I am come to send Fire on the earth; and what will I if (when I come) it be already kindled?...(Luke 12:49).

See I set before thee this day Life and Good, and Death and Evil.

In that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God (which means at the very least, to love all that God has created, to be in harmony with unfolding reality, and to harm with malice no living thing), to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and statutes and his judgments, THAT THOU MAYEST LIVE AND MULTIPLY: and the Lord thy God shall bless thee in the land (the State of Mind) whither thou goest to possess it.

But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods (other thought-forms and national philosophies, and those who espouse them), and serve them;

I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land, whither thou passest over Jordan to go to possess it.

I CALL HEAVEN AND EARTH TO RECORD THIS DAY AGAINST YOU, THAT I HAVE SET BEFORE YOU LIFE AND DEATH, blessing and cursing: THEREFORE CHOOSE LIFE, that both thou and thy seed may live...(Deuteronomy 30:15-20).

It was February 2, 2001, and I had been invited to travel to Portland, Maine, to attend the sentencing of 77 year old peace activist Philip Berrigan. Philip did not deny that he and other demonstrators broke through a fence at a Maryland Air National Guard base and damaged two A-10 Thunderbolts. Berrigan said that the A-10 aircraft use armor-piercing ammunition that contains depleted uranium which he believes is the source of Gulf War Syndrome and the cause of numerous deaths and deformities of adults and children in Iraq and in our soldiers. He told the judge, of comparable age, "I was acting according to my conscience and the precepts of non-violent principles and laws". Berrigan was sentenced along with Susan Crane, 57, to a year in Federal Prison. Would that he had been an Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, etc., criminal; or had been involved in the billions of the Savings and Loans heist (Neil Bush-Silvarado) he'd have been a free man.

Philip Berrigan and members of Plowshares, had found weapons of mass destruction, and symbolically went about destroying these annihilating weapons of mankind. Phil would have been lauded, had he found them in Iraq, but here on American soil, he was branded a criminal. Some weapons are more equal than others-it all depends where they are found.

It was a cold gray day. I'd never been to Portland, and gazed ever so briefly at the blur of blues, greens and netting, of various seafood restaurants and the choppy ocean waters beyond. There was a small band of supporters outside the courthouse. I thought to myself, watching the great love they had for one another, that the rest of the world would never see this grave injustice being perpetuated against this man of Forever Peace. I'd never met Philip Berrigan (though I read his books), and was quite taken with his gentle, giant, demeanor and front porch welcoming smile, that invited you into his life.

His blue eyes sparkled with some private mischief and his white hair was covered with a tweed cap. He seemed more intent on comforting his followers, than being dragged off to prison that day. I spoke briefly with him, impressed that he'd take the time. During the lunch break, the driver of the vehicle, in which we'd made the trip and I, stopped into a hole in the wall coffee shop. There at a table near the window, sat Philip, his "friends" and brother Daniel, eating clam chowder. No lavish last meal this. We bought coffee, and quickly left this small group to themselves, not wanting, as strangers, to intrude in their last moments together. I was secretly envious of the laughter, love, and peace that emanated from this band of peace activists. People you would want to know.

Confusing isn't it? The season identified as peace on earth to men of goodwill, with war raging, and local farmers, loggers, and truckers being sent off to this chaos for a year and a half! And so, for "freedom-peace-liberation-regime change", people of one land occupy another and kill and kill and kill. The men who make all the money from this war business, count their loot, buy stock, and vacation on the Riviera or exotic islands watching it all from a distance.

"This is the rule of love: the good that we desire for ourselves we desire for our neighbors also; and the evil that we are unwilling to undergo we wish to prevent from happening to our neighbor. All who love God will have such a desire toward everybody." (Augustine). We self-righteously denounce those, who in the name of conscience, would try to save mankind from the madness that has the very real potential to destroy us all. What juries and judges perceived as lawbreaking, "being a danger to the community", Philip Berrigan and his fellow activists for peace, saw as allegiance to international law and treaties forbidding nations to prepare for wars of annihilation. In a 1996 autobiography, Philip writes, "If a house full of children is burning, it is necessary to break down the door to rescue them. In our trials the government refused to allow the necessary defense, arguing we could not prove that nuclear war was imminent. We explained that nuclear war could happen at any time. It was imminent because the government was designing, building and deploying nuclear weapons. It was imminent because our air, water and food supply were being poisoned with radioactive isotopes. All weapons, nuclear and conventional, reflect the spirit of murder, rather than hope."

From the right, Philip and friends were ridiculed as professional prisoners, whose actions had no effect on public policy. From the left, he and his friends were accused of destroying property-damaging weapons, and that this was violence. "It is a curious argument", Philip wrote, "one I've heard many times. Warheads whose sole purpose is to vaporize cities are hardly to be thought of as legitimate property. Bombs that indiscriminately murder millions of men, women and children are not property." Linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky called Philip and his brother Daniel, "heroic individuals, willing to do what many realize should be done, regardless of the personal cost, with a simplicity of manner. There are not too many people of whom this can be said." And so Philip Berrigan died Dec 6, 2002, having spent years in prison for his beliefs. People know the name of an O.J. Simpson, a Koby Bryant, a Michael Jackson, but Philip, trying to save mankind of annihilation and shredded children never made the top of the news. His final message was left unfinished. I sincerely believe because we have been left to finish it.

We live in a world of approximately 6 billion people. On the one hand you have in comparison, a small cadre of a few thousand plus; who in their summits, meetings, dinners, gatherings, board rooms, war rooms and secret sessions decide who will live and who will die; who is expendable collateral damage, who are the herds of human resources to be dumbed down, to compliant passive servitude; what minerals, lands, timbers, waters and natural resources will go to such and such a conglomerate, dividing up the plunder.

Then, there are the hundreds of thousands, millions really; the hirelings, who carry out the messy part of the business in dispossessing people's from their lands, disappearing some, bombing others, and beating and gassing those who dare to dissent in the streets. There's a pecking order here, with some attaining high office and appointments, cabinet positions, agency heads and mouthpieces. Others include attorneys, medical officials, scientists,, military commanders, police departments, media personalities, regulatory personnel and the like.

We applaud the peacemakers and sometimes even attend organized events. The well rounded life should have us involved in some kind of community action. But there it ends. We object to injustice, to war, to hunger and people being dispossessed. In our sympathy, it is possible to encompass the whole of humanity, costing us nothing! Our outcry, our anger and outrage; is but for the moment, having no lasting effect. We protest feebly. Least in our protesting there might come a cost to our personal lives, our comfort zones, our standing in the community; what will the neighbors, church members or relatives say?

