Why everybody now wants the bomb

May 17 2003

Nuclear disarmament is dead as the United States flaunts its 
weapons superiority and small nations rush to make their own bombs. 
The second cold war is here, writes Christopher Kremmer.  

For almost half a century nuclear weapons poisoned the global 
imagination, a force so devastating it could literally destroy 
life on our planet. It's a nightmare that could return if the Bush 
Administration gets its way. It almost did last week, when a US 
Senate committee voted to lift a decade-old ban on the research 
and development of low-yield nuclear weapons, providing $US15.5 
million ($24 million) for research on a "bunker buster" hydrogen 
bomb called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator.  

Designed to take out enemy command and control facilities, the 
tactical bomb is billed as a "useable" nuke with a yield as low 
as 0.3 of a kiloton, much smaller than strategic nuclear weapons.  

Yet scientists believe human casualties from radiation would still 
be in the order of 10,000 to 15,000 dead if such a weapon were used 
in a built-up area. Thousands more would die in the fires and building 
collapses caused by the blast.  

This week, the Senate committee's vote was overturned by the House 
Armed Services Committee, but trench warfare over the proposal will 
continue.  

Already, a string of decisions and pronouncements from Washington 
have convinced many experts that the United States is on an ambitious 
program to revitalise its nuclear arsenal and widen the scope of its 
possible uses.  

The Doomsday Clock, which is maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic 
Scientists as a measure of global insecurity, now stands at seven 
minutes to midnight, 10 minutes closer to Armageddon than it was at  
the end of the Cold War in 1991.

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Full article at Sydney Morning Herald ...
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/16/1052885398462.html

Cheers, Steve..

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