Bending the Third Rail
Because We Should, We Can, We Do
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Blurring the Con Trail
The Bush administration is incompetent. We know that. But the pure mendacity of never looking at unintended consequences is mind-boggling:
Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg News has another scoop that probably portends the most important strategic military development of our generation.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has given the Navy go ahead to develop a conventionally armed Trident missile. Two dozen existing nuclear-armed submarine-launched missiles will be converted to carry conventional warheads. The missiles will then be assigned "global strike" missions to allow quicker preemptive attacks.

For the first time since intercontinental ballistic missiles were "captured" in arms control treaties 40 years ago as unique and potentially destabilizing weapons, the United States will muddy the waters by modifying an existing nuclear weapon for use in day-to-day warfare.

The conversion of Trident missiles abandons the strict segregation of nuclear from conventional weapons.
In one fell-swoop, the Bush administration manages to 1) negate long-standing arms control treaties, 2) destabilize the use of nuclear weapons, 3) open the door and greatly increase the possiblity for a retaliation due to a mistaken nuclear attack and 4) further our international image as a bullying war-mongering nation through the use of uniliateral, "pre-emptive" attacks.

And why? Don't we have enough capability for covert attack?

This is all part of preparing to bomb Iran and North Korea into the stone-age without getting our hands dirty. But the destabilizing consequences of such action are enormous.

Swell.
Written at 10:23 AM by Greyhair.
4 comments
4 Comments:
Blogger Lynne said...
And they call the president of Iran a threat. This is unreal.
1:12 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Where is Jane Harman? Murtha? Other Democrats with military chops? If I were a Chinese general with an ICBM headed in my direction, not knowing if it was conventional or nuclear, would I fire a nuclear weapon back? I hope someone with sense, in the Republican party and Democratic party, calls out this nonsense and helps put a stop to it. McCain? Anyone?
7:18 PM  
Blogger AR1836 said...
The Russians used an ICBM to attack Chechens. "If Putin's gonna break a treaty, by golly, God wants ME to break a treaty!"--Pres. Cheney, er, Bush. (Note: Edited for language)
9:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
They are probably going to be utilized in conjunction with 'the rods from god' i.e. massive tungsten rods which utilize the kinetic energy from an sub-orbital re-entry to produce a near nuclear sized explosion on impact, and presumably are also capable of deep earth penetration. There has been previous discussion about a space-based version of this weapon, but utilizing submarine ballastic missiles as a delivery vehicle is both cheaper and has the advantage of surprise, i.e. launched from a Trident sub from 1000km away in the open ocean, leaves about 4 minutes to react. Another possibility would be to utilize multiple sequential impacts of rods to achieve very deep penetration capability

Proves yet again that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld and the other dispensationalist whackjobs in the current adminstration are clearly insane (i.e. the definition of insanity is doing the same thing ("preventative" wars) over and over again and expecting a different result), and have no intention of backing off their save-Israel-at-any-cost-to-the-US plan. The only good thing to say about this is that at least they seem to recognize (or have been informed by the Chinese and/or Russians) that using nukes for first strikes is still off the table.

Wouldn't be surprised if the Israelis also have similar weapons they plan to utilize against Iran.
5:30 PM  
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