Perfect Love casts out all fear, and here may lie the obstruction, the barrier to our making a real difference. How can we honestly say to ourselves that we love those that are thousands of miles away, whom we will never meet, let alone have to feed, comfort and grieve with? If we can't even love those in our communities, how can we love the stranger and cry out for them? There are the excuses. We are offended at the lack of culture, the social standing, the language of another, who may speak out of turn (according to our way of seeing things). We find this the perfect reason to voice our righteous indignation; as if we were without flaw, without blemish, without fault! With a harumph, we dismiss anyone who dares to offend our expectations or sensibilities. It's called hypocrisy and the easy way out. We are called to love the unlovable and to touch the untouchable; not merely those who meet our imaginary plumb line. Would that we would manage such passion and outrage over real issues; such as the homeless, hungry, suffering in our own midst; due to the corruption of the system that serves the interests of the idle rich, powerful and well-connected! But no, it's much easier to fault those of lesser credentials, the powerless. No cost here.

Love asks that you give up fear, resentment, shame, hurt, and any expectation of reciprocated love. Love asks that you forgive all wrongs done. This does not mean you forget harm done or continue to place yourself in harm's way. You are to claim full responsibility for your acts. Love commands of us that we simply give of our hearts freely and unconditionally.

Vishal Ghariwala tells us, "Love is without a doubt the greatest gift of the Divine. Love is truly Divine. It represents love of the highest form; Unconditional Love. Many of us have a very vague idea of what unconditional love is. The reason is simple. Society never gave any importance to the term, "unconditional'. When two good friends become sore enemies, the love which once existed between them often miraculously disappears, simply because of the subconscious agreement based on CONDITIONS such as; this friendship is valid if and on if .....and if and only if....and if and only if. If any of these CONDITIONS are not met, then....we shall see about it."

"Love will always be a weakness as long as it is conditional. Love which hurts is CONDITIONAL love. In a loving relationship, when something happens, contradicts your 'expectation' and 'preconceived' thoughts, you experience a state of shock and disbelief. Hidden underneath is anger, which will almost always be transparent. Anger results because reality contradicted your idealistic thoughts. You directly experienced what you thought was impossible. The idealistic thoughts somehow became CONDITIONS that supported your relationship. When those CONDITIONS failed, your emotions were crippled. And you blamed it all on love. Nonetheless, it must be realized that love cannot hurt, because Love is divine. If you feel and experience pain in a loving relationship or friendship, then it simply means that there is a dose of CONDITIONAL attachment and judgment present."

"The pain which results when two people separate, results because a connection is broken. Imagine a cord, something like an umbilical cord, connecting you to your friend or partner. Now imagine a pair of scissors cutting that cord. That is the reason for the pain., if there is no attachment, there would be minimal or no pain at all. But then again, it there such a thing as deep love with non-attachment? Indeed there is such a thing. However, it is extremely difficult to find a person who exhibits this type of love. Once you realize in truth that everything in the cosmos is interconnected, you realize that you will always have the inner-connection."...

Several months after the Man of Peace died, I again visited Portland, Maine, and took a picture of a dancing bird in the light. I am reminded, when looking at it, of...Philip and (his) message to us all. In the midst of citizens being beaten, gassed, (democracy run amuck) and shot with stun guns by fellow citizens (?) in armored black; because they seek peace and a world of economic equity; the mayhem of holiday shopping distracts from the crisis at hand. And so in the blare of Jingle Bell Rock, the bleached specter from Never-Never Land, warnings of plague, plans for what new experience to seek, new lands to travel, the drum beat of war, and shredded children; we miss the gifts of real value right in our midst in the giving of unconditional love towards our fellow man. You don't "Shock and Awe" people into Democracy or liberating love! The Man of Peace now with the Child of Light telling you so. They are gone, but not their message. Philip left us to finish the message. "Do you hear what I hear........."

YE SHALL KINDLE NO FIRE THROUGHOUT YOUR HABITATIONS ON THE SABBATH DAY...(Exodus 35:3; Hebrews 4).

For our God is a CONSUMING FIRE...(Deuteronomy 4:24; Hebrews 12:29...KJV).

And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning made them Male and Female (Positive and Negative principles).

And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?

Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. WHAT THEREFORE GOD HATH JOINED TOGETHER, LET NOT MAN PUT ASUNDER (let not man Break apart).

They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?

He said unto them, Moses BECAUSE OF THE HARDNESS OF YOUR HEARTS suffered you to put away your wives: but FROM THE BEGINNING it was not so...(Matthew 19:1-8).

THEIR QUEST HELPED CHANGE THE WORLD

Los Alamos, N.M.__It was the quest for "the Gadget" that united hundreds of ordinary men and women and a few geniuses on a mountaintop in the middle of nowhere 40 years ago. At dawn on July 16, 1945, The Gadget -- nobody referred to it as a bomb -- was detonated in the southern New Mexico desert known as Jornado del Muerto, THE JOURNEY OF DEATH. The code name was "TRINITY."

There, the makers of man's first ultimate weapon gawked at a strange mushroom cloud. None of them had been sure the thing would even explode, let alone turn the earth at ground zero into green glass and change the course of history. It was less than a month before Hiroshema.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of THE MANHATTAN PROJECT. was reminded of a sentence from Sanskrit literature: "I AM BECOME DEATH, THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS."

THE LIGHT WAS SEEN NEARLY 300 MILES AWAY

by Judy Giannettino

TRINITY SITE, N.M.__Radiation warning signs posted on a mesh fence are about the only evidence today of the violence unleashed here 40 years ago...

The Road to Trinity Site.

This isolated stretch of desert on the northern fringes of what is now White Sands Missile Range has a place in history because of a brief moment in the pre-dawn hours of July 16, 1945 -- the explosion of the first atomic device. THE BEGINNING OF THE NUCLEAR AGE CHANGED THE WORLD FOREVER.

As the countdown to change began, the bomb sat in a steel cab atop a 100-foot tower, awaiting an electrical signal that would set off its combination of plutonium, explosive and detonators. Only a few scientists and politicians had any knowledge of the bomb's development or the hopes that it might provide a way to end World War II....

All waited in the Darkness to see if their theory that atoms of certain heavy elements COULD BE SPLIT at once, RELEASING VAST QUANTITIES OF ENERGY AND CREATING AN IMMENSE EXPOSION, WOULD HOLD TRUE...

Zero hour told them they were right.

The blast lit the desert sky of south-central New Mexico as never before. A MASS OF FLAME hurled rocks and debris into the air. A deafening roar filled the valley as a mushroom cloud slowly rose overhead. The steel tower was vaporized. Only a crater in the ground showed where it had stood...

The brilliant Light was seen nearly 300 miles away -- as far north as Santa Fe and as far south as El Paso, Texas. Windows rattled in Silver City, more than 100 miles away, and in Gallup, nearly 200 miles to the northwest. A woman driving near El Paso saw the sky turn from deep black to bright white in a matter of seconds....

Since the detonation, Trinity Site has become a tourist attraction, though it has returned to its original state -- dusty, windswept land dotted with desert flora. The crater caused by the blast has been filled in.

__________

"Prometheus, son of Iapatus, surpassing all in cunning, you are glad you have outwitted me AND STOLEN FIRE -- a great plague to you yourself and to men shall be. But I will give men as a price for Fire an evil in which they may be glad of heart when they embrace their own destruction" Hesiod's Works and Days.

