[DoughtyOne]

McCain has made a number of troubling comments regarding our nuclear arsenal.  The problem with them is that his plans hinge on agreements and inspections that have proven over time to be unreliable.  And when it comes to nuclear weapons, being wrong is fatal.  Nobody likes it, but MADD is the proper course.  When other nations posess nuclear weapons, there is no other policy.  Any other policy is simply suicidal.  It encourages tyranical states to think they just may be able to win a nuclear war, and that's something we should leave absolutely no doubt about.  We need thousands of nuclear warheads ready to go, so that no nation thinks it can pull off a surprise attack and weather the paultry response.  The response must be unthinkable for any nation to contemplate.

One of the few things I disagreed with Ronald Reagan on, was our nuclear stockpile.  Yes it would be wonderful if there were no nuclear weapons on this planet.  It would also be nice if every human was a multi-millionaire and there were no poor.  There are a lot of things I would like to be the case, but they aren't.  And disarming the United States without making the world a vastly more dangerous place, is one of them.

John states that inspections will allow us to disarm.  Yep, the same inspections that couldn't determine that Hussein didn't have WMDs, is now his great idea for making sure others don't have nukes so we can destroy most of our own.

This article touches on John's dreams for our future.  They cause me to think those dreams are a nightmare.  He wants to reduce our nuclear arsenal to the lowest possible number.  He wants to withdraw our battlefield tactical nuclear weapons from Europe.

In short, John is the 2008 version of George McGovern.  Well, okay, he's not quite as bad, but he might actually get a chance to do what he wants to, and that makes him a dangerous threat to our nation IMO.  Put this man in office and you'll see people across this forum backing some of the worst policy decisions in the History of the United States.  Yep, that's the eventuality I'm hoping to realize.  NOT!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2022096/posts

[Paul Ross]

One of the few things I disagreed with Ronald Reagan on, was our nuclear stockpile.

I didn't. I approved of everything he did and tried to do. The INF treaty was the only reduction he authorized, while everything else was modernized.

The INF treaty defanged the nuclear freezers. Reagan was proved to have been right. That if you are to negotiate with tyrants, you have to negotiate from strength.

We never would have had the B1B or the B2 or the MX missiles, not to mention SDI, but for Reagan. Carter and the rats would have traded them away.

The main cuts have occurred subsequent to Reagan, with GHWB eliminating our tactical inventory...unilaterally. Xlinton and W slashing our Minutemen in more than half. And W all on his lonesome UNILATERALLY decomissioning our brand-new MX missiles...all while Russia deploys the Topol-M super missile...and keeps its full inventory of SS-18s. China and Russia remained armed to the teeth in regard to tacticals as well.

Reagan's motto, "Trust, but Verify" was, in his hands, a tool which would have ultimately resulted in fairly serious action upon detection of falsehood by the Russkies. Unfortunately, in Xlinton's hands, the verification went out the window...even when it was discovered that the Russians had clearly knowingly tried to cheat and hide S-22s in tunnels and such in Eastern Europe...only to be ratted out after the Soviet Union's collapse. Since the "new" Russia never admitted to these deceptions, despite Yeltsin's pledges, we should have actively kept the Eastern Bloc states from surrendering any of the nukes back to Russia. Should have kept the arsenal splintered.

And then bought it off their hands.