Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $10.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
September
25, 2003
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
Recent
Stories
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
September
19, 2003
Ilan Pappe
The
Hole in the Road Map
Bill Glahn
RIAA is Full of Bunk, So is the New York Times
Dave Lindorff
General Hysteria: the Clark Bandwagon
Robert Fisk
New Guard is Saddam's Old
Jeff Halper
Preparing
for a Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid
Brian J. Foley
Power to the Purse
Clare
Brandabur
Hitchens
Smears Edward Said
Website of the Day
Live from Palestine
September
18, 2003
Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In
Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Wayne
Madsen
Wesley
Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job
Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Wesley Clark and Waco
Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze
Dominique
de Villepin
The
Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere
Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope
Elaine
Cassel
Payback is Hell
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Website
of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
September
26, 2003
A New Weapon in the
Doomsday Arsenal
The
Strangeloves Win Again
By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY
The Pentagon is conducting research into development
of a device called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. It sounds
fairly innocuous, really: perhaps a sort of zippy, hi-tech, fence-post
digger that will be useful to those who want to burrow deep into
the ground for the benefit of all mankind. Well, it's no such
thing. It is a lunatic, Larry-light-bulb, Strangelovian excursion
into nuclear proliferation that will boost the US nuclear arms'
industry, warm the hearts of nuke-lovers everywhere, and add
yet another hellish weapon of mass destruction to an already
bulging arsenal.
The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty
(NPT; 1970) is ignored with total impunity by three nuclear-armed
countries, India, Israel and Pakistan, none of which have signed
it or ever will but nevertheless receive generous military assistance
from the United States. No penalties are imposed by the Bush
administration for a country's failure to support international
arms control agreements, providing these are regarded as a joke
by Washington's ultra-right-wing, and the countries concerned
are not Iran or North Korea. The terms of the NPT were extended
indefinitely in 1995 when it was declared by the five nuclear
weapons' states (defined as those having manufactured and exploded
a nuclear device before January 1, 1967) that they would "determinedly
pursue . . . systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear
weapons globally, with the ultimate goal of eliminating those
weapons and . . . [ensuring] general and complete [nuclear] disarmament
under strict and effective international control." How principled
and civilised, to be sure. Or it would be if these governments
meant anything they said. It is difficult, to put it mildly,
to imagine Washington, Paris, London, Moscow or Beijing agreeing
to "strict international control" over the price of
eggs, never mind examination of their nuclear arsenals.
So, with the goal of eliminating nuclear
weapons at the forefront of its international policy the Bush
administration is forging ahead to . . . well . . . , develop
more nuclear weapons. According to Senator Wayne Allard (R. Co),
however, it isn't really doing that. Not at all, huffs the senator,
because ". . . we are not producing new nuclear weapons.
We are doing a modification. It is a continuing modification."
Ah. So that's all right, then. There's nobody there but us nuclear
modifications.
Allard has never met a nuke he didn't
like and, as with most of the Senate, was violently opposed to
ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (voting against it
in 1999), which is still not approved by Washington and never
will be for so long as the nuke-happy regime continues. (In 1997
he voted against US ratification of the UN Chemical Weapons'
Convention banning production and use of CW. A real humanitarian
progressive.) He is a vet, but not a military one. He graduated
as a veterinarian in 1968, aged 25 at the height of the Vietnam
war, but did not don uniform. His lack of exposure to matters
military at the sharp end has not affected his contributions
as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee in which he
chairs the Strategic Forces Subcommittee and from which he mounted
his recent successful defence of the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator
(RNEP), that cosy-sounding little 'bunker-buster' whose development
will in some mysterious fashion "reduce nuclear weapons
globally, with the ultimate goal of eliminating those weapons
. . . " under an international treaty obligation that not
even Bush has managed to wriggle out of. Yet.
As the senator explained, no doubt with
his copy of Alice in Wonderland ready to hand, marked at relevant
passages, "Somehow the other side [led by Senator Byron
Dorgan; D. ND] is trying to imply that we are building new nuclear
weapons and we are going to add to the number of warheads we
have. We are continuing to reduce the number of nuclear warheads
under the Moscow Treaty." Of course Senator Dorgan stated
the intention is to build new nuclear weapons, because the RNEP
is a new type of weapon. He did not labour the point about adding
to an already enormous nuclear arsenal because he knows quite
well that the whole thing is a pea and thimble trick. When a
new capability is added, an old one is removed. The numbers of
effective and deliverable weapons remain the same, diminishing
only when out-of-date nukes are retired or placed in storage
supposedly under the terms of the toothless, unenforceable and
thus meaningless Moscow accord.
Senator Allard admitted that there are
nuclear earth-penetrators already stockpiled. As recorded in
June 2002 by Lisbeth Gronlund and David Wright of the US
Union of Concerned Scientists there were then some fifty
nuclear bombs of the B61-11 class that will vaporise "a
target buried roughly 15 meters under rock or concrete."
But this isn't enough for Allard the Nuke. "We are looking"
he says, "to see if perhaps we can't do a modification"
on another, bigger (in fact the biggest) nuclear bomb, the B-83,
itself a development paralleling the B61-11.
Of course this will not add to the total
number of nuclear weapons, because the nuclear cores of existing
B61-11 or B-83 penetrating bombs can be removed from their present
casings and placed inside other metal shields with greater tensile
strength. These will be the more "robust" earth-penetrators
that will not break up (they hope) when plunging even deeper
into the earth. It isn't the nuclear explosive capacity that
matters, according to Allard: it's the capability to go deep.