"They have one love and that is for weapons; ever more horrible are these weapons UNTIL THEY REACH FOR THE ONE THAT IS ULTIMATE. Should they use that there will be no forgiveness in that vale where there is no turning. USING SUCH A WEAPON TO MAKE MAN OVER IS REACHING INTO HEAVEN FOR THE GODHEAD." He Walked the Americas, by L. Taylor Hansen, pp.167.

The Burden of Dumah (Isaiah 21:11; Revelation 18:4-8...KJV).

For the Day of the Lord will come as a thief in the Night, in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervant heat, the earth also, and the works that are therein shall be burned up...(2 Peter 3:10-12).

"Carter heard Truman say over the destroyer's loudspeaker, 'IF THEY DO NOT NOW ACCEPT TERMS, THEY MAY EXPECT A RAIN OF RUIN FROM THE AIR, THE LIKES OF WHICH HAVE NEVER BEEN SEEN ON EARTH.' There were looks of disbelief and wonderment around Jimmy as Truman's words sank in. 'THE FORCE FROM WHICH THE SUN DRAWS ITS POWER HAS BEEN LOOSED AGAINST THOSE WHO BROUGHT WAR TO THE FAR EAST'..."

__________

"'Brother!' she yelled, 'Look! Look! Over there!' I looked toward the mountain, where she was pointing. What a sight! The biggest thing I ever saw, the biggest that ever was, was sticking way up into the sky from the other side of the mountain. IT WAS LIKE A CLOUD, BUT IT WAS LIKE A PILLAR OF FIRE TOO. It looked hard and soft and alive and dead all at the same time, and beautiful and ugly too. THE LIGHT IT SENT OUT WAS ALL THE COLORS OF THE RAINBOW. It almost blinded me with the glare. It kept getting taller and taller all the time, and wider and wider, twisting and rolling around just like smoke from a chimney. IT WAS GROWING FROM THE TOP, I MEAN THE TOP WAS GETTING PUSHED UP FROM INSIDE. Then the top began to spread out, so that it looked like an umbrella opening up...Kayano said it was all RED when she first saw it AND SHE SAID IT HAD A SHAPE LIKE A TREE, but by the time I saw it, it was very swollen and beginning to get whitish.

Where we were. we were about three miles from it...I began to be worried about my mother because the thing was in the direction of Urakami. (His mother was killed by the bomb). I was just burning up inside, I was so worried. I couldn't stand it. I ran back down to the river and jumped right into the water to cool off.

After a few minutes I saw something coming up the road along the river that looked like a parade of roast chickens. Some of them kept asking for 'Water! Water!' I wasn't burning up any more. I shivered. I ran back to the cottage. I would rather blind myself than ever to have to see such a sight again."

The Nagasaki Peace Declaration
August 9, 2002

Fifty-seven years ago today, August 9th, the City of Nagasaki was instantly transformed into ruins. Dropped from an altitude of 9,600 meters, a single atomic bomb was detonated 500 meters above the ground, emitting heat rays of several thousand degrees Celsius and creating a blast winds of tremendous force, unleashed against a civilian population of women, the elderly, and blameless children. Some 74,000 people were killed, and 75,000 injured. Radiation-induced leukemia and cancer have gradually claimed many more lives since. Even more than half a century later, the survivors of the atomic bomb suffer constant anxiety over their health, and are stalked by death.

If the instruments of indiscriminate mass destruction known as nuclear weapons were ever to be used again, the environment would be destroyed and the very survival of all humanity would be jeopardized. The citizens of Nagasaki, having themselves experienced the tragedy of an atomic bombing firsthand, have continued to appeal to the world for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, there remain in existence some 30,000 nuclear warheads, each with unimaginably more destructive power than the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. Most of these weapons are in a state of immediate launch readiness.

Terrorist attacks against the United States were staged on September 11th of last year, and we were outraged at this wanton destruction of life and property. International tensions have since been heightened by the ensuing attacks against Afghanistan and intensified strife in the Middle East, as well as military clashes between India and Pakistan that have threatened to devolve into nuclear conflict. In the midst of such serious international conditions, the government of the United States has unilaterally withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia in the name of terrorist countermeasures, and is moving forward with missile defense programs. The United States has also rejected ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and has suggested the possibilities of restarting the production of plutonium triggers, developing a new generation of compact nuclear weapons, and engaging in preemptive nuclear strikes. Other concepts, such as the redeployment of many warheads subject to deactivation according to the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty with Russia, also run counter to the disarmament efforts of international society. We are appalled by this series of unilateral actions taken by the government of the United States, actions which are also being condemned by people of sound judgment throughout the world.

Domestically, comments by leaders of the Japanese government concerning reconsideration of the Three Non-Nuclear Principles have also stabbed at the hearts of Nagasaki citizens. As the only nation ever to have sustained nuclear attack, it behooves Japan to stand at the forefront of nuclear arms abolition. For this reason, the Three Non-Nuclear Principles stating that Japan will not possess, manufacture or allow nuclear weapons into the country must be passed into law without delay. The Nagasaki City Council has adopted a resolution calling for such legislation. The Japanese government should embark on the creation of a Northeast Asian nuclear-weapon-free zone, and should clearly present to international society a posture of non-reliance on the "nuclear umbrella." At the same time, we call on our nation's government to take steps to enhance the welfare of aging atomic bomb survivors residing both within and outside of Japan.

At home, citizens and local governments in Nagasaki are working together to host a worldwide NGO gathering for the second time in November 2003, and preparations are proceeding apace. As of today, no fewer than 80% of Japan's local governments have declared themselves to be in opposition to nuclear weapons. We are forming linkages among NGOs, local governments, and United Nations institutions, and we are resolved to work for the building of a peaceful society.

The hibakusha atomic bomb survivors desire that they be the final victims of atomic weapons. May our young people inherit this desire for peace, and may they themselves consider what is to be done, take action, and pass on this spirit to the future. Many of Nagasaki's young people are involved in volunteer activities for peace. The City of Nagasaki supports the expansion of these efforts, and is promoting the Nagasaki Peace Education Program for the training and development of youth who are motivated to take autonomous action.

The abolition of nuclear arms through mutual understanding and dialogue is an absolute precondition for the realization of a peaceful world. It is up to us, ordinary citizens, to rise up and lead the world to peace.

Nagasaki must remain the final site of the calamity of nuclear attack. Today, on the 57th anniversary of the atomic bombing, we pray for the repose of those who died, and, in the name of the citizens of the City of Nagasaki, I declare our undying commitment to the complete and permanent elimination of nuclear weapons.

Iccho Itoh
Mayor of Nagasaki

Across the street from the White House, since 1981.

STALIN SMILES BLANDLY

by James F. Byrnes

President Truman and I discussed whether or not we were obligated to inform Stalin that we had succeeded in developing a powerful weapon and shortly would drop a bomb in Japan. Though there was an understanding that the Soviets would enter the war with Japan three months after Germany surrendered, which would make their entrance about the middle of August...the president and i hoped that Japan would surrender before then. However...we agreed that because this was uncertain, and because the Soviets might soon be our allies in that war, the President should inform Stalin of our intentions, but do so ina casual way.

