The fact is that the U.S. has poured trillions into developing the nuclear
missile program. It seems to me that the only sane way to garner any kind
of return on investment is to rattle the nuclear saber every now and then as
a deterrent to those rogue governments would who threaten to use weapons of
mass destruction, be they chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear
against us.
It's as if the Bush administration is saying, if you anthrax/small pox us,
nerve gas us, or explode a dirty bomb in, say, L.A. and force us to evacuate
a vital urban area for possibly hundreds of years, it may well be that the
next sound you hear will be the shrill whistle of incoming nuclear warheads
over Baghdad. Don't fuck with us. You've been warned.
God forbid we should ever actually launch though.
By the way, a distinction should be made between those "suitcase nuclear
bombs" and so called "dirty bombs." The suitcase bombs do exist, but it
takes a helluva lot of special nuclear material (plutonium) to make one, and
that shit is not easy to come by. Plus, the mere handling of that type of
material would kill any would-be user from exposure pretty quickly if
they're not really, really careful. The mechanisms in these devices are
intricate and volatile. You'd have to know exactly what you're doing to use
one "successfully." But they would cause a devastating nuclear fission
explosion if detonated. Some that were made in the former Soviet Union are
known to be missing. Scary.
On the other hand, a dirty bomb is more likely to be used by a terrorist
organization. These types of devices can be any manner of explosive, like a
few sticks of dynamite, bundled with cheap, relatively stable and more
easily obtainable radioactive isotopes, like cesium, americium or cobalt.
The idea is to widely disperse the radioactive material with the explosive
and spread terror and fear. No one dies immediately unless you're at ground
zero and are done in by the explosion, but you'd have to evacuate the entire
area for many, many years due to the elevated risk of thyroid cancer to the
populace over time. Obviously, such a scenario would be devastating to the
economy, not to mention the fear factor and panic that would ensue.
Attempting something like this is more in keeping with the modus operandi of
terrorist organizations like al Qaeda.
-Julius
> gene mock wrote:
>
> > to all concern, i don't care if your a communist, capitalist, socialist,
> > imperialist, democrat, or republican-----to advocate use of nuclear
weapons of
> > any yield is fucking INSANE!
>
> I think the capitalized words much describe the Pentagon planning under
> Rumsfeld, and as well captures the essense of this entire administration.
>
> Not since the days of Barry Goldwater advocating the use of nuclear bombs
in
> Vietnam has there been such an asinine comment , other than Reagan's
advocating
> the possibility of the same ("low yield" nuclear weapons) in Europe back
in what,
> 1982? Every 20 years the horrid spectre of nuclear weapons use is raised
in this
> country and we wonder why the rest of the world looks at us as crazed.
>
> (the Rev) Vince
