The (Junior) Bush administration's nuclear program was a shell game with their ambitions hidden within the Energy and Defense bills, most under the guise of research. Reuters, in 2003, reported that the Bush administration was proceeding with their plans to promote and push for the expansion of the nation's nuclear arsenal with the unveiling of an initiative produced by the ‘Defense Science Board'.
http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsbThe supporting document, named the “Future Strategic Strike Force”, outlined a reconfigured nuclear arsenal made up of smaller-scale missiles which could be targeted at smaller countries and other lower-scale targets. The report was a retreat from decades of understanding that these destructive weapons were to be used as a deterrent only; as a last resort.
For the first time since the U.S. banned the production of nuclear weapons in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; signed by the U.S. and Russia in 1968, entered into force in 1970; and since the moratorium on nuclear testing, which has been in place since 1992, the nuclear arms race has been restarted by the Bush administration, aided in part by an underground Pentagon campaign.
Gen. Lee Butler, of the Strategic Air Command, along with former Air Force Secretary Thomas Reed, and Col. Michael Wheeler, made a report in 1991 which recommended the targeting of our nuclear weaponry at "every reasonable adversary around the globe."
The report warned of nuclear weapons states which are likely to emerge." They were aided in their pursuit by, John Deutch, President Clinton's choice for Defense Secretary; Fred Iklé, former Deputy Defense Secretary, associated with Jonathan Pollard; future CIA Director R. James Woolsey; and Condoleezza Rice, who was on the National Security Council Staff, 1989-1991.
The new nuke report recommended that U.S. nuclear weapons be re-targeted, where U.S. forces faced conventional "impending annihilation ... at remote places around the globe," according to William M. Arkin and Robert S. Norris, in their criticism of the report in the April 1992 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ("Tiny Nukes").
At the same time, two Los Alamos (Lockheed) nuclear weapons scientists, Thomas Dowler and Joseph Howard, published an article in 1991 in the Strategic Review, titled "Countering the Threat of the Well-Armed Tyrant: A Modest Proposal for Smaller Nuclear Weapons." They argued that, "The existing U.S. nuclear arsenal had no deterrent effect on Saddam and is unlikely to deter a future tyrant."
They advocated for "the development of new nuclear weapons of very low yields, with destructive power proportional to the risks we will face in the new world environment," and they specifically called for the development and deployment of "micro-nukes" (with explosive yield of 10 tons), "mini-nukes" (100 tons), and "tiny-nukes" (1 kiloton).
Their justification for the smaller nuclear weapons was their contention that no President would authorize the use of the nuclear weapons in our present arsenal against Third World nations. "It is precisely this doubt that leads us to argue for the development of sub-kiloton weapons," they wrote.
In a White House document created in April 2000, "The United States of America Meeting its Commitment to Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons," the administration stated that, "as the United States reduces the numbers of its nuclear weapons, it is also transforming the means to build them."
"The Bush administration directed the military to prepare contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries, and to build new, smaller nuclear weapons for use in certain battlefield situations," according to a classified Pentagon report obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
The report said the Pentagon needed to be prepared to use nuclear weapons against China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Syria, Iran and Libya.
It said the weapons could be used in three types of situations: against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack, in retaliation for attack with nuclear biological or chemical weapons, or in the event of ‘surprising military developments.' The report, signed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, was used by the U.S. Strategic Command in the preparation of a nuclear war plan.
As reported by the World Policy Institute, the report on the "rationale and requirements" for U.S. nuclear forces, was used as the model for the Bush administration's Nuclear Posture Review, which advocated an expansion of the U.S. nuclear "hit list" and the development of a new generation of "usable," lower-yield nuclear weapons. Most observers do not believe that the new weapons can be developed without abandoning the non-proliferation treaty and sparking a new and frightening worldwide nuclear arms race.
Three members of the study group that produced the NIPP report - National Security Council members Stephen Hadley (assistant to Condi Rice), Robert Joseph, and Stephen Cambone, a deputy undersecretary of defense for policy - were directly involved in implementing the Bush nuclear policy.
Stephen Hadley, who replaced Rice as National Security Adviser, co-wrote a National institute for Public Policy paper portraying a nuclear bunker-buster bomb as an ideal weapon against the nuclear, chemical or biological weapons stockpiles of rouge nations such as Iraq. "Under certain circumstances," the report said, "very severe nuclear threats may be needed to deter any of these potential adversaries."
In September 2000, the PNAC drafted a report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century."
The conservative foundation- funded report was authored by Bill Kristol, Bruce Jackson, Gary Schmitt, John Bolton and others. Bolton, now Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, was Senior Vice President of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
The report called for: ". . . significant, separate allocation of forces and budgetary resources over the next two decades for missile defense," and claimed that despite the "residue of investments first made in the mid- and late 1980s, over the past decade, the pace of innovation within the Pentagon had slowed measurably." Also that, "without the driving challenge of the Soviet military threat, efforts at innovation had lacked urgency."
The PNAC report asserted that "while long-range precision strikes will certainly play an increasingly large role in U.S. military operations, American forces must remain deployed abroad, in large numbers for decades and that U.S. forces will continue to operate many, if not most, of today's weapons systems for a decade or more."
The PNAC document encouraged the military to "develop and deploy global missile defenses to defend the American homeland and American allies, and to provide a secure basis for U.S. power projection around the world."
In reference to the nation's nuclear forces, the PNAC document asserted that, " reconfiguring its nuclear force, the United States also must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction that may soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military action by threatening U.S. allies and the American homeland itself.
The authors further warned that, "U.S. nuclear force planning and related arms control policies must take account of a larger set of variables than in the past, including the growing number of small nuclear arsenals –from North Korea to Pakistan to, perhaps soon, Iran and Iraq – and a modernized and expanded Chinese nuclear force."
In addition, they counseled, "there may be a need to develop a new family of nuclear weapons designed to address new sets of military requirements, such as would be required in targeting the very deep underground, hardened bunkers that are being built by many of our potential adversaries."
The PNAC ‘Rebuilding America' report was used after the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks to draft the 2002 document entitled "The National Security Strategy of the United States," which for the first time in the nation's history advocated "preemptive" attacks to prevent the emergence of opponents the administration considered a threat to its political and economic interests.
It stated that ". . . we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country." And that, "To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."
This military industry band of executives promoted the view, in and outside of the White House that, " must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends. . . We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed."
‘Peace through strength’; big kid on the block,' is a posture which is more appropriately used to counter threats by nations; not to threats by rouge individuals with no known base of operations.
Their strategy asserted that "The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction - and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack."
The 2002 PNAC document is a mirrored synopsis of the Bush administration's foreign policy. President Bush projected a domineering image of the United States around the world which provoked lesser equipped countries to desperate, unconventional defenses; or resigned them to a humiliating surrender to our rape of their lands, their resources and their communities.
President Bush intended for there to be more conquest - like in Iraq - as the United States exercises its military force around the world; our mandate, our justification, presumably inherent in the mere possession of our instruments of destruction. He was intent on unleashing a new, unnecessary fear between the nations of the world as we dissolved decades of firm understandings about an America power which was to be guileless in its unassailable defenses. The falseness of our diplomacy revealed in the scramble for ‘useable', tactical nuclear missiles, new weapons systems, and new justifications for their use . . .
Now, President Obama has signaled a sharp reversal from all of that . . .
references:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2739176http://journals.democraticunderground.com/bigtree/1361http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2739176
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