Upon the adjournment of the afternoon session, when we arose from the table, the President, accompanied by our interpreter...walked around to Stalin's chair and said, "You may be interested to know that we have developed a new and powerful weapon and within a few days intend to use it against Japan." I watched Stalin's expression as this was being interpreted, and was surprised that he smiled blandly and said only a few words. When the President and I reached our car, he said that Stalin had replied only, "THAT'S FINE. I HOPE YOU MAKE GOOD USE OF IT AGAINST THE JAPANESE."

I did not believe Stalin grasped the full importance of the President's statement, and thought that on the next day there would be some inquiry about this "new and powerful weapon," but I was mistaken. I thought then and even now believe that Stalin did not appreciate the importance of that information...but there are others who beieve that...he was already aware of the atom bomb.

WHO BROKE THE EVIL EMPIRE?

by Peter Schweizer

The Reagan cold warriors, new evidence shows, knew exactly what they were doing, and why.

Five years have now passed since the Berlin Wall was breached, the first material sign of the Soviet empire's decline and fall. As the annals of current history continue to be written, a great geopolitical riddle remains: Did the Reagan administration somehow trigger the collapse of THE EVIL EMPIRE.

Shortly after the demise of the Soviet Union, Strobe Talbott...said: "The difference from the Kremlin standpoint...between the conservative Republican Administration and a liberal Democratic Administration was not that great. The Soviet Union collapsed, the Cold war ended almost overwhelmingly because of internal contradictions...And even if Jimmy Carter had been reelected and been followed by Walter Mondale, something like what we have now seen probably would have happened."

But a number of former Soviet officials don't see it that way. "American policy in the 1980s was a catalyst for the collapse of the Soviet Union," is the blunt assessment of former KGB General Oleg Kalugin. he adds, "Reagan and his views disturbed the Soviet government so much they bordered on hysteria. There were cables about an imminent crisis. He was seen as a very serious threat."..."There was a widespread concern and actual fear of Reagan on the central Committee. He was the last thing they wanted to see in Washington."

...There is new evidence that the Reagan Administration was far more active than had previously been believed. A paper trail of top-secret presidential directives indicates that in 1982, President Reagan and a few key advisors began mapping out a strategic offensive designed to attack the fundamental weaknesses of the Soviet system.

Two canons of Reagan thinking drove the strategy. The first was the president's well-known anti-Communism, EXPRESSED IN MORAL TERMS OF GOOD AND EVIL. He did not believe that Communist regimes were "just another form of government," as George Kennen had once put it, but a monstrous abberation. When the words "evil empire" rolled from his lips, Reagan meant it. But the other important ingredient in his thinking...was his belief in the profound weakness of the Soviet Union. Some of his public pronouncements SEEM RATHER PROPHETIC IN RETROSPECT. "The years ahead will be great ones for our country, for the cause of freedom and the spread of civilization," he told students at Notre Dame..."The West will not contain Communism it will transcend Communism. We will not bother to denounce it, we'lll dismiss it as a sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written."

WE MUST DEFEND AMERICA

A New Strategy for National Survival

Daniel O. Graham. Project Director High Frontier

PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN

March 23, 1983

"LET ME SHARE WITH YOU A VISION OF THE FUTURE WHICH OFFERS HOPE. It is that we embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive...what if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack; that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?

Would it not be better to save lives than to avenge them?...My fellow Americans, tonight we are launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history. There will be risks, and results take time. But with your support I know we can do it."

And Cush begat Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one in the earth.

He was a mighty hunter (of souls) before the Lord, wherefore it is said EVEN AS NIMROD, the mighty hunter before the Lord...(Genesis 10:8-11).

__________

"Now it was Nimrod who excited them against God...He persuaded men to ascribe their strength and happiness to their own courage...He also gradually changed the government into tyranny (as is the American government today a subtle tyranny of both Liberalism and Conservatism, but nonetheless a police and military state)--seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into constant dependence upon his power. He also said he would be revenged on God, if He should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower (a national engine, and an economic structure) too high for the waters to reach, (and, of course, an army too powerful for God to destroy)...The multitude followed." Antiquities of the Jews I.IV.2.

REAGAN CITES SCRIPTURE AS BACKING ARMS OUTLAY

by Lou Cannon

President Reagan asserted twice yesterday that U.S. arms spending is sanctioned by scripture and said defense budget cuts would weaken the nation in the face of the "unprecedented military buildup of the Soviet Union."

"You might be interested to know that the scriptures are on our side in this," Reagan told a group of business and trade representatives in the White House. "Luke 14:31, in which Jesus in talking to the disciples spoke about a king who might be contemplating going to war against another king with his 10,000 men, but he sits down and counsels how good he's going to do against the other fellows 20,000 and then says he may have to send a delegation to talk peace terms."...

Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with Twenty thousand...(Luke 14:31).

The chariots of God are Twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the Lord is among them, as in Sinai, in the holy place...(Psalm 68:17).

(Twisting the meaning of these texts, and failing completely to understand the direct connection between the text in Luke and the Book of Psalms Reagan continued): "Well I don't think we ever want to be in a position of being only half as strong and having to send a delegation to negotiate under those circumstances -- peace terms -- with the Soviet Union."

In his speech to the business and trade representatives Reagan expanded upon this passage with an analogy to the upcoming arms control talks with the Soviet Union: "Ultimately, our security and our hopes for success at the arms reduction talks hinge on the determination we show here to continue our program to rebuild and refortify our defenses," the president said. (continued)...

DRAGON KILLER

LONDON__President Reagan arrived here yesterday confident he had slain "a few dragons" during his contentious summit discussions on human rights with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...He told Gorbachev, "It is fitting that we are ending our visit, as we began it, in this hall -- named for the order of St. George," the dragon slayer.

"I would like to think that our efforts during these past few days have slayed a few dragons and advanced the struggle against the evils that threaten mankind -- threats to peace and to liberty." Ronald Reagan.

TWO DANGEROUS DOCTRINES

by Tom Wicker

President Reagan has now proclaimed and presumably bases his policy upon two dangerous doctrines: The Soviet Union is "the focus of evil in the modern world" and "an evil empire," while Americans are "enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus Christ to oppose...with all our might" the "sin and evil in the world."

And then shall that (truly) Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy WITH THE BRIGHTNESS OF HIS COMING.

Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders.

And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish: because: because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie...(2 Thessalonians 2:1-12).

For there is no power but of God: THE POWERS THAT BE ARE ORDAINED OF GOD...(Romans 13:1-7; Joel 3:9-14...KJV).

REAGAN, GOD, AND THE BOMB

From Myth to Policy in the Nuclear Arms Race

by F. H. Knelman

THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE: REAGAN and the WRONGS of the RIGHT

The strange almalgam of forces that brought and returned Ronald Reagan to power has sometimes been collectively referred to as the New Right. This umbrella term is appropriate in some senses, but the various groups subsumed under the term are far from homogenous. Their membership ranges widely, from the small group of influential security intellectuals (the neo-cons of the present Bush Administration), to veterans of the Old Right, to the Moral Majority of fundamentalist evangelicals or electronic pastors. This "congregation" has played a particularly crucial role in the political action movements of the right. Their literal and often liberal interpretation of the Bible, coupled to a blind and absolute belief in the Word, directly relates to the issue of nuclear war.

