over, Truman dropped the bombs. Thousands of men were prepared to die, but they turned around and came back to America instead.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.