------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 23, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
EDITORIAL: ROGUES WITH NUKES
If too much CNN or Fox News has contaminated your brain, you might think the greatest danger of nuclear proliferation comes from Iran. If you mistakenly think Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz occasionally speaks the truth, you might think a real threat of nuclear-weapons use arises from North Korea.
Even if you carefully follow the news, you might have missed the atomic misadventures of the real rogue state in today's world.
Yes, the USA is again number one. The warfare state is prepared to spend more tens of billions of dollars to expand its already overwhelming nuclear arsenal. The U.S. has produced 70,000 nuclear warheads since it started the Manhattan Project during World War II. Now the Pentagon wants to expand in a direction that will open the door to really using nuclear weapons to make war against poor, Third World countries, Washington's targets of choice these days.
The latest plan is to make small nuclear weapons. These will be fission bombs with a yield of about five to 10 kilotons of TNT. Like the larger "conventional" warheads used against Iraq to intimidate the population into surrendering, or to blow up underground bunkers and air-raid shelters, these are tactical weapons. They are meant not simply to intimidate but to be used.
Can anyone doubt that the Pentagon bullies, once they have these weapons available, will find a way to use them? They have used depleted-uranium warheads to penetrate underground bunkers and shelters and destroy them. They have used 20-ton bombs in and around Baghdad to "shock and awe" the people.
Even testing these weapons will increase the dangers to humans and other living things on the planet, and will remove another constraint set by international treaties during the time when the U.S. and the USSR faced each other with enormous strategic nuclear stockpiles.
Congress disburses only pennies for medical research--for AIDS or SARS, for example. And nothing is done for the 40-plus million uninsured people in the U.S. who have no way to pay hospital bills. Yet the federal government is ready to spend more tens of billions of dollars on this military research for an anti-people weapon.
The Pentagon gang and this administration have shown themselves to be the number one war criminals on the planet. It is they--not Iraq or Iran or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea--who have to be disarmed by the people of this country. Keep these tactical nuclear weapons out of their hands by not letting them be built in the first place. And begin meaningful nuclear disarmament by disarming the world's number one rogue state--the United States of America, whose policies are dictated not by the people but by a small clique of super-rich intent on getting even richer at the expense of the rest of the world.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