Indeed He is...Nay, they deny the hour: but we have prepared a blazing Fire for such as deny the hour...(Sura XXV.2; Malachi 4:1; Hebrews 12:29)

...Reagan is not the first president to claim God as his personal and national ally; but he is probably the first president to openly write religion into politics, to cater to religious fanatics, to declare that "we have driven God from the classroom"...The ecology behind that tragic trinity of Reagan, God, and the Bomb is possibly more sinister than the doctrines of the scholars of apocalypse in the defense establishment. (continued)...

Here, of course, is the failing of liberal intellectuals. The Right believes God is on their side. The Liberal-Left on the other hand, believes that man is all-sufficient, and has no respect for the words of the prophets, or for the very Presence of God in all of these matters at all. And while the Liberal-Left has the Reagan-Bush gang in its sights, and sees it for the danger to world stability that it is, it totally fails to give an account of itself--or for the equally-dangerous, but far more subtle, Carter factor in world affairs....

JIMMY CARTER: "Nowadays, one of the most hotly debated historical questions is whether President Truman made the right decision in ordering the atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima...The horrors of a nuclear attack are being compared with what might have happened during weeks of massive bombing with conventional forc, followed by the mainland invasion. In 1984, I was the first senior American statesman to visit Hiroshima, and I was deeply moved by the remaining evidence of destruction, and the estimates of 66,000 deaths from the attack. Clearly this was a devastating military blow with horrific human consequences. STILL, I BELIEVE THAT TRUMAN'S DECISION TO USE THE BOMB WAS CORRECT. REMEMBER, WE WERE IN A DECLARED WAR, DEFENDING DEMOCRACY, OUR NATION, AND OUR CITIZENS...

Although most Japanes strongly disagree, it seems to me, that THIS DIFFICULT DECISION HAD TWO OVERRIDING BENEFITS. Much greater invasion casualties were avoided, and the terrible evidence of atomic power has proved to be a major deterrent to its subsequent use. THUS, IN THE CONTEXT OF THE VAST, ALMOST UNIMAGINABLE EVIL OF A WORLD WAR, THE LESSER EVIL OF USING THE FIRST ATOMIC WEAPON MAY HAVE BENEFITED HUMANITY IN THE LONG RUN--THOUGH AT AN AWFUL PRICE.

UNLLIKE SOME PEOPLE OF FAITH, I DON'T BELIEVE THAT PACIFISM IS A NECESSARY ELEMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. This is a choice I made when I joined the navy. I KNEW THERE WOULD BE TIMES, DURING WAR, WHEN I MIGHT HAVE TO TAKE HUMAN LIFE IN DEFENSE OF MY COUNTRY...

...Had my Christianity been of the type that the Quakers and some others espouse, I would have been a conscientious objector rather than serve in the military. (I might also never have accepted political office, EXACTLY! since this could have required me, as president, to send soldiers to their death). BUT PACIFISM WAS NOT MY CHOICE.

SACRIFICING LIVES IN DEFENSE OF OUR NATION IS SOMETIMES NECESSARY, and as a submarine officer and then as commander in chief during the Cold War years, I WAS PREPARED TO USE THE WEAPONS AT OUR DISPOSAL to destroy Soviet submarine OR RESPOND TO A NUCLEAR MISSILE OR ANY OTHER MILITARY ATTACK THAT THREATENED OUR NATION. THIS DECISION APPLIED A DIRECT NUCLEAR RESPONSE AGAINST SOVIET TARGETS...

Even before my inauguration as president, I was thoroughly briefed about our military forces, and I consulted then and throughout my term with wise and knowledgeable people who shared my cautious approach to the use of our military power. MY PRIMARY COMMITMENT WAS TO PROTECT AMERICA'S INTERESTS while living peacefully with the Soviet Union. IF PEACEKEEPING EFFORTS FAILED, AS HAPPENED BEFORE WORLD WARS I AND II, I WAS PREPARED TO USE FORCE IF NECESSARY. In addition, the mutual know-ledge of our of our mighty response capability was the greatest possible deterrence to an enemy attack and the destructiveness of the alternative--A THIRD WORLD WAR. THUS, ALTHOUGH THE LIFE-AND-DEATH POWER I HELD AS COMMANDER IN CHIEF WAS SOBERING, I WAS, AND AM CONVINCED OF THE MORAL RIGHTNESS OF MAINTAINING AMERICA'S MILITARY STRENGTH." The Personal Beliefs of Jimmy Carter, by Jimmy Carter, pp.97-101.

__________

(continued)...The Reagan cosmology with its utter simplicity and depth of belief -- uncluttered by any rational process of judgment, never confused by the facts, never obliged to follow the dictates of evidence -- incorporates the more dangerous quality of the apostles of the New Right. The politics of the sophisticated "Wizards of Armageddon" who wrote the script for the secret agenda merges with the world view of the fundamentalist true believers who anticipate the "Final Days." Reagan supporters share their dedication to destroy the "evil empire," if necessary through the battle of the final days on this earth. This binding dedication is strong enough to overcome their differences, be they religious, intellectual, or economic, and create the hard-line, undifferentiated, ultraconservative perception of the Soviet threat.

Reagan-think (and now Bush-think) propounds a world view of simple dichotomies, distilled into the ultimate struggle between good and evil. Reagan is the piper who plays the seductive tune. The nuclear arsenal provides the instrument for a self-fulfilling vision of destruction.

RELIGION AND NUCLEAR WAR

The position that fundamentalist/born-again religious organizations have taken on nuclear war stands in stark contrast to that of other churches in the West. In the vanguard of peace, the World Council of Churches and the Catholic Church have both condemned nuclear war. The Lutheran Churches of the Netherlands and the two Germanys have also played a prominant role in the peace movement. The Catholic Church and other religious bodies in Central and Latin America and the Third World have more often placed human justice on the top of their agenda and provided martyrs for this cause. People facing the continual torments of hunger, poverty, deprivation, and dispossession find it difficult, if not impossible, to relate to any larger issue of mass destruction or extinction. Still, many groups and individuals in the Third World have shown their concern and become part of the global peace network...

Roman Catholic bishops of the U.S. took a surprising, courageous, and incisive position and have spoken out against nuclear war with vigor and clarity. This provides hope that moral vitality still persists in American life. It stands in sharp contrast to the moral position of the Moral Majority and their electronic churches...

Presidents from Truman to Reagan have invoked God, good, and evil in the name of the U.S.'s mission to be superior in nuclear arms, remain superior, and, if necessary, fight and win a nuclear war...

...Nixon's attitude toward the Soviet Union indicated at least a level of pragmatism...but in the voices of Ronald Reagan, Caspar Weinberger, and the unholy alliance of the New Right -- the Born-Again movement, the "Moral Majority," and their psychotically anti-Soviet advisers -- any hint of pragmatism or politics disappears, drowned out by the shrill, clear voices of true believers, the nuclear holy cruaders. This alliance of the ultra-conservatives, fundamentalists, and scholars of apocalypse links nuclear armament to moral rearmament and crusades for a holy Christian war against "godless communism." Reagan's favorite phrase.

