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Nukes: The Next Generation
jonerik writes: "Following up on the weekend's posting on the revision of American nuclear war-fighting plans, the New York Times has this article on the difficulties in building a new generation of nukes. The American nuclear arms industry is much smaller now than it was ten years ago, testing the new, smaller "bunker busters" would be problematic, and no one's certain that a nuclear weapon with a tiny explosive yield that's capable of penetrating yards of reinforced concrete could actually be built."
but i thought any nation that was amassing weapons of mass destruction was terrorist?
Couldn't you get rid of Bush before he starts a thermonuclear war?
Cause I don't know about you, but the rest of the planet is getting a little bit scared.
True warriors use the Klingon Google
Since 9/11 a few disturbing things have happened. Under the pretense of terrorist fighting the US defense budget has been raised by an insane amount of money; privacy and freedom of speech invading laws have been rubberstamped and now there's talk about developing and actually using new nuclear weapons. What's next? Precision bombardments with tons of antrax from a B52???
WTF, we're supposed to be the good guys! Remember Hiroshima? Remember various non prolifiration treaties????
The truth is even more disturbing. Nuclear weapons are an option because american casualties need to be avoided, at all cost. Compared to the loss of 1 american life the thousands of affected lives of local civilians(be they iraqis, afghanistani's) is acceptable and considered collatoral damage (thus irrelevant and not news worthy). So it is more convenient to deploy nuclear weapons than to accept a hand full of (american) losses and fight the war the conventional way. The indifference towards the hundreds of thousands of afghan fugitives (not to mention the tens of thousands babies, elderly and sick people that have died) is equally appalling. Somehow it seems like the tragic death of = 4000 New Yorkers outweighs any amount of Afhan collateral damage.
Right now the American policy towards just about anything appears to be 'Nuke em 'cause we're superior.
I am not at all surprised anti american feelings prosper in the middle east. I don't share those feelings (at least not entirely) but I understand them well. I also understand that deploy nukes is not going to contribute to a permanent solution (except perhaps for an end losung).
Because modern conventional explosives are incredibly sturdy: you can bang on them with hammers, light them on fire, etc. and they won't go off, but even after major abuse, they'll still detonate reliably if the right stimulus is applied. In contrast, nukes are delicate, tricky beasts: abuse them too much before detonation and you won't get a yield, or worse, you'll get a low yield and incredible amounts of fallout. Basically, nukes are mechanical devices; conventional bombs are solid-state.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
References to a "club" and America being labeled terroristic is absurd! If you ACT like a terrorist and support terroristic acts without even a facade of anti-terroristic belief, you are a TERRORIST.
If you've been paying attention for the past hundred years or so you may have noticed that some people are more likely to invade neighboring countries or say, indiscriminately shoot over borders because of this or that belief. Sometimes I seriously wish we would just mind our own damn business and let all of Europe fall into another World War except this time the enemy has the power to obliterate those countries that ride the neutral line because they aren't directly involved...yet.
Do NOT beat up America for trying to create plans to preserve itself and more than likely OTHER countries. When we start dropping nukes on Canada or Mexico then you can complain.
A view of Iraq.
Recently the VP of Iraq stated that UN arms inspectors were kicked out of Iraq for spying. Spying to me is the uncovering of hidden agendas and or plans. In this case spying was the discovery of weapons of mass destruction or their telltale signs of production. That's EXACTLY what they are supposed to be doing! It was a United Nations mandate to put inspectors there to make damned sure those weapons were removed! The entirety of the WORLD should be behind the obliteration of the existing Iraqi government who openly support terrorism and refuse to abide by UN mandates. The UN is a large body of wussies headed by a patholigical bystander. Britain and the US have been two of the few powers willing to stand up and take physical action against unstable cancers and those that do take flak from those that don't. How quickly people forget their histories!
Whoever scored this guy as insightful is an IDIOT.
When your country begins to worry about the US establishing military presence in or near your country think about WHY we are doing it because I can guarantee it's not because we want your land or require your resources. The American people as a whole would not stand for our government indiscriminately attacking other countries. We don't brainwash easily due to our crazy mixture of beliefs so there's no chance of a Hitler here. When we do things, we do it for what we believe to be the greater good of our country and the world. We have no unified or even predominant religious beliefs so don't expect a holy war from us! Like it or not, we aren't militant marauding bastards out to take over the world.
Slashcrap at it's best.
Mod this!
Done ranting!