Is anybody starting to question yet (as I did months ago) why we seem to only be able to bomb other nations, but are quite scant in regards to the "troops on the ground"? We have what, something like 130 nations with a U.S. troop presence, right? While I don't have any numbers in front of me, I will investigate further to try and back up the hypothesis that I am going to relate.
I think we don't have the manpower to conduct this "war on terror" as Bush and his cabinet define it at all. I think that with the reductions in the military from Clinton, as well as our massive presence in many other nations, we are shaved razor thin on manpower from a ground troop perspective.
Consider how fast the Reserves and Guard are activated now for any military maneuver. Now I know they've always been activated and put on alert during times of conflict, but from my knowledge of history they are never put on the front line as "first see" troops at the very immediate outset of an engagement like they are being used today. I could be wrong, again, I need to research this a bit.
Add to this the bills we see floating around proposing a reactivation of the draft, what, two or three months after the "war" was engaged, and I'd say that the Pentagon and powers that be are quietly acknowledging a severe shortage of manpower for the task at hand.
Add to that this recent pronouncement that we no longer will have a prohibition on nuking non-nuclear states, and I have to wonder why they would say this? What possible reason would we have to do this kind of thing, unless we were unable to meet out military objectives using conventional forces (or massive casualties would be taken on our side). Now since we are engaging third world powers using the equivalent of 19th century military tactics, I hardly see how we would take what could be considered massive casualties....unless we didn't have the manpower to spare for any sizable military engagement.
This is obviously all conjecture at this point, but its worth investigating. Folks, we may be a lot weaker militarily than the flag waving and oompah band playing suggests.
This is what the American people wanted at the time after we won the Cold War and everyone wanted their "peace" dividend.
Biological and chemical warfare -- used against troops abroad and/or innocent civilians at home. This is what this message is all about, and I believe we all know at which countries both the statement, and our warheads, are aimed.
The military forces first use their technology. Nuclear weapons are part of the technology. And, yes, we only have so many people in uniform. There aren't enough to go around.
While I agree that we may need more men I wanted to address the above line.
First the tenor of your statement seems to imply that killing someone with a nuke is worse than killing them with conventional weapons. I disagree. Dead is dead. Whether the corpse smokes or the ashes glow is of no concern to me (or to the recent tenant of said corpse or ash heap)
Second, we (IMHO) reserved the right to nuke anyone who attacks us for two reasons. 1) War ends when the enemy is dead. After a nuke the enemy will be dead. 2) The world needs another lesson in "we are normally really nice guys and are very patient but don't piss us off"
And then there's my unofficial reason 3) Nukes are cool. and they achieve the objective (death of the enemy) very quickly.
Of course Neutron bombs are far better in that they don't destroy as much of the infrastructure, but some 'democrat' decided that having a useful weapon was just too icky and cancelled it. I'm hoping that President Reagan or President Bush had some built on the sly anyway.
God Save America (Please)
It's precisely about our future downsized and spread out military (mostly in Korea) dealing with a second invasion by Iraq.
Unable to move any forces into the region in time, the Nuclear Card is dealt.