They have butressed their preaching with plans for a huge arms build-up to fight and win any nuclear war or to destroy Soviet communism by blackmail, coercion, or economic suffocation. Their cliche-and-slogan-filled rhetoric tragically reflects a simplistic world view untainted by the complexity of reality (the author himself does not understand what he is saying here...2 Thessalonians 1:4-10...KJV). The danger lies in the sincerity of their belief. . When Reagan said, "It is time for us to start a (military) build-up and it is time for us to build to the point that no other nation on this earth will ever dare TO RAISE A HAND AGAINST US, and in this way we will preserve the peace, he really meant it. It is necessary to make this link between Reagan's and Weinberger's fundamentalists beliefs, the organized campaign against secularism, ultraconservatism, and the military and other policies of the administration...

Reagan and Bush...Revelation 13:7-11.

...When Reagan spoke at the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, he deliberately linked the belief in God to opposition to a nuclear freeze, and to support of a massive build-up in U.S. arms. He said, "There is sin and evil in the world and we are enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it, should deterrence fail." Reagan went on to say that "Soviet communism is the force of evil in the modern world...(they) possess the aggresive instincts of evil in the modern world." Lewis comments, "But it is not funny, What is the world to think when the greatest of powers is led by a man who applies to the most difficult human problem a simplistic theology, one in fact rejected by most theologians?" Can the concept of good and evil be applied "to the contenteous technical particulars of arms programs...or whether 10,000 nuclear warheads are enough, whether the United States needs a first-strike weapon against the Soviet Union...(or) whether a nuclear freeze is likely to make the world more or less safe?"...

REAGAN JOKE "TOO BASE" SOVIETS SAY

WASHINGTON (UPI)__President Reagan made light of the controversy over his quip about bombing the Soviet Union Thursday and sources said White House officials hope to tighten internal procedures to avoid another embarrassing incident. "The lesson was learned," one source said, "and the White House has made clear they don't want to see it happen again."

Reagan was overheard making the joke as he warmed up for his weekly radio address at his California ranch Saturday. "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes," he deadpanned. The quip provoked a diplomatic and political flap...

MOSCOW (AP)__President Reagan's joke about bombing the Soviet Union reflects a "sacred dream" of the American leader and a state of mind "too base" for the president of a great country," a Soviet television commentator said yesterday.

...The U.S. has long rejected deterrence in favor of a warfighting doctrine. At various times, Robert McNamara, James Schlesinger, Donald Rumsfeld (yes the very same), and Harold Brown preferred the "strategic doctrine" of a limited nuclear war. FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER GAVE THIS DOCTRINE SUBSTANCE IN HIS PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE (PD-59). Harold Brown, secretary of defense under Carter, used the expression "countervailing" strategy, which really meant that the U.S. must develop the capacity to "prevail" at any level of escalation in a nuclear conflict. Supporters of Brown's strategy argued that it had merit for deterrence, although the more sane, in their moments of candor, expressed doubt that a nuclear war could be "surgically controlled." No such doubts cloud the official policy of the Reagan administration. Armed with the primitive belief that God is not only on their side, but also guiding their mission, they have developed policies and plans to fight and win a limited, protracted, or all-out nuclear war.

In its most frightening aspect, the Reagan administration couples its warfighting policy with a fundamentalist, religious world-view. The end of the world is engrained in the minds of the reborn. Armageddon is not a mere tenuous prophecy, but an absolute prediction. For key members of the administration, Armageddon is the basis of policy. In a radio interview on "Washington Talk," Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was asked if he believed the world was going to end and if so, "Will it be by an act of God or an act of man?" Weinberger replied "I have read the book of Revelation and, yes, I believe the world is going to end -- by an act of God I hope...I worry that we will not have time to get strong enough...I fear we will not be ready. I think time is running out...but I have faith." Interior Secretary James Watt stands on record with the same belief, and thus his policies were designed to make the environment expendable. One hundred religious leaders accused the Reagan administration of taking the position that "reconciliation with America's adversaries is ultimately futile." (As one discovers the mind-set of the Reagan administration, they should immediately think of the mind-set of the present Bush administration. The last is the brainchild of the first). At a conference of religious leaders in the Washington Hotel in 1984, The Christic Institute claimed to have collected eleven statements by Reagan that suggested the imminence of Armegeddon. In the sacond Mondale-Reagan debate, Ronnie characteristically brushed the charge aside, but Rabbi Bricker claimed Mr. Reagan had "talked about it in a serious frightning way." The internal logic is terrifying; if the world is going to end and if God is on your side, then, "an act of man" becomes "an act of God."

(To reiterate: In our ongoing indictment of the American political and religious order, we would desire that our brothers and sisters on the Intellectual Left Hand Side of the American body-politic not be so cock-certain in their attitude toward the Right, for they share the very same disregard for the words of the prophets and the same spiritual blindness toward the spiritual "reality" of things as they are unfolding in the world at this time. [October, 2003]. God is that Reality. What humanity is doing collectively God is doing singularly. Because men love war, and because they will not cease from it, God performs the desire of their heart. [Of course it is not as simple as this. The very process of Creation itself is unfolding before our eyes...Genesis 1:26]. Those on the Left rationalize war in a different way, and for different reasons, but they make recourse to it nonetheless. Not seeing God in ALL things -- not able to grasp the spiritual equation, not realizing why God sent the transforming Christ-spirit into the earth -- they have deluded themselves with talk of "Just Wars." War is war, and the plain simple fact is that God IS a God of War...Exodus 15:3. God IS a Consuming Fire...Deuteronomy 4:24. War is only justified when God wages it, not when men wage it in return. Thus the words):

Follow PEACE (absolutely and unconditionally) with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord...(Hebrews 12:14).

For a Fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell (for this is where we are), and consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.

I will heap mischief upon them; I will spend my arrows upon them.

They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust (we diagnose these things as cultural depravities and human psychoses)...

To me belongeth vengeance, and recompense; THEIR FOOT SHALL SLIDE IN DUE TIME; FOR THE DAY OF THEIR CALAMITY IS AT HAND, and the things that shall come upon them make haste...(Deuteronomy 32:16-42).

THE BATTLE OF ARMAGEDDON

The current fundamentalist theology of Armageddon is convoluted and complicated. The "born-again" group expressly believes that at present the world is in an age of satanic control...Shortly, Soviet, European, Iranian, Arabian, African, and Chinese armies will invade ISRAEL and be totally destroyed, possibly by a nuclear war. A remnant of Israelites will be saved to accept Jesus as their messiah. Christ and an army of saints will then return to earth to punish the unbelievers and destroy the forces of anti-Christ in the "big one, the battle of Armageddon...Reagan has been quoated as saying "Never has there been a time in which so many (biblical) prophecies are coming together. There have been times in the past when people thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but never anything like this," and "Jerry, I sometimes believe we are heading very fast for Armageddon."

