Robert Weitzel: America's Perpetual Nuclear War (CommonDreams)

[marmar]

Published on Sunday, March 11, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
America's Perpetual Nuclear War
by Robert Weitzel

On the evening of July 25, 1945, President Truman confided to his diary that the atomic bomb “seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful." Twelve days later it was “useful” in Hiroshima, and again three days later it was “useful” in Nagasaki.

In a radio speech the day Nagasaki was obliterated, Truman told his American audience, "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."

The world took note that as many as 140,000 civilians were killed instantly or later died of injuries and radiation poisoning at Hiroshima.

To prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power in the Middle East, President Bush has tasked the Pentagon with developing plans for a surgical strike on Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz, which is buried under 75 feet of earth and rock.

One option on the table is the B61-11, the smallest tactical nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal. The B61 is a variable yield bomb. It can be calibrated to yield as low as 0.3 kilotons or has high as 170 kilotons of atomic power. Its maximum yield is ten times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0311-21.htm

[Taverner]

1. That will just mean that it will start with smaller nukes

Doesn't necessarily mean it will end with them

[whistle]

2. tens of millions of people throughout the world have died from

...the nuclear fall out which followed from 40 years of atmospheric and underground atom bomb testing which followed into the 1980s due to cancers and other illnesses from the nuclear plutonium entering the human food chain and drinking water.

The fascists go right on winning their eugenics program and BushCo is again pushing to resume bomb development and testing. These people are totally insane.