From: Steve Ewing 

On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 16:45:28 -0500, John Beamish  wrote:

> As you point out subsequently, MAD was a doctrine designed to pre-empt
> their use.

You misunderstood his statement:

>> The whole concept of MAD was to prevent pre-emptive use of them.

*Not* to pre-empt their use, but to prevent a first-strike attack
(pre-emptive use).  Dropping a few tactical nukes if events warranted were
always part of the plan: in fact, that was the deal with "neutron
bombs", bombs that killed with short-lived radiation but had little
residual radiation or explosive damage.  By the point the use of tactical
nukes would have been considered, NATO would have been pushed back so far
that we'd be dropping them on West Germany: very untidy to mess up your
ally's yard, so use some relatively clean weapon.

To not use nukes at all, different arguement.

--
Steve 
http://www.qmss.com/~sewing

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