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"Simply
stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass
destruction." Vice President Dick Cheney, 8-26-02.
"For
those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devises or banned
weapons, they're wrong, we found them." President George Bush, 5-30-03.
When it became obvious that the neoconservatives would succeed in
turning the "war against terrorism" into war against the Muslim Middle
East, I said that the consequences would be the return of the draft or US
use of nuclear weapons.
Bush
administration neoconservatives have concluded that reinstating the
military draft would incite more opposition than inaugurating a new
weapons program to produce "useable nukes."
In the
October 26 Telegraph (UK), Washington correspondent Julian Coman reports
that "influential advisers at the Pentagon are backing the development of
a new generation of low-yield nuclear weapons � so-called mini-nukes � in
a controversial report . . . the report argues for a move away from the
Cold War view of nuclear arms as catastrophic weapons of last resort."
In place of
bad old nuclear weapons, the good new nukes will be easier to use and more
"relevant to the threat environment."
This
extraordinary proposal from the world's Arms Control Hegemon demonstrates
the fanaticism of the neoconservatives. They are indeed the heirs of the
French Revolution just as Professor Claes Ryn shows in his new book,
America the Virtuous.
The Pentagon
report, which has been leaked to a defense magazine, designates
"terrorists" as the targets of the mini-nukes. New nuclear weapons are
said to be necessary in order to destroy deeply buried biological weapons
caches, terrorist cells and hidden weapons of mass destruction.
Such weapons
caches will exist wherever neoconservatives declare them to be. For the
neocons, the advantage of a nuclear over a conventional attack is that the
former solves the manpower problem and, by obliterating the target,
conveniently rules out discovering the embarrassing fact of nonexistent
WMD.
Obviously,
nuclear weapons of any size are too destructive to use against terrorists,
who are scattered among much larger populations. The only purpose of the
"small nuclear weapons" � an oxymoron if ever there was one � is to
incinerate Muslim cities. Just as Iraq, Iran and Syria are declared,
propagandistically, to be "terrorist states," Damascus, Tehran, Baghdad,
Mecca, Cairo, and Mogadishu will be declared "terrorist cities." It looks
as if the neocons intend a final solution to their "Muslim problem" and
are organizing genocide for Arabs.
Deeply
buried caches of weapons of mass destruction exist nowhere except, of
course, in the US, Israel and Russia � countries that are not to be found
on the neocons' terrorist list. But neocons are betting that a rumored
threat can be used to justify a new generation of nuclear weapons.
Propaganda
about nonexistent weapons caches is fuel for the neoconservative jihad
against Islam, just like fabricated claims of Iraqi WMD were used as a
pretext for invading Iraq. It is not American "virtue" but nuclear fallout
that neocons intend to spread in the Middle East.
During three
short years of the Bush administration, neoconservatives have turned US
foreign policy on its head. Neocons dismantled US multilateral
relationships that were a half century in the making. Neocons used lies
and fabrications to deceive the American public and to launch an
aggressive war. Not satisfied with their revolutionary destruction of
world order, neocons now demand that the US lead the world in a new round
of nuclear proliferation.
If this is
not the behavior of a rogue state, what is?
The Pentagon
report argues for a new generation of useable nuclear weapons on the bare
assumption that terrorist underground caches of WMD will materialize out
of thin air sometime in the future. The Pentagon report does not explain
why terrorists who intend us harm would make targets of their WMD by
storing them in bunkers instead of immediately using them against us.
 In
three short years neoconservatives have reorganized the Department of
Defense from a deterrent force to a means of waging aggressive war. It
shows that US policy, following that of Ariel Sharon, has abandoned the
quest for peace in the Middle East, focusing instead on a one-sided
resolution through conquest.
Deceived,
befuddled and complicit, Americans are being led into a wider
war.
(Creators
Syndicate)
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Dr.
Roberts is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy,
Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and
Research Fellow at the Independent
Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street
Journal and
a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of
The
Tyranny of Good Intentions.
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