* Copied (from: CONSPRCY) by Steve Asher using timEd/2 1.10.y2k+.


Our Nuclear Talk Gravely Imperils Us Notion of a First-Strike
Use in Iraq Carries The Seed of World Disaster
By Edward M. Kennedy
Los Angeles Times | Commentary 

Wednesday 29 January 2003 

A dangerous world just grew more dangerous. Reports that the 
administration is contemplating the preemptive use of nuclear weapons 
in Iraq should set off alarm bells that this could not only be the wrong 
war at the wrong time, but it could quickly spin out of control.  

Initiating the use of nuclear weapons would make a conflict with Iraq 
potentially catastrophic.  

President Bush had an opportunity Tuesday night to explain why he 
believes such a radical departure from long-standing policy is justified 
or necessary. At the very minimum, a change of this magnitude should be 
brought to Congress for debate before the U.S. goes to war with Iraq.  

The reports of a preemptive nuclear strike are consistent with the 
extreme views outlined a year ago in President Bush's Nuclear Posture 
Review and with the administration's disdain for long-standing norms 
of international behavior.  

According to these reports, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has 
directed the U.S. Strategic Command to develop plans for employing 
nuclear weapons in a wide range of new missions, including possible 
use in Iraq to destroy underground bunkers.  

Using the nation's nuclear arsenal in this unprecedented way would be 
the most fateful decision since the nuclear attack on Hiroshima. Even 
contemplating the first-strike use of nuclear weapons under current 
circumstances and against a nonnuclear nation dangerously blurs the 
crucial and historical distinction between conventional and nuclear 
arms. In the case of Iraq, it is preposterous.  

Nuclear weapons are in a class of their own for good reasons -- their 
unique destructive power and their capacity to threaten the very survival 
of humanity. They have been kept separate from other military 
alternatives out of a profound commitment to do all we can to see they 
are never used again. They should be employed only in the most dire 
circumstances -- for example, if the existence of our nation is 
threatened. It makes no sense to break down the firewall that has 
existed for half a century between nuclear conflict and any other form 
of warfare.  

A nuclear bomb is not just another item in the arsenal.  

Our military is the most powerful fighting force in the world. We can 
fight and win a war in Iraq with precision bombing and sophisticated new 
conventional weapons. The president has not made a case that the 
threat to our national security from Iraq is so imminent that we even 
need to go to war - - let alone let the nuclear genie out of the bottle.  

By raising the possibility that nuclear weapons could be part of a first 
strike against Iraq, the administration is only enhancing its reputation 
as a reckless unilateralist in the world community -- a reputation that 
ultimately weakens our own security. The nuclear threat will further 
alienate our allies, most of whom remain unconvinced of the need for 
war with Iraq. It is fundamentally contrary to our national interests 
to further strain relationships that are essential to win the war against 
terrorism and to advance our ideals in the world.  

This policy also deepens the danger of nuclear proliferation by, in effect, 
telling nonnuclear states that nuclear weapons are necessary to deter a 
potential U.S. attack and by sending a green light to the world's nuclear 
states that it is permissible to use them. Is this the lesson we want to 
send to North Korea, Pakistan and India or any other nuclear power?  

The use of nuclear weapons in Iraq in the absence of an imminent, 
overwhelming threat to our national security would bring a near-total 
breakdown in relations between the U.S. and the rest of the world. At 
a minimum, it would lead to a massive rise in anti-Americanism in the 
Arab world and a corresponding increase in sympathy for terrorists who 
seek to do us harm. Our nation, long a beacon of hope, would overnight 
be seen as a symbol of death, destruction and aggression.  

In the introduction to his national security strategy last fall, the 
president declared: "The gravest danger our nation faces lies at the 
crossroads of radicalism and technology." On that he was surely right 
-- and the administration's radical consideration of the possible use 
of our nuclear arsenal against Iraq is itself a grave danger to our 
national interests, our nation and all that America stands for.  

------- 

Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy represents Massachusetts. 

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is 
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest 
in receiving the included information for research and educational  
purposes.)

                             -==-

Source: Truthout - http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/020103A.kendy.seed.htm

Cheers, Steve..

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