Rumsfeld's Dr. Strangelove

[Reeder]

Now this is a scary read.

Payne is not a well-known figure, even in Washington policy circles. But he ought to be. He is the deputy assistant secretary of defense for “forces policy”—essentially, the Pentagon’s top civilian official assigned to the development, procurement, planning, and possible use of nuclear weapons.

For 20 years before he came to the Pentagon at the start of the George W. Bush administration, Payne was at the forefront of a small group of think-tank mavens—outspoken but, at the time, marginal—who argued not only that nuclear weapons were usable, but that nuclear war was, in a meaningful sense, winnable.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2082846/

I find the Gen. Buck Turgidson quote in the article quite apropos.

Perhaps we should start a bomb shelter company.

[MrTuffPaws]

So is the debate should we build more nukes, or is it that we should use them in combat?

[MrTuffPaws]

Not to get me wrong, I do find the new government interest in nukes scary. Hell, I find the fed gov scary as a whole.

[Marley23]

There’s a new debate starting about “usable” (small, relatively low-yield) nukes. So it’s building AND using them - offensively, too, which is touchy as well.

[Harborwolf]

I find this frightening, but not surprising.

The part I liked the best was hitting areas with nukes if you suspect the area of having portable missile launchers. Must never have heard of overkill.

[bo989]

That 20 million US casualities quote sent a big chill down my spine. Don’t these people have families?

[Dragline]

The small nukes have some tactical uses that can’t be duplicated by anything else. They can be made to penetrate far deeper into hardened shelters and blow up without a huge fallout plume, the high temps will burn up chemical weapon warheads, and the radiation will kill anthrax spores.

Potential adversaries are certainly digging a lot deeper these days, - might they come in handy? I can’t come up with a scenario for their use, but it never hurts to have something a little extra in your back pocket if you’re in a really nasty fight.

[CalMeacham]

Take a look at This from today’s news:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/fc?cid=34&tmpl=fc&in=World&cat=Nuclear_Weapons

This is truly scary stuff. “Bunker buster” nukes? Even without reading the supporting material from the UCS and Jane’s, I know enough to be scared – hardened bombs don’t penetrate anywhere NEAR enough to prevent venting. In fact, the explosion is virtually at the surface. As I understand it, the debris from Project Sedan (which was buried deeper than the existing bunker busters can go, or are expected to go) was thrown into the air and is still too radioactive to safely remain near. (For a good read on Sedan and the Project Chariot it was related to, see The Firecracker Boys.)

And, as the UCS reports note, such a bomb won’t even destroy chemical or biological weapons with any certainty, and there’s a good chance that they’ll spread them.

Halting the deep earth penetrator research would tell the world “that they’re wise to invest in going underground,” Rumsfeld said.

Don’t they already know this? How old are foxholes?

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

WE already knew that Rummy has no compunctions about the use of biological weapons, so why should he care about nukes?

This is one scary administration. It might just be the last one.

[Huerta88]

See:

http://exile.ru/162/162052003.html

For discussion of possible reasons for renewed interest in tactical nuclear weapons.

[blowero]

I keep thinking the current administration can’t possibly get any more insane, and then they always surprise me.:rolleyes:

[John_Mace]

I hate to have to be the bearer of bad news, but the sky is not falling. Even if nukes could be “scaled down” so as to be on par or slightly above conventional weapons, no US administration would be stupid enough to use them as a first strike weapon. The PR fallout would outweigh their benefit.

Judging someone on what they have done is one thing, pulling out some “what-if” strategy to trash someone is another thing alltogether. But if it makes you feel better to have another reason to hate Bush and his team, knock yourself out!

[rjung]

The PR fallout would outweigh their benefit.

Considering this Administration apparently doesn’t give two shakes about what anyone else thinks, I don’t think this is a credible deterrent for them…

[blowero]

*Originally posted by John Mace *
**I hate to have to be the bearer of bad news, but the sky is not falling. Even if nukes could be “scaled down” so as to be on par or slightly above conventional weapons, no US administration would be stupid enough to use them as a first strike weapon. The PR fallout would outweigh their benefit.

Yeah, you’d think, but then I never thought any US administration would be stupid enough to want to repeal a 10-year ban on the research and development of “low-yield” nuclear weapons. But there they go surprising me.

Judging someone on what they have done is one thing, pulling out some “what-if” strategy to trash someone is another thing alltogether. But if it makes you feel better to have another reason to hate Bush and his team, knock yourself out!

It’s not a “what-if”. They do want to build these things. Did you read the article? You seem to be suggesting that they will never use them, but the WHOLE POINT of scaled-down nukes IS that they will be used. If you just want a “doomsday” device, we already have plenty of full-scale nukes.

[Latro]

*Originally posted by John Mace *
But if it makes you feel better to have another reason to hate Bush and his team, knock yourself out!

And just no amount of reasons is going to start you wondering : “Who the hell *are[i/] these people running the country?”

[John_Mace]

Yeah, I read the article. And we build lots of weapons that we never use. I still say a first strike nuclear attack from the US, even ona small scale, will not happen (again) except under the most unusual of circumstances. But I guess that’s just MHO. I don’t think one can really argue that topic on facts.

[akrako1]

I’d assume that another staged terrorist strike would be ‘unusual of circumstances’ enough for the fascists in Washington to consider using it. With all the ‘trouble’ they’re having finding Osama and Saddam, if we had good intelligence that someone was hiding in a specific bunker, I think we’d consider nukin’ it. We already have Depleted Uranium shrapnel littering Afghanistan and Iraq - what’s a little radioactive falloout?

[John_Mace]

*Originally posted by akrako1 *
I’d assume that another staged terrorist strike would be ‘unusual of circumstances’ enough for the fascists in Washington to consider using it.

You assume wrong. There has been another terror attack, in Saudi Arabia, that was clearly aimed at Western interests. Just like the one in Bali.

So why are nukes not flying now?

Oh, yeah, you said “consider” it. That’s a convenient weasle word that leaves the impression of “do” it w/o the paper trail. Nice try.:rolleyes: