Understanding the Rules
If we stop Iran from having nukes, good.
If President Obama wants to support a nuclear non-proliferation treaty, bad.
Of course, if no one has any nukes, then who's responsible for the mushroom cloud?
posted by jurassicpork @ Thursday, April 08, 2010
9 comments
9 Comments:
Hey JP,Forbes reprted that Glen Beck earned 32 million last year and I think he had two best sellers.
How the hell does that crazy bastard get published and you cant?
(Sigh) Maybe I'm just not crazy enough.
Rupert Murdock may know a few publishers.
Yeah, like Judith Regan... Oops, sorry. Forgot.
If we insist that Israel acknowledge its nukes...anti-Semitic!
The video clip is just horrible -- shameless, exploitative fear-mongering. It is dishonest, untrue and dangerous.
The U.S. possesses . . . what? roughly 2,400 active nuclear weapons, and a total of 9,400 nuclear weapons. This is 30% of all active nuclear weapons in the world, and slightly less than half of all the nuclear weapons in the world. The only other country that comes close is Russia, whose nuclear arsenal is dangerous principally because it is failing into disarray.
Aside from its nuclear arsenal -- which, incidentally, is capable of incinerating the planet a hundred times over -- the U.S. outspends the entire world combined on its military, possesses 6,000 miles of coastline and protection of the Atlantic Ocean on the east and Pacific Ocean on the west, and has no military rival whatsoever in the entire Western Hemisphere. The U.S. has more active aircraft carriers than the rest of the world combined, with 11 (Russia has 1). The U.S. also has 18 nuclear submarines; 14 are each armed with 24 Trident missiles, each capable of delivering a nuclear payload. No other country comes close to this nuclear sub capacity.
And yet, FOX News' blonde bimbo breathlessly alerts viewers that by seeking to reduce the possibility of nuclear armageddon, President Obama may "leave the U.S. DEFENSELESS."
Pathetic.
Did Reagan have to go through all this shit when he advocated for a reduction in nuclear arms?
I guess I wasn't paying enough attention.
No. You know why? IOKIYAR.
JP, I don't quite understand this. The US has been party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) since 1972. (That Nixon was a wild-eyed Jacobin, by today's standards!)
Obama's recent nuclear activity, signing the new START, the Nuclear Posture Review, etc., is NOT meant for US consumption. These things are messages to the rest of the world.
The NPT's 5-year Review Conference is starting in NYC at the UN this May. Obama is sending a message loud and clear to the rest of the world that he is NOT Bush.
Back in 2005, Bush's delegates were under orders not to outright obstruct everything, but 'not to make it easy on them' (as the delegate said to my wife! Obama is telling the world that he is ready to get serious work done at this Review Conference.
This is a very, very good thing!
Now the most important thing to remember is that that treaty is flawed: Iran is well within the treaty's legal framework to develop nuclear technology - for peaceful purposes. But Iran's processing facility really has no other purpose than to create weapons.
One thing Iran is doing by going forward with re-processing is challenging the US and the other 'Nuclear Weapons States' (France, China, UK, and Russia) to live up to their side of the bargain. The US is CLEARLY NOT in compliance with the NPT's Article 6, that weapons states will get rid of them.
And this is the important part of the new START treaty, Obama can point to it at the NPT and say, see we ARE doing something about Article 6! This gives him cover to harass Iran about their flirting with non-compliance with Article 4.
One final note about the NPT, while it is a flawed treaty, it has worked extremely well over the last 40 years. The nations that did sign on have not become nuclear weapons states, and the nations that did NOT sign on (most of them) do now have nuclear weapons.
India and Israel - Israel developed their weapons in conjunction with South Africa and when the whites lost their apartheid state and the blacks were about to take over, S. Africa quickly shipped all their weapons to Israel!
Anyway, my wife is going to be at the NPT during May and she'll be tweeting updates every day from her contacts that are inside the conference meetings.
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