Nuclear Citizenry in Motion

I'm new to the Groups, I'm sure there was allot of previous activity, and as I do more research I'm sure I will get up to speed rather quickly.

.. So......Could these weapons be used against the American Public? In February 2002, the United States put on the most impressive display of precision bombing in the history of warfare and demonstrated the unmatched power of the U.S. military.

But despite this overwhelmingconventional superiority, the Bush administration is pursuing a new era of smaller, less powerful nuclear weapons.

The Senate Armed Services Committee voted to end a 10-year-old ban on the development of small nuclear arms, and the repeal of this ban is expected to pass the full House and Senate as part of the defense authorization bill later this month.

SMALL ? http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,909205,00.html

In addition, the committee approved the administration's request for funds by allotting $46.5 million to conduct further research on advanced nuclear weapons concepts and to allow the Pentagon to recommence nuclear weapons testing.

Despite denials of plans to build such bombs, according to the Nation, the Bush administration is the first since World War II to endorse a policy not based on nuclear arms control .

It's a shocking piece of legislation that shows the Pentagon wants the option to use nuclear weapons not just for deterrence against nuclear states but for war-fighting against non nuclear countries as well.

Its chief goal is the capability to destroy deeply buried bunkers, where it believes rogue states may house weapons of mass destruction. That would indeed be a good capability to have, but nuclear weapons can't provide it.
THE BUNKER BOMB http://www.billustration.com/images/Sc032403.gif

If we wanted to use a nuclear weapon to destroy an underground bunker, we'd need to know precisely where the bunker was located, and we'd need to be very sure that destroying its contents was worth breaking a 58-year taboo against nuclear use, enraging our allies and friends and scaring our enemies into developing their own atomic arsenals. ?

Our recent experience in Iraq shows just how elusive that certainty would be.

Of all the rogue states thought to be pursuing weapons of mass destruction, Iraq should have been the one about which we had the best information.After all, in addition to the work of our own intelligence agencies, which made Iraq a priority, we also had eight years of on-the-ground reports from U.N. weapons inspectors.

And yet 3 years after our forces crossed the Iraqi border, we have yet to find any chemical or biological (let alone nuclear) weapons.

That does not mean they aren't there, but it does show how difficult it would be to obtain intelligence good enough to sanction a nuclear first strike.
FIRST STRIKE http://hem.passagen.se/replikant/nuclear

Even if our intelligence were good enough, the depth to which a speeding warhead can dig before it disintegrates is limited.

Our current earth-penetrating weapons can dig only a few meters into the ground, and even with further research, physicists believe that the limits of existing materials would prevent weapons from reaching below 50 feet.

The bunkers we're worried about could be buried as deep as 1,000 feet.The Bush administration had wanted to repeal the ban on low-yield nuclear weapons because it thinks they can do the job while limiting collateral damage,making their use more acceptable.

But according to nuclear physicist's , exploding even a 1-kiloton nuclear weapon at a depth of 50feetwould eject 1 million cubic feet of radioactive debris into the air from a crater the size of Ground Zero. And it wouldn't destroy a target 1,000 feet down -- you'd need a weapon hundreds of times larger to do that.
my bunker

http://www.diggerhistory.info/images/diggers/pre-fab-bunkers.jpg

Logistical and technical arguments aside, using a nuclear weapon to destroy a target in a non nuclear country would destroy U.S. nonproliferation efforts. Our nuclear policy already balances on the thin edge of hypocrisy.--

....after all, we have thousands of nuclear weapons but we insist that others do not develop them.

It's a one-sided arrangement that has held only because of a treaty promise we made to work toward nuclear disarmament. That is a distant goal, but moving in the opposite direction is inexcusable and self-defeating.

Building new nuclear weapons would make it nearly impossible to roll back nuclear programs in states such as Iran, India and North Korea.Bush officials who support new nuclear weapons ought to heed an old cliché and put themselves in the shoes of their enemies.

What would they recommend to their leader if faced with a United States that declared a doctrine of preemption, named countries against which it was prepared to use nuclear weapons and sought to build new nuclear weapons whose use would be more "acceptable"?

In that situation, I'd recommend immediately building a nuclear deterrent.What about those bunkers? Well, if we have good enough intelligence, we could probably seal them off by destroying entrances and air ducts.

And, if we needed to destroy a bunker itself, physicists are researching the idea of dropping successive precision-guided munitions on the same spot, digging a deeper hole with each strike until the bunker is reached and breached .Intelligence and creativity are the answers to this problem, not nuclear weapons.

MIRVMAN
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