[Reader-list] A NUCLEAR ROAD OF NO RETURN

[Avishek Ganguly]

Los Angeles Times
>May 13, 2003
>A NUCLEAR ROAD OF NO RETURN
>Bush's bid for new kinds of weapons could put the world on a suicidal course.
>By Robert Scheer
>http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-scheer13may13,0,5142385.column
>
>It turns out the threat is not from Iraq but from us.
>
>On Sunday, the Washington Post wrote the obituary for the United
>States' effort to find Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass
>destruction. "Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq," read the
>headline, confirming what has become an embarrassing truth - that
>the central rationale for the invasion and occupation of oil-rich
>Iraq was in fact one of history's great frauds.
>
>The arms inspectors "are winding down operations without finding
>proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of
>outlawed arms," reported the Post, putting the lie to Colin Powell's
>Feb. 6 claim at the United Nations that Iraq possessed a functioning
>program to build nuclear bombs and had hoarded hundreds of tons of
>chemical and biological materials.
>
>Unfortunately, this does not necessarily mean the world is a safer
>place. The deadly weapons of mass destruction have proved phantom
>in Iraq, but the Bush administration is now doing its best to
>ensure that the world becomes increasingly unstable and armed to
>the teeth. Although the nuclear threat from Iraq proved to be
>nonexistent, the United States' threat to use nuclear weapons and
>make a shambles of nuclear arms control is alarmingly vibrant.
>
>In its latest bid to frighten the planet into a constant state of
>shock and awe, our government is accelerating its own leading-edge
>weapons-of-mass-destruction program: President Bush's allies on the
>Senate Armed Services Committee have approved ending a decade-old
>ban on developing atomic battlefield weapons and endorsed moving
>ahead with creating a nuclear "bunker-buster" bomb. They also
>rubber-stamped the administration's request for funds to prepare
>for a quick resumption of nuclear weapons testing.
>
>What's going on here? Having failed to stop a gang of marauders
>armed with nothing more intimidating than box cutters, the U.S. is
>now using the "war on terror" to pursue a long-held hawkish
>Republican dream of a "winnable nuclear war," as the president's
>father memorably described it to me in a 1980 Times interview.
>In such a scenario, nukes can be preemptively used against a much
>weaker enemy - millions of dead civilians, widespread environmental
>devastation and centuries of political blowback be damned...
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