It was no bluff, they would have done it. They would have had nothing to lose.
_____What is your source for this?
There is nothing evil about nuclear weapons, the save the lives of several hundred thousand of our guys in WW2.
____Triggering off a worldwide nuclear war would have been evil when there were conventional options available.
Nixon saved Israel from having to nuke their foes.
___I simply do not believe that Nixon aided Israel out of fear that it would resort to nukes.
One Israel phrased it this way, "The Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches."
____Very funny...
My dad flew airlift missions to Israel at the time, he saw the situation first hand. The only way they could have survived without our help would have been using nuclear weapons.
_____Nixon, just as a matter of Cold War politics, would have prevented an Arab victory.
"What is your source for this?"
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/israel/doctrine.htm
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cpc-pubs/farr.htm
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Israel/Isrhist.html
"Triggering off a worldwide nuclear war would have been evil when there were conventional options available"
They were running out of munitions, their back was against the wall. They did not have the means on their own to win the war, without resupply their choices were accept defeat or go nuclear, they had nothing to lose. It would be evil to allow your people to be wiped out. Eisenhower relied on nuclear weapons as part of his "New Look" military in 1953, he had no intention of matching the USSR tank for tank and draining us economically. Ike was not evil, and was a far better president than Bush 41 or 43.
"I simply do not believe that Nixon aided Israel out of fear that it would resort to nukes."
Read the URL's, this is no big secret!
"Nixon, just as a matter of Cold War politics, would have prevented an Arab victory."
He ended up having to prevent an overwhelming Israeli victory too, the IDF was in a position to take Damascus at the end of the war, and Sharon had 2 Egyptian armies cut off on the east bank of the Suez Canal. The best source on this war is a book titled "Yom Kippur War," part of the Ballantine history of the violent century.