US overstates China nuclear clout, report says

[UpInArms]

http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=2006-11-30T230924Z_01_N30172407_RTRIDST_0_CHINA-USA-NUCLEAR.XML

WASHINGTON, Nov 30 (Reuters) - The United States has been exaggerating China's nuclear clout in a process that could lock the two into a Cold War-style arms race, two arms-control advocacy groups said in a report Thursday.

The Defense Department and U.S. intelligence agencies have portrayed Chinese weapons developments as more threatening than warranted, to justify building a new generation of weapons, according to the study by the Federation of American Scientists and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"The report's main finding is that the Pentagon and others routinely highlight specific incidents out of context that inaccurately portray a looming Chinese threat," the groups said in a statement.

Specifically, they said, the Defense Department and U.S. intelligence agencies had been "embellishing China's submarine and long-range missile capabilities."

<snip>

"Military planners always need a rationale -- a real or potential danger -- for why they must have new weapons or new strategies and plans," said the study, "Chinese Nuclear Forces and U.S. Nuclear War Planning."

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[Selatius]

1. All right! Another excuse to build big nukes and big big nukes and big big big nukes!

Let's spend another several trillion dollars on nukes and forget about education, health care, the national debt, infrastructure repairs, and the environment. Let's all piss that away in an orgy of militarism. While we're at it, we should spend billions more on tanks, warplanes, gunships, and other mechanized killing devices. The children will have to wait at the end of the line before money is freed up for their education and future.

It must be booming to be a war profiteer in the military-industrial complex.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. No. Really??

The way they're trying to terrify us with N Korea, which MIGHT have a dozen bombs and no way to deliver them, ya really think they'd exaggerate China's capabilities?

Can I get a big "Duh!"

[fujiyama]

3. The US did this during the Cold War as well

It turned out that the Soviet Union's capabilities were far less than predicted.