1963 The M29 155mm (Heavy) Davy Crockett Launcher is pictured tripod-mounted in the display photo above.
Posted on 05/22/2003 2:59:16 AM PDT by kattracks
Leading Democrats in Congress expressed grave reservations about Bush administration attempts to create a new class of nuclear weapons that could be used on the battlefield.
The move by the White House to explore developing low-yield nuclear weapons sparked a revolt among senior Democrats in the US Senate, who pointed out that, while valued for their deterrent effect, nuclear weapons have long been considered off-limits for tactical military use.
"For the past nine or ten years, we've had a prohibition in law against the research and development," Senator Carl Levin said Wednesday at a press conference.
But the US Senate voted late Tuesday to lift that ban, acceding to White House wishes. Michigan Democrat Levin called the development "reckless and dangerous."
"The message from this administration (is) while we're telling everybody else don't go down that road, we are going to go down that road ourselves," he said.
Senator Dianne Feinstein said countries around the world were also likely to become alarmed by the development.
"It really says to the world that this nation with the mightiest military, is now going to begin to expand its nuclear weapons."
The controversy over the possible US development of low-yield nuclear weapons came as part of a larger senate debate on the 2004 Defense Authorization Bill that would give the Pentagon 400 billion dollars to fund military operations and modernize its arsenal.
The senate rejected an amendment by Feinstein that would have kept the decade-old ban on low-yield nuclear weapons in place -- a development that unleashed both heated defense and furious denunciations of the administration's defense and security policies from the senate floor.
Opponents warned Wednesday that introducing such weapons could trigger a dangerous new nuclear arms race.
"Do you know what the message is to India, to Pakistan, to North Korea -- to every other nation that wants nuclear weapons and has nuclear weapons?" said Senator Byron Dorgan.
"The message is, this country doesn't think that we ought to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, or that we ought to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.
"That is exactly the wrong message this country ought to be sending anybody in the rest of the world," the North Dakota Democrat said.
The comments by Dorgan and other Democratic colleagues were mild compared to those of West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, who issued a scathing denunciation of White House military and diplomatic policy, accusing the Bush administration of "prevarication and the reckless use of power," during the recently-concluded war in Iraq.
Supporters of developing, or at the very least researching, the use of such weapons, maintained nuclear devices may one day prove to be an important weapon and that revoking the ban was necessary to combat new security threats around the world.
"We need to be thinking about what we want the military to look like 20 or 30 years down the road," said Colorado Senator Wayne Allard, who argued that a modern military needs to have at its disposal the broadest possible range of weapons.
Feinstein, while vowing to continue to fight, warned that the weapons seem headed toward certain development in the absence of a public outcry against them. She explained the lack of public outrage on the after effects of the September 11, 2001 terror attack on New York and Washington, which traumatized the entire nation.
"I sometimes think that the wound was so deep from 9/11, and it presented such deep scar tissue on the American psyche," Feinstein said, "that it kind of opened to door to all kinds of things that the American people would not have supported before."
Nevertheless, "some of us decided that we're going to fight and try to raise the warning flag," she said.
Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy lamented the "very deep division that exists in this country about the radical departure of this administration in terms of nuclear policy."
"We are going to do everything we possibly can ... to halt this reckless escalation of the nuclear arms race," said the Democrat.
No wonder they want to tax gasoline and won't drill ANWR. ;^)
1963 The M29 155mm (Heavy) Davy Crockett Launcher is pictured tripod-mounted in the display photo above.
With all due respect that last phrase is doubtful. I was in my thirties when I truly discovered "bias in the media"--and in my fifties before I identified the formulation I now prefer--intrinsic anticonservative perspective in journalism (and other forms of entertainment . . .).
Foreigners aren't the ones who cast the ballots that get them elected.
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