Jerry Falwell, head of the Moral Majority, predicted the Russians would have come from across the Mexican border by 1981, "if Reagan had not been elected in 1980." In an interview with Robert Scheer, Falwell stated,, "We believe that Russia...is going to move in on the Middle East, and particularly Israel, because of their hatred of the Jew, and that it is at that time that all hell will break out. And it is at that time when I believe there will be some nuclear holocaust on this earth." Falwell, like Reagan, denied all all this on behalf of most evangelicals; however, the statement of one hundred religious leaders at the Christic Institute's conference correctly identified the Religious Right as proclaming, through some of its leaders, "an ideology of nuclear Armageddon." The images of the "Last Days" present in sketches of the "Day After" and "nuclear winter" link the holocaust and the final battle of Armageddon to the devastation of nuclear war. The way out for true believers is based on the Rapture concept.

The arrival of the anti-Christ heralds the biblical end of the world. Napoleon seemed to be this anti-Christ to believers at the start on the nineteenth century. Since the 1950s American fundamentalists have applied the anti-Christ mantle to Soviet leaders and the entire communist system...

For as a snare shall this day come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth...(Luke 21:32-35).

...Fundamentalists believed that only God could bring them salvation (quite true); it could not be won through their own intervention. Ronald Reagan first recruited evengelical conservatives to the cause of sectarian politics and an anticommunist world view. With his assertion that the Soviets were the force and "focus of evil" in this world, and that "God has been driven out of the schools." Reagan sought the active support of Jerry Falwell and company. In overlaying politics and national interest with "Christian" dogma, Reagan broke with two of America's greatest democratic traditions, the separation of church and state and the rule of law. The new conservative agenda seeks unreasonable restrictions on travel and speech...and on civil rights in general. The 1984 election and the vain boasting of Jerry Falwell all attest to this...

The Falwell enterprise's overt political wing, the Moral Majority -- not really a majority and, to many other Christians, not really moral -- assembled in 1979, dedicated to "born-again" religion and politics...The New Right and the Old Right, combined in the Moral Majority, played a key role in the presidential elections of 1980 and 1984. Like their nonsectarian cousins from the COMMITTEE ON THE PRESENT DANGER, the fundamentalists elected their man to the White House...

The "exact" prophecy of the Bible tells the fundamentalists that their God, who created a fully equipped, fully inhabited universe exactly 5,988 years ago, is about to bring it to an end...

From Genesis 1:26 to Revelation 10:7, one Full Circle of 120 Jubilees. (120 X 49 = 5,880 years).

...Independent fundamentalist ministries such as Second Coming Incorporated produce an array of television productions and magazine publications--It's Happening Now, Bible Prophecy News, and the Endtime Messenger. Hal Lindsay's book The Late Great Planet Earth has sold over fifteen million copies and won him the title of New York Times bestselling nonfiction writer. Falwell's television specials, his booklet Nuclear War and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, and his book Armageddon and the Coming War with Russia have sold millions...In effect, he has marketed the end of the world...

The Root of Evil

(Ezekiel 13; Zechariah 13:1-4; Matthew 7:15-27; Hebrews 6:1-8; James 4:1-17; 2 Peter 2; the Book of Jude....KJV)

...Today, the world has approached the end of the "Church Age," epitomised by the rise to power of Reaganism, and the signs of the beginning of the Tribulation period appear everywhere...This Armageddon doctrine inserted into the nation's political arena "seems to justify nuclear war as a divine instrument to punish the wicked and complete God's plan for humanity, and cannot be prevented."...Reagan is the instrument of prophecy, commander-in-chief of the forces of good in the battle of Armageddon that takes place in Israel...He is the instrument "to...complete God's plan for history." Deterrence will fail because the Bible tells us so. The policies of nuclear warfighting and warwinning become self-fulfilling prophecies. But how does the administration's myth of survivability accord with the Moral Majoriy's biblical and prophetic reality?...According to it, exactly seven years before the final battle, the great nuclear war, the period known as the "Tribulation" begins. During the Tribulation, God will take "true Christians" bodily away from earth and into heaven...

And Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel.

Ye have seen what I did to the Egyptians, AND HOW I BARE YOU ON EAGLES WINGS AND BROUGHT YOU UNTO MYSELF...(Exodus 19:3-6).

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ (not literally, but figuratively, spiritually and intellectually...Ezekiel 37) shall rise first.

THEN WE WHICH ARE ALIVE AND REMAIN SHALL BE CAUGHT UP TOGETHER WITH THEM IN THE CLOUDS (on Eagle's Wings) TO MEET THE LORD IN THE AIR (not literally, but figuratively...Daniel 12:2-7), AND SO SHALL WE EVER BE WITH THE LORD...(1 Thessalonians 4:16,17).

...Many cultures and religions share an "end of the world" notion. The Koran refers to it: "Have faith in Allah and the Last Day--these shall be rewarded." (Sura 4.60). The Bible says, "Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days" (Gen.49:1) and "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come" (2 Tim.3:1). The Rapture is not in the Bible (it is, of course, but not in ways that we have understood it...2 Corinthians 12:1-9), but Jerry Falwell actually distributes a bumper sticker with the words, "If the driver disappears, grab the wheel!" Jerry Falwell, Ronald Reagan...and the rest of the "good" will suddenly vanish. The Soviets will invade Israel...How could the Bible be wrong! According to Writ, Russia will lose exactly 83 percent of her soldiers, and be repulsed in Falwell's version of "The Russians are Coming." The remaining seven years of Tribulation will be occupied entirely with burying Soviet soldiers and burning (weapons)...

The crux of this issue is whether the most powerful man in the world, the president of the United States...believes all this...The Moral Majority asserts its moral superiority but offers no intellectual analysis of nuclear war. No questions are asked about the notion of justice or whether war can ever be just. No questions are raised about the strategy or doctrine of nuclear warfighting. The bankrupt assumption of morality based on the oversimplified virtues of family and faith has neither form nor content. Their church has become the town meeting place for propounding a red-neck theology, tainted by elements of racism and chauvinism. Images of fire and brimstone instill fear and blind adherence. God and evil are de facto concepts, presented without analysis or justification. (Our author says): In contrast, U.S. Catholic bishops have written and preached one of the finest moral analysis of nuclear war ever elucidated, in an often hostile atmosphere. Their courage matches the depth and honesty of their questions and answers. (We shall see).

Double minded men are unstable in all their ways...(James 1:8).

STAVING OFF THE APOCALYPSE

RESISTING THE BOMB, A HISTORY OF THE WORLD NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT MOVEMENT

By Lawrence S. Winter, Reviewed by Colman McCarthy

In the international peace movement -- ranging from the valient Women Strike for Peace to the persistent Fellowship of Reconciliation -- no shortage exists of dissenters willing to defy governments that trust in nuclear weapons to solve conflicts. Where a shortage -- of another kind -- can be found is among the media, in the journalistic decisions of editors and reporters to dismiss the nuclear disarmament movement as a collection of fringe rebels unversed in the ways of national security and too emotional to appreciate the wisdom of "peace through strength."...

