Yes, We Can Abolish Nuclear Weapons
By Jerome Grossman

A major disappointment in the presidential race has been the failure of the three surviving candidates to address nuclear weapons, the greatest existential threat to planet Earth, to the human race itself, and of course, by extension to the United States of America.

Today, the United States, fearing a geo-political setback that will undercut the broader "war on terror," is putting the diehard goal of military "victory" ahead of the diplomatic initiatives that alone can enable the reconstruction of Iraqi society. The needed spirit of cooperation among Iraqi factions, and from other nations, will never materialize as long as the United States pursues the fantasy that its armed might will at last prevail. Once again, diplomacy is being rejected in favor of war. This is insane.

Both my title and the quote above are from a column appearing in today's Boston Globe.  Written by James Carroll, it is entitled The new immorality of Iraq war.    My quotation is from the 2nd paragraph.  You can get a clear sense from the first and last sentences of the opening paragraph:

INSANITY is defined as repeating one mistaken action again and again, each time expecting a better result that never comes.  . . .

Diplomacy was once again rejected.

 I want to focus on the insanity of rejecting diplomacy.

If India, Pakistan, China, Russia or North Korea were to threaten to launch nuclear weapons at America there would be an international crisis.

Yet the best we can muster when a potential president threatens unequivocally to obliterate an entire nation is to mumble a few words of disapproval, or worse still, to cheer.

Her boastful claims are at best a sorry and desperate attempt at saying anything to win votes and at worst nothing more than mindless arrogance and diplomatic incompetence.  

On the day of the Pennsylvania primary, Hillary Clinton told ABC's ‘Good Morning America’ that, if she were president, she would ‘totally obliterate’ Iran if Iran attacked Israel.

Clearly she was speaking of nuclear obliteration.

I grew up in the Cold War Age and I suppose there are too many young politicos and journalists who have no recollection whatsoever of the atomic attack drills where as young students we learned to crouch under our desks in the event of a nuclear attack.  (How sad to think we were so uninformed to believe that would help.)  Or, in the town where I lived, when we wore dog tags to identify us in the case of an evacuation or attack.  Or, when we learned what our evacuation plans would be in the event of nuclear attack.  Where and when, maybe, we would be reunited with our parents.  Oh, and remember those who built bomb shelters?  It is so easy to forget the days of the Cold War and the fear of "mutually-assured destruction."  

Last night on Countdown and this morning on Good Morning America, Clinton took the extra-ordinary measure of insisting on her willingness to "obliterate Iran" if Iran was ever to attack Israel with nuclear weapons and to provide a nuclear umbrella to other Middle Eastern countries.

Promising an ally our intention to retaliate against a nuclear attack is not  really anything new.  On its face Charlie Gibson's question was a ludicrous future scenario that is unlikely to be a real decision the next President will have to make.  Many intelligence experts recognize that Iran is probably 5 to 10 years away from nuclear weapons in the best of circumstances.

I'm pretty sure that Israel would probably turn Iran into a sheet of glass if they launch a nuclear strike on Israel.

I have embedded the complete video of KO's countdown interview with Hillary.  I sure do hope voters in Pennsylvania do not fall for the fear mongering argument that Hillary is so regrettably using.  She has truly totally discredited herself as a true democrat --no wonder she has some major disagreements with MoveOn.org --and yet prove again that she would say and do anything to get elected.  

For those of you who haven't already noticed, I am a huge fan of Countdown with Keith Olbermann. He is one of the best newscasters I have seen, and has had the courage to call "BS" when he sees it.  I was very surprised with his interview with Hillary Clinton this evening.  She even more adamantly reiterated her position on an "umbrella of deterrence" towards middle-eastern countries should Iran launch a nuclear attack against a any of them.  I am watching this on my computer so I can rewind and replay it over and over again and pause and start it again and here is my transcript of the response she gave to Keith's request for a follow-up on the response she gave to the debate last week regarding Iran and nuclear weapons.  I am shocked.  Video will arise as soon as I can get it.  My transcript on the flip

Update: Honored to be on the rec list!  

Here's the video:

It seems that no major media outlets caught George Stephanopoulos' substantive gaffe on Iran.

