On The Premature Beating Of Swords Into Ploughshares
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Democrats — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Via the always spectacular Power Line, I find that the similarly spectacular Bill Hobbs has an excellent post up discussing John Kerry's plans to get rid of nuclear bunker busting bombs. Recall that Kerry discussed his plans in the debate two nights ago:
Right now the president is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to research bunker-busting nuclear weapons. The United States is pursuing a new set of nuclear weapons. It doesn't make sense.You talk about mixed messages. We're telling other people, "You can't have nuclear weapons," but we're pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using.
Not this president. I'm going to shut that program down, and we're going to make it clear to the world we're serious about containing nuclear proliferation.
Of course, our development of nuclear weapons and our desire to ensure that our nuclear arsenal remains updated does nothing whatsoever to dilute any anti-proliferation efforts undertaken by the United States. But put that aside for the moment. Note the statement made on the value of bunker busting weapons by Rear Admiral John T. Byrd, Director of Plans and Policy for the United States Strategic Command--which Bill Hobbs quotes (all emphases are Hobbs's):
One of the most pressing threats posed by our potential adversaries in the international arena today is the proliferation of hard and deeply buried facilities capable of protecting nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons; the means of delivering them; and the leaders who would threaten the United States. Our current arsenal, developed in the Cold War, was not designed to address this growing worldwide threat. There are facilities today which we either cannot defeat, even with existing nuclear weapons, or must hold at risk using a large number of weapons. As a result, both the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, through the Nuclear Weapons Council, have approved a study of how to effectively counter this threat. This study of a Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) will evaluate modifications to existing nuclear weapons that do not require nuclear testing.The ideal outcome of an RNEP study would be a recommendation to proceed with selective modifications to existing weapons that would ultimately strengthen deterrence by improving the credibility of our strategic forces against hard and deeply buried facilities. As you are well aware, our efforts to strengthen deterrence involve denying sanctuary to our adversaries. This may mean making our nuclear weapons more tailored to the target type, which is not equivalent to making them more likely to be used. Tailored weapons strengthen deterrence, which in turn makes them less likely to be used. Also, a robust nuclear earth penetrator is only one piece of the overall solution for targets contained in these types of structures. Other capabilities such as advanced conventional, information operations, and special operations capabilities must be developed as well. A full spectrum of capabilities strengthens deterrence and maintains the nuclear threshold by developing a range of options for the President to counter the growing hard and deeply buried target set.
After the Israelis annihilated Saddam Hussein's weapons program in 1982 with airstrikes at Osirak, rogue states learned that not only do tyhey have to spread out their weapons producing plants, they have to put them underground as well. Doubtless this is what the Islamic regime in Iran and the regime in North Korea have done. No one likes to contemplate the use of nuclear weapons, of course, but the possession of them would do wonders for America's deterrence capability. And as the Admiral said, "[t]ailored weapons strengthen deterrence, which in turn makes them less likely to be used." If the North Koreans and the Islamic regime know that we have bombs that can destroy bunkers completely, they will refrain from constructing those bunkers, and placing WMD-producing material and personnel there. Consequently, their ability to develop WMD's will be retarded.
Unfortunately, John Kerry does not seem to understand this. He appears to be stuck in the same policy timewarp he inhabited in the 1980s. Back then, he argued vehemently that the rearmament efforts of a previous Republican Administration would do nothing to bring the Soviet Union to the table, and would do nothing but set back the cause of peace.
Time and distance has helped show the bankruptcy of this worldview. The question now is whether we will remember the lessons of history, or whether the Kerry campaign will successfully aid us in developing a bizarre case of national amnesia.
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On The Premature Beating Of Swords Into Ploughshares 3 Comments (0 topical, 3 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Kerry's assertion regarding Security were troubling...and a combination of false and misleading. I intentionally only spent 5 minutes per "assertion", to show how much is readily available.
First an analogy. A company (nameless for obvious reasons) that I worked for did an employee satisfaction survey. The results were (and are) closely gaurded, but in a presentation I was shown that just before the last downturn (5 years ago) they had done a study and gotten 90% (or thereabouts) rating of Satisfied or Very Satisfied. Two ways to view this data. This company has over 50,000 employees worldwide. Although 90% is a phenomenal number (and they were proud of it), it still means they had FIVE THOUSAND disgruntled employees!
