Reply #2: Yeltsin damned near launched a full-scale nuclear attack on us in 1995 [View All]

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.ippnw.org/InTheNews.html

<snip> On January 25, 1995, Russian military radar mistook a weather rocket launched from Norway for a possible missile attack on Russia. President Boris Yeltsin was given five minutes to decide if he should launch a full-scale counterattack on the United States that would have involved, at that time, 4,000 nuclear bombs hitting every city in the United States.

We don’t know exactly what happened in the Kremlin that day, but Mr. Yeltsin did not launch a nuclear counterattack.

That January 25 was an ordinary day. There was no great international crisis, not even a minor bump in relations between the US and Russia. Yet the policy of maintaining thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert brought us to the brink of global destruction.

The American people do not support these policies. More than 80 percent wanted the Senate to ratify the CTBT, and nearly as much favor the complete abolition of all nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, these huge majorities are not well organized or particularly vocal, and they have not influenced US government policy.