This Echo is READ ONLY !   NO Un-Authorized Messages Please!
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FYI
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Science Policy News
Number 75: June 13, 2003

House Debate on Administration's Nuclear Weapons Initiatives

Part 1 of 2

Words and emotions were running  strong on the House floor last
month when Members debated an amendment by Rep. Ellen Tauscher
(D-CA) to transfer $21 million in authorized funding for research on
two types of nuclear weapons to conventional weapons research.  What
follows, rather extensively, are selections from this debate.
Tauscher's amendment was rejected on a largely party line vote of
199-226.

REP. TAUSCHER: "Mr. Chairman, I am offering an amendment that
addresses a dangerous nuclear policy provision in the [FY 2004]
defense [authorization] bill. This amendment cuts $21 million for
the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, known as the RNEP, and for new
[low yield] nuclear weapons and redirects that money toward
improving our conventional capability to defeat hard and deeply
buried targets. As we do this debate today, our military does not
have a requirement for nuclear bunker busters. They do, however,
need funds for several programs the Pentagon is pursuing to improve
our ability to get at hardened targets with conventional weapons.

"My amendment would provide additional funding to these critical
conventional initiatives without taking the United States down a
dangerous road that seeks to find new uses for nuclear weapons and
crosses the line from strategic deterrent to offensive use. There
are several reasons not to develop an RNEP. Here are just five:

"First, it will produce massive collateral damage; second, even the
most powerful nuclear weapons cannot destroy bunkers at a certain
depth; third, if a bunker is filled with chemical and biological
agents, it is only common sense to keep them underground rather than
blow them up and spread them all over the place in a mushroom cloud;
fourth, an RNEP will cause massive casualties. Detonated in an urban
area, it would kill tens of thousands of civilians. Last, developing
nuclear bunker busters would undermine decades of work by the United
States to prevent nonnuclear states from getting nuclear weapons and
encourage nuclear states to reduce their stockpiles.

"Until we have exhausted all conventional means to defeat hardened
targets and the military service produces a current requirement for
an RNEP, it would be irresponsible for Congress to jump the gun and
promote new uses for nuclear weapons. Let us learn from history.
Nearly half a century ago, President Eisenhower rejected the Council
of Advisers who wanted a new variety of nuclear weapons that they
said would allow the United States to fight a winnable nuclear war.
Eisenhower responded: 'You can't have that kind of war. There just
aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.'

"As we have seen in Afghanistan and Iraq, conventional weapons can
do the job. There is no scientific, military, or strategic reason to
go nuclear at this time and every reason not to. I urge my
colleagues to support the Tauscher amendment."

REP. HEATHER WILSON (R-NM): "Mr. Chairman, my colleague from
California has made a strong argument for unilateral nuclear
disarmament. But what she has not made is a good argument for
stopping our Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator program. Nuclear
weapons are useful because they are unusable. That is the nature of
the nuclear deterrent. And the reason that we are pursuing these
studies and why we should reject the Tauscher amendment is because
deterrence is the center of what nuclear weapons are all about; it
is not because we are changing the way we plan to fight wars.
Nuclear weapons are horrible things. Warfare is a horrible thing.
But we must maintain the nuclear deterrent so that we can avoid
those conflicts.

"We have been reducing our nuclear stockpile in this country over
the last 10 years, and we will continue to. We signed the Moscow
treaty which will bring our stockpile down to levels that we have
not seen since the 1950s. We have stopped advanced development and
research over the last ten years and at the same time North Korea,
Iran, Iraq, and Russia have continued their weapons development
programs. Our unwillingness to research these weapons has not
stopped anybody from developing them themselves.

"Our potential enemies are burrowing in. They are putting their
command and control centers, the people with their fingers on the
trigger, in hard and deeply buried bunkers. For deterrence to work,
we have to hold at risk those things which our potential enemies
value and that means holding hard and deeply buried targets at risk.
They are out of reach of conventional weapons. They are out of reach
of current nuclear weapons. The Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator
program does not create a new nuclear weapon. It is only intended to
explore whether you can encase a weapon in order to allow it to
penetrate before it explodes so that you can hold that target at
risk and continue to deter the use of weapons of mass destruction
against America or its allies.

"The base bill includes $280 million for work in conventional
weapons against hard and deeply buried targets and only $15 million
for these programs in advanced development and for the Robust
Nuclear Earth Penetrator program. The advanced concepts program I
think is even more important. President Putin announced last week
and confirmed what all of us have suspected for some time: the
Russians are developing a new generation of nuclear weapons. It is
up to the United States to avoid being surprised. That means to
constantly study what other nations are doing so that we have a good
idea of what is going on."

REP. ED MARKEY (D-MA): " The bunkers which the Republicans want to
drop these nuclear bombs on are in the middle of Baghdad. They are
in the middle of P'yongyang in North Korea. These bombs, these
nuclear bombs, are bigger and more powerful than the bombs we
dropped on Hiroshima. We are like those that would preach temperance
from a barstool. We cannot tell the other countries in the world
that nuclear weapons are unusable if we are at the same time saying
that one can use them, that one can be successful and that one can
win if one drops nuclear weapons in the middle of the most densely
populated cities in the world.   We just brought Iraq to its knees
in three weeks using conventional weapons. The signal the
Republicans are sending is that nuclear weapons are usable and they
are usable in the middle of cities where bunkers are being built.
And they are wrong, and it is immoral for our country to be taking
this step."

REP. CURT WELDON (R-PA): "My colleague makes it out as if we want to
automatically build some kind of Earth penetrator and that we are
some kind of Darth Vaders. The fact is anyone who has studied the
[Russian] Ministry of Atomic Energy and has watched the career of
Mr. Mikhailov, who used to be the director of that agency, when he
left that agency, he came back as the number two person, and we put
on the record in [the Armed Services] Committee from Mr. Mikhailov's
own mouth that his job was to develop a whole new class of small
atomic munitions that are nuclear.

"If we follow through on the logic of those like my friend from
Massachusetts, we cannot even research what the Russians are
building. That has nothing to do with what we want to build. We
cannot even research the small weapons the Russians have said
publicly they are building. That is outrageous. That is outrageously
stupid.  This is not about whether or not we are going to nuke
underground. It is whether or not we allow our scientists to have
the ability to do research."

 - Continued -

@Message posted automagically by IMTHINGS POST 1.30
---