On to Kerry...
"The president hasn't put one nickel - not one nickel - into the effort to fix some of our tunnels and bridges and most exposed subway systems."
In five minutes of searching on the Internet I found dozens of articles detailing upgrades, both dramatic and subtle to major tunnels and bridges countrywide. When searching on subways the same thing, dozens detailing upgrades, primarily to enhanced patrols and communications. An amazing amount of time, effort AND money has been spent...wisely, I believe.
"The president - 95 percent of the containers that come into the ports, right here in Florida, are not inspected."
This is one of the nuanced truths. The number, historically, was under 2% inspected, and is now actually just under 6%. (5% was the 1993 number). These stats are available from numerous government publications. What's important is that the 2% used to be almost completely random. Whereas now we have pushed our intelligence gathering to the ports LOADING the cargo, so that while some inspections are random, most are TARGETED inspections. So yes, 94% are un-inspected. But that is over double (actually THREE TIMES) what it was under Clinton, and prior to 9/11.
"Civilians get onto aircraft and their luggage is X-rayed, but the cargo hold is not X-rayed.
Actually inspection, including x-raying, of cargo and luggage is increasing every day. Still, this is a half-truth. Not ALL cargo/luggage is scanned, but it used to be ZERO scanned. Again, LOTS of articles talking about major upgrades and installation of high-speed luggage scanners. In fact most airports now tell you NOT to place any film in luggage to be checked through, since the power of the high-speed scanners is dramatically higher.
"And there's an enormous undone job to protect the loose nuclear materials in the world that are able to get to terrorists."
Very sneaky half-truth. There IS a lot undone. But the implication is that NOTHING is being done. This is not true, and there are, again, tons of articles on this on the internet.
"The president, also unfortunately, gave in to the chemical industry, which didn't want to do some of the things necessary to strengthen our chemical plant exposure."
At this point Kerry flat out lied. There has been tremendous attention, focus, and success here. The American Chemical Council issued a strongly worded rejection detailing all the efforts and success since 9/11. This was Kerry as far out of bounds as he could get.
The lies & half-truths regarding the FBI and the translation of tapes has been chronicled elsewhere...but is equally important.
PLEASE spread the word. And if you are a Kerry supporter on this site please reconsider your vote all the more carefully. I would add one more fact for that re-consideration: Kerry mentioned, VERY prominently, in his performance, that he would be "agressively strengthening our intelligence, by going after the financing more authoritatively". This last week a Federal judge struck down a provision of the Patriot Act that allows for just that!
Ask yourself if Kerry would agressively seek to overturn that judge???
I wish I could be kind enough to say the left's proclivity toward disarmament was due to amnesia, but I actually believe it is something far more pathologic. They do not LIKE America. At least not the America of the red states. (just listen to Mike Moore) Their values are not our values. And they don't trust us. Which is O.K. because we don't trust them.
Oh, they can live here and all that, but we really don't want them representing us in our REPRESENTATIVE form of government. America is much more conservative than the MSM and NEA (and probably the current batch of nyeocons) has led us to believe and it's high time our three gov branches reflected that.
And as far as excellence? I come here before Powerline. Everyday. Pej, you the man. You said it yousef. Couldn't resist.
You have hit upon one the major problems facing Western societies today... a total lack of memory regarding recent history or knowledge of distant history.
One only has to look at what is happening with the recent rise in Islamofascism (an updated term for the old Islamic call for jihad and world dominance). So many in our nation really do not remember what they were taught (or were never taught) regarding militant Islam in world history. This is not new. Everyone needs to go back and read their history books in the time period of 570 AD (the birth of Muhammad) to about 732 AD (The Battle of Tours). The French and Germans, in particular, need to go back and read their history. It was the Franks that finally stopped the advance of militant Islam in Europe back then.
Today's militant Islam is more covert... but strangely familiar. Now Europe should be concerned as they consider bringing Turkey into the EU. The Europeans are also calling for summits with the terrorists in Iraq? I'm waiting for Kerry to embrace that, as well.
In the meantime, we have a mainstream media that is infatuated with Kerry's debate style, but is not evaluating what he is actually saying. It is scary.