[Note: a similar diary was posted yesterday, but received no comments or recs, so I am feeling free to post my own very similar thoughts on this development]

No sooner had I awarded the chutzpah crown to Tzipi Livni (post here*) than along come some other contenders:

Iraq's financial free ride may be over. After five years, Republicans and Democrats seem to have found common ground on at least one aspect of the war. From the fiercest foes of the war to the most steadfast Bush supporters, they are looking at Iraq's surging oil income and saying Baghdad should start picking up more of the tab, particularly for rebuilding hospitals, roads, power lines and the rest of the shattered country.

Their bill also would require that Baghdad pay for the fuel used by American troops and take over U.S. payments to predominantly Sunni fighters in the Awakening movement.

It has been almost forty years since the United States signed on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty and now is the time to begin to live up to the spirit of that treaty.  The NPT has been signed by 189 nations and was intended as a framework to move the world toward both the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and the eventual dismantlement of weapons of mass destruction.  In our time, these instruments of genocide and apocalypse have hung over our heads like an angel of death, haunting the vast majority of our foreign policy decisions and at times pushing the planet to the edge of nuclear war.

Beneath the fold, I am pasting in its entirety a piece I received today from Stratfor via email.  The email encourages re-posting in full with a link, which I've provided.

Short version is this: the entire Middle East is in a state of profound agitation.  Israel is on a pre-war footing, as is the American Navy, and while Syria appears to be in the crosshairs of both powers (owing to the still-perplexing September 2007 action), it is hard to ignore (and Stratfor doesn't) the possibility that Iran is the critical variable.

Consider for a moment that American military personnel (officers, no less) are passing warnings to the media about looming false flag actions designed to ensnare Iran in a ginned-up war.  Consider also that Senator Conyers last week -- seemingly out of the blue -- threatened impeachment against Bush should he unilaterally decide to invade or attack Iran -- and it is impossible for a rational person to remain unconcerned.

Fellow Kossacks,

Do we need a whole new generation of nuclear weapons?  Your very own U.S. Department of Energy thinks so.  Here at CREDO, we beg to differ.

Now, you might think that with a name like the "Department of Energy," they'd be looking into things like efficiency, solar, getting us off our oil dependency, etc. etc.  Well, think again!  

While there is a tiny bit of that work still going on by a handful of courageous souls at DOE...the really big money at DOE is all about the nuclear weapons programs.  Thinking about them, designing them, making them, maintaining them, trying to come up with possible uses for them, and dreaming about future generations of them...but unfortunately not so much about cleaning up their legacy.

Original article via Agence France-Presse.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - CIA chief Michael Hayden expressed his personal belief Sunday that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program, but also stood by the agency's assessment that the program was suspended in 2003.

I'm reading it but I just can't fucking believe it...

We've heard the U.S. accusing Iran of developing nuclear weapons, and heard them accusing Iran of "threatening" Israel. Now (with a hearty hat tip to WIIIAI), we have not one but two new interviews in which George Bush doubles down on those false claims:

   The current crisis over North Korea’s nuclear capacity needs to be set in the perspective of history.  The Bush administration seems to feel that demonizing countries they disagree with is a substitute for a foreign policy.  Mr. Ashton Carter, in NPR interview in 2006 called North Korea a criminal country, run like a Mafia state and blamed its Confucian history for the present government policy.  This is absurd, certainly Confucian thought supports the idea of respect for the elderly and authority, but only in the context of good government. Carter should read Mencius the major source of Confucian thought.
   

Here's an interview with Matthew Bunn ,a senior research associate in the Project on Managing the Atom in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's John F Kennedy School of Government. Bunn says the IAEA report is by no means a clean bill of health regarding the state of Iran's nuclear program.

The report includes troubling new information about procurement and other activities by Iran that the agency judges to be "relevant to nuclear weapon R&D [research and development]" - not just civilian enrichment. This includes "the testing of high voltage detonator firing equipment; the development of an exploding bridgewire detonator (EBW); the simultaneous firing of multiple EBW detonators [especially relevant to designing and building implosion-type nuclear weapons]; and the identification of an explosive testing arrangement that involved the use of a 400 meter shaft and a firing capability remote from the shaft by a distance of 10 kilometers".