Rumsfeld defends funding for nuclear penetrator study

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared funding to complete a feasibility study for a nuclear earth-penetrating weapon a "sensible" response to rogue states that are moving sensitive facilities underground.

Congress cut off funding for the study last year but the administration is requesting 8.5 million dollars in 2006 to resume it and says it will need an extra 14 million dollars to complete it in 2007.

Called Robust Nuclear Earth-Pentrator, the study would examine whether a nuclear weapon can be designed to bore through concrete or rock and then detonate.

Rumsfeld said the United States has no conventional capability for attacking deeply buried targets.

"The only option we currently have is to use a vastly overpowered nonconventional weapon. That isn't desirable," he told a Senate Committee.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050217/pl_afp/usmilitarynuclear_050217231605

[MasonJar]

1. For once Congress did something sensible. Let's make sure

our reps do not reinstate this funding. We are after all the biggest rogue state. It's time to put ourselves in the place of other peoples.

[DrWeird]

2. in exchange for one million dollars?

[bvar22]

3. Rummy describing his MANDate with Gannon.

Nine Inches...Cut
That's MY BOY!

[Journeyman]

4. They told us we'd probably need a nuclear-tipped "bunker buster". . .

to get Saddam. Turned out a couple of cherry bombs or a garden hose could do the job.

(In fact, I believe it was a simple order barked into a hole that brought Saddam into the light of day. But trust Rummy to find the least useful method to botch a job.)

[punpirate]

5. The science on this suggests...

... that it's not feasible:

http://www.fas.org/faspir/2001/v54n1/weapons.htm

We've already been working on these for some time without the results the Pentagon desires. But, there's Iran sitting there with underground labs, so, press on regardless.... :eyes:

[ragin_acadian]

6. maybe i'm buying an offbrand tinfoil,

but to my knowledge, rumsferatu sat on the board of ABB, a company that sold nuclear reactors to north korea in 2000.

am i just getting paranoid, or does the fact that Reagan sold iraq the chemical weapons that allowed hussein to create the mass graves we use to justify this war, and the fact that the "Don" sold north korea nuclear reactors capable of making yellowcake that we are using to justify a war with north korea, and ollie north idly sitting by in the 80's while abu nidal sold chinese silkworm missiles to iran through the BCCI that the CIA had infiltrated sound suspicious?

after selling the all the good/bad stuff to the rest of the world, rumsfeld and company uses that as a reason to invade them, and a reason to build even better weapons that he will sell to our next enemy?

anyone else feeling sick to their stomach?

[OneBlueSky]

7. More Nukes! More Nukes! . . .

just what we need in our quest to make the world a safer place . . .