Posted on 05/20/2003 8:21:33 PM PDT by Libloather
Senate Scraps Low-Yield Nuke Weapons Ban
2 hours, 32 minutes ago
By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The Senate agreed Tuesday to end a 10-year-old ban on research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons, rejecting Democratic claims that lifting the prohibition would be a step toward nuclear war.
A Democratic amendment to keep the ban was defeated in a 51-43 procedural vote. After the vote, Democrats were offering a compromise that would allow research on the weapons to begin, but prohibit their development.
The Bush administration's request to lift the research and development ban is part of a bill authorizing $400.5 billion in 2004 defense programs. A vote on the overall bill is expected this week.
Low-yield weapons have a blast equivalent to less than five kilotons, about a third as large as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II. Democrats say lifting the ban would undermine U.S. efforts to persuade other countries not to develop their own nuclear weapons. They also say it would blur the line between nuclear and conventional weapons and make it more likely that a nuclear weapon might be used.
"This issue is as clear as any issue ever gets. You're either for nuclear war or you're not. Either you want to make it easier to start using nuclear weapons or you don't," said Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.
"Is half a Hiroshima OK? Is a quarter Hiroshima OK? Is a little mushroom cloud OK? That's absurd. The issue is too important. If we build it, we'll use it," he said.
Advocates of lifting the ban say weapons could target enemies more precisely while limiting deaths of civilians. They say such a weapon could be used to destroy stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and avoid the kind of widespread contamination that might follow a strike using conventional weapons with less destructive force.
"To stop research and development on a potential weapon that could destroy a terrorist group or a rogue nation from creating a chemical/biological capacity that's deep underground is illogical," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, at a news conference Tuesday, stressed that the Pentagon wanted only to consider the weapons.
"It is a study. It is nothing more and nothing less," he said. "And it is not pursuing. And it is not developing. It is not building. It is not manufacturing. And it's not deploying. And it is not using."
Democrats flatly rejected that.
"Just a study? Baloney," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, pounding the podium. "Does anyone really believe that?" She said repealing the ban "opens the door for Americans to develop nuclear weapons again."
Senators voted mostly along party lines in defeating the Feinstein-Kennedy amendment that would have preserved the ban.
The House version of the defense authorization bill also would remove the ban on research, but not development, of low-yield weapons. House debate on the bill is expected to begin Wednesday.
In both the House and Senate, Democrats will challenge provisions easing environmental restrictions that the military says hinders its training exercises.
House Democrats will try to stop Republicans from giving the Defense Department greater authority over more than 600,000 civilian employees.
The Pentagon said the changes would help it transfer noncombat jobs from the military to civilian workers, make it easier to recruit new workers and give it greater control over pay, promotions and dismissals. Democrats say the changes would cost employees job protections and were rushed through Congress without giving federal workers the opportunity to comment on it.
"The process by which the civil service reform has been rushed to the floor is nothing short of appalling," House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland said at a news conference Tuesday.
The personnel changes are not in the Senate bill but could still be added before the final vote.
In another change to the Defense bill, the Senate voted 85-10 to make national guard and inactive reservists eligible for the military health insurance program TRICARE. Also reservists who pay for private insurance for their families after being activated could be reimbursed for insurance costs. The reservists themselves are covered by TRICARE while on active duty.
Since when?
Thanks dems. I guess they don't understand that the remaining members of the Axis of Evil have spent a HUGE amount of treasure and time building hardened, underground bukers.
Yep, they sure know what the military needs. Dopes.
"Is half a Hiroshima OK? Is a quarter Hiroshima OK? Is a little mushroom cloud OK? That's absurd. The issue is too important. If we build it, we'll use it," he said.
Link here:
Agreed. And as every congress and every president knows, it is their duty to future Americans to keep our fighting abilities better than any other nation on the planet.
Anything less is treacherous.
I'm not calling for the use of atomic weapons, nor am I praising our use of them in the past. It was and always will be with great reluctance and sorrow that a free society chooses to engage in total war. But once total war has been brought to free societies, they will not be free for long if they are not willing to use the most terrible of all weapons. And once total war has begun, ending it the most efficient way possible is the only humane choice.
My uncle, who was a Marine artillery gunner on Wake, is alive today because Truman made his decision. He spent 44 months in Japanese slave labor, starving, being beaten, abused, and worked like an animal. He and other brave American soldiers, men who helped free Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East of German, Italian, and Japanese tyranny are some of humanity's most honored examples. Of the prisoners who were freed in Asia, many would have never lived if we had not obtained an early surrender.
My father, a B24 radio operator wounded over Europe in 1944, was relieved that his targets were industrial and military. He now says he regrets that America used atomic weapons (and other incindiary devices) on civilians. But the decision wasn't his, and that he has failed to continue approving of the bombing of civilians only shows how moral and consciencious the American fighter truly is.
The human beings who hold the torch of freedom owe it to all others, and all future human beings to remain armed and vigilant. I say armed to the teeth.
Now as we face untold terror from Islamic countries, I think we have to let it be known again that we are willing to send the most terrible of retributions if our nation is struck again. It's possible that we may avoid both if we make that clear now.
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