But he ignores what happens to people and places around the enormous
impact that even 10 kiloton nukes make when they penetrate the
planet. (Of course they might not go deep. And we might bear
in mind that intelligence concerning existence of deep shelters
containing weapons of mass destruction will come from the same
people who gave us incontrovertible evidence concerning existence
of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.)
Deep nuclear penetrators will protect
America, says Allard, because "Our potential enemies are
trying to avoid any vulnerability to targets by going deeper
and deeper underground. In order to destroy deeply buried targets
that could be hiding weapons of mass destruction or command and
control assets, this new technology needs to be an option."
But, adds Allard, soothingly, although the nuclear penetrator
bomb is an option, "we are not necessarily going to use
it." Oh, that's all right then. It isn't a new weapon, it
is only new technology ; and in any event it is not going to
be produced to be actually used against anyone. It is only an
option. The man does not understand that a weapon's option balance
is weighted in favour of use. Simply because the weapon exists
it will be attractive for the Pentagon to propose nuking a nation
for Bush.
Then Senator Allard displayed his deep
knowledge of international affairs and world nuclear developments
to a presumably awestruck, if tiny, audience. (It is said that
one senator was autographing PR photographs of himself throughout
the proceedings. Who could possibly want a signed photograph
of a senator, for Pete's sake?) Anyhow, he declared, above the
scrape of narcissistic scribbles, that "We are continuing
to set the example for the rest of the world by reducing the
number of nuclear warheads. The problem is countries such as
Afghanistan and Pakistan don't care what we are doing. Despite
our best efforts to set an example, they are continuing to develop
nuclear warheads. They are doing more than we are today so far
as the triggering mechanisms for nuclear warheads. If that continues,
where will that put us as far as the defence of this country
is concerned?" Fortunately there was nobody in the press
gallery at the time this portentous crap was delivered, otherwise
there might have been horse laughs causing considerable embarrassment.
(See transcript of proceedings at www.ananuclear.org/)
So Afghanistan is developing nuclear
warheads, is it? And doing more than the US concerning nuclear
triggering mechanisms? Well, well, well. No doubt there have
been statements made in the Senate that have been more ringing
in their urgency for preparedness against potential enemies.
There have probably been more dramatic and passionate speeches
intended to rally support for creation and induction of new weapons'
systems essential for defence of the nation. But there cannot
have been many pronouncements of such astounding ignorance, inanity
and imbecility as the Allard declaration that Afghanistan leads
the United States in development of triggering mechanisms for
nuclear devices.
Afghanistan is under American and Nato
occupation and its president is a Washington puppet. The country
has the technological sophistication of a medieval blacksmith's
workshop and a nuclear capability approximating that of the Bahamas.
Its entire scientific resources couldn't produce a triggering
device for a Starbucks' coffee machine.
Allard spoke vehemently in support of
creating an enhanced nuclear capability for the United States,
having had detailed supportive briefings by the Pentagon. One
wonders who in the Pentagon told him Afghanistan was "continuing
to develop nuclear warheads". And this was no mistake, no
slip of the tongue : the veterinarian Allard could have castigated
Israel or India instead of Afghanistan, for the straightforward
reason that they (and Pakistan, indubitably), are developing
nuclear warheads. But the claim that any country in the world
can be "doing more than we are" about nuclear triggering
mechanisms is bizarre and ludicrous. The Senate should have roared
with laughter, but it didn't. It voted down the line to give
Allard and Bush their nukes.
There is a major problem with robust
earth penetrators. (See an excellent analysis at http://www.clw.org/.)
This is that after they slam deep into the ground their explosion
releases vast amounts of radioactivity instantly introduced into
thousands of tons of earth, water, rock fragments, building dust
and other detritus including what might be left of those human
beings who are not vaporised at the moment of post-impact detonation.
Up goes the muck, down comes the radiation, and if anyone is
unlucky enough to be a few miles downwind of the crater they
will not die immediately. They will die gradually and horribly.
Senator Allard's claim that "we are talking about the defense
of this country" is grotesque. He is talking about killing
-- annihilating -- human beings who know nothing of their country's
place in the world according to Bush.
The Strangelove side of the Senate ignored
the better-informed and rational observations of Senator Dorgan
who argued "We must . . . [in] the world populated by 30,000
nuclear weapons, find a way to keep them out of the hands of
the wrong people, to stop the proliferation, and to begin to
reduce their number. That ultimately represents our security.
That is the way to defend this country: to stop the spread of
nuclear weapons, not to build more . . . I so strongly believe
this country is sending a terrible signal to the rest of the
world - Russia, China, Pakistan, India, you name it. I think
this [motion of the nuclear and international affairs' expert,
Senator Allard] is a dreadful mistake. It does not strengthen
this country. In my judgment, it makes this country more vulnerable
in the long term . . . I support a strong, robust defense. Nuclear
weapons are different. They are different. They threaten the
very existence of the world as we know it, and that is why it
must be dealt with differently. That is why I offer this amendment."
Tough luck, decent and honourable Senator
: the Strangeloves won again.
Brian Cloughley
writes about defense issues for CounterPunch, the Nation (Pakistan),
the Daily Times of Pakistan and other international publications.
His writings are collected on his website: www.briancloughley.com.
He can be reached at: beecluff@aol.com
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the
Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|