Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Non-barking dogs
The usual neocons aren't barking very loudly at Obama's proposal to cut our A-bomb arsenal by 80%. Nothing on NRO, nothing on Daily Caller, minor mentions on Drudge and Newsmax. Only Weiner alias "Savage", the pure neocon transparently pretending to be an "independent", hit it hard today.
Wonder if most of the usual suspects are coming to terms with post-Cold War reality? Or are they remembering that their boy Bush eliminated ALL of our neutron bombs in 2003 under an agreement with Putin?
In either case, the cut is sensible at this point.
Bush failed to use the bombs on 9/12 when he should have thrown a few at Arabia. Now the world knows that we're not going to use them in ANY circumstance. Zero deterrent value.
Also, the weapons wonks at CFR and other think-tanks have been quietly warning that the bombs may not even be functional because of poor maintenance. Those are complex devices with lots of old electronics and several stages of chemical explosive. The nuke material has been irradiating the electronics and chemicals for 40 years, which is known to cause damage. Details are classified, but the wonks say maintenance has been badly neglected. And if the CFR boys have reached that conclusion, you can be damn sure the Chinese have also figured it out. They have spies everywhere.
So our A-bombs don't deter and probably won't work. Definitely time to recycle the material into reactor fuel, as we've already been doing with old Russian bombs. ¶ 5:05 PM
Wonder if most of the usual suspects are coming to terms with post-Cold War reality? Or are they remembering that their boy Bush eliminated ALL of our neutron bombs in 2003 under an agreement with Putin?
In either case, the cut is sensible at this point.
Bush failed to use the bombs on 9/12 when he should have thrown a few at Arabia. Now the world knows that we're not going to use them in ANY circumstance. Zero deterrent value.
Also, the weapons wonks at CFR and other think-tanks have been quietly warning that the bombs may not even be functional because of poor maintenance. Those are complex devices with lots of old electronics and several stages of chemical explosive. The nuke material has been irradiating the electronics and chemicals for 40 years, which is known to cause damage. Details are classified, but the wonks say maintenance has been badly neglected. And if the CFR boys have reached that conclusion, you can be damn sure the Chinese have also figured it out. They have spies everywhere.
So our A-bombs don't deter and probably won't work. Definitely time to recycle the material into reactor fuel, as we've already been doing with old Russian bombs. ¶ 5:05 PM