"Resisting the Bomb" covers 1954 through 1970 and antinuclear campaigns in dozens of nations involving millions of citizens. Under President Dwight Eisenhower, the Atomic Energy Agency conducted its first hydrogen bomb explosion at Bikini atoll in the Marshall Islands in March 1954. Within weeks, highly radioactive fallout caused illnesses among islanders and crew members of a Japanese fishing boat downwind. All were well beyond the test site's supposed danger zone. Trying to quash the international uproar caused by the news of effects of the effects of the blast on human beings, the AEC chairman, Lewis Strauss, claimed that the islanders appeared "well and happy." The illnesses among the Japanese fishermen? That was "due to the chemical activity of the converted material in the coral rather than to radioactivity."...

In late 1957 the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy--known as SANE--was formed. Within months, it had a national membership of 25,000 chapters. No other peace group could match its size or influence. It's goal was to halt the testing of nuclear weapons as "a first step in the direction of disarmament."

Sticking with its pro-nuke editotial stand, the New York Daily News called SANE's leaders "as nutty as so many fruitcakes." Time magazine condemned the organization for being suckered into believing "the horror stories of nuclear fallout." It had been duped by "the sworn enemies of religion, liberty and peace," or whatthe chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities called "the black hand of the Communist conspiracy."...

Wittner, a pacifist and member of the War Resisters League, is professionally dispasionate in assessing the achievements with which he is personally in agreement. he writes: "All it wanted, the movement argued, was to ban the Bomb. But, as policymakers and portions of the public well understood, banning the Bomb would have substantial effects on national security policies. Under great popular pressure, policymakers might limit nuclear testing, regulate the arms race, or draw back from nuclear war. But, for the most part, they were not about to give up their nuclear weapons or, for that matter, reform the international system.

For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither Root nor Branch...(Malachi 4:1).

THE BUSH DEFENSE AGENDA

Proverbs 4:14-19.

In his first weeks as president, George W. Bush has given every indication that he intends to challenge several cold-war customs that still shape American defense strategy nearly a decade after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. This reassessment is long overdue. IF EXECUTED IN AN ENLIGHTENED FASHION, it could clear away Pentagon cobwebs and launch a new era in the management of nuclear weapons and the development of novel military technologies. If mishandled, especially by rushing to construct unproven missile defenses, the effort could lead the nation into a new arms race with Russian and China...

In a world with only one superpower (Revelation 13:4), the United States, it may be possible to take a different approach that allows Washington and Moscow to act on their own to cut warheads more deeply and quickly. This can be done without underming American security if Washington retain a sufficient number of weapons to deter or respond to a nuclear attack.

Mr. Bush has asked the Pentagon to tell him how many warheads it needs. Under this approach, American commanders will work out how many nuclear weapons are really required to carry out their targeting strategy. If that formular were applied today, Washington could reduce the number of warheads it fields from 7,500 to around 2,500 without any loss of deterrence. (In the words of ten million young people in America who stand to be annihilated in this diabolical madness..."Duh, hello!"). A new strategy review could reduce that number even further.

Even if Russia chose to reduce its numbers more slowly, Washington would still have the means to strike a devastating blow against Moscow's nuclear forces...Mr. Bush or a future president could expand America's nuclear arsenal if changed conditions required it. Weapons design and manufacturing facilities should be kept ready for such a contingency. The New York Times.

RUSSIA SAYS U.S. ANTIMISSILE PLAN MEANS A (RENEWED) ARMS RACE

By Patrick E. Tyler

MOSCOW__Two days after American officials told their European counterparts that the United States intended to go ahead and develop a national missile shield--but only after extensive consultation--Russia responded with a sober warning that it is ready to resort to a new arms race to ensure that its strategic rocket forces will not be undermined...

President Mohammad Khatami of Iran is expected in Moscow next month for discussions about trade and military cooperation and diplomats here and in Tehran said the two leaders would discuss ways to control the spread of ballistic missile technology. The United States has expressed longstanding concerns about Russia's assistance to Iran's ballistic missile program...

As Mr. Putin was preparing his diplomatic moves, Defense Minister Igor D. Sergeyev said that Russia was making contingency plans to respond to the Bush administration's antimissile plans. He said Russia was not planning a new missile buildup, which it cannot afford, but "asymmetrical" technologies that would penetrate any missile shield. "We had three mighty programs to counter asymmetrically the national missile defense systems of the United States during the period of REAGAN'S STAR WARS," he said.

He told the Interfax news agency that "a lot of money was invested in those programs " before they were abandoned at the end of the cold war. "But we still have them," he added, "and can take them up again." Marshall Sergeyev, the former comander of Russian strategic rocket forces, labled the American antimissile proposal "SON OF STAR WARS," and predicted...that the Bush administration would not be able to persuade its allies to abandon "the entire system of agreements which has led to strategic stability in the world"....

The Defense Minister's statements and Mr. Putin's diplomacy were another effort by Russia to play on the deep skepticism that already exists in Europe over the United States' determination to rearrange the strategic landscape. An American national missile shield would violate the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which the Bush administration wants to amend and which Moscow now calls the "cornerstone of strategic stability."...

Konstantin V. Cherevkov, a senior missile scientist at the Russian Space Academy said that "Russia considers the American position deceptive."

RATTLING NEW SABERS

By John H. Cushman Jr.

WASHINGTON__In setting forth major changes in the kinds of nuclear weapons the United States builds, and in their kinds of targets, a secret report to Congress describes in detail the military gains the Pentagon is seeking. But it says much less about the diplomatic price the Pentagon is willing to pay...

The diplomatic fallout...may be immediate, affecting Vice President Dick Cheney's reception on a 10-day trip to Europe and the Middle East...His audiences in Europe and the Islamic world are likely to find the report unsettling, the Europeans from an arms-control perspective, and the Arabs because it includes Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran among the nations that might be hit by nuclear weapons in some speculative crisis...

Unlike the old strategic formular of mutual assured destruction, or MAD, in which nuclear superpowers deter each other into a detente, the Pentagon's new saber-rattling is meant to signal something different. That is a unilateral assured destruction, so that NO DICTATOR COULD SEEK SAFETY FOR HIMSELF OR HIS WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION...

Critics are bound to argue that Mr. Bush is making a radical and dangerous shift to a first-strike policy. But in the nuclear standoff of the cold war, the United States never declared a no-first-strike policy (Russia did) against its nuclear adversaries; it simply made massive retaliation a credible threat by building a triad of AIR, LAND AND SEA weapons, enough of which, in theory, would survive any plausible first strike by the Soviet Union,the only real strategic threat that the United States faced...

Even though a pre-emptive, limited nuclear strike might be contemplated in an unexpected emergency, it would PROBABLY be the last resort. Otherwise, anyone considering such a strike would be open to scorn as some sort of latter-day Dr. Strangelove embracing the bomb.

Indeed, the United States has not gone so far as to renounce its pledge--made similarly by all the other big nuclear powers--nnot to make a nuclear attack on any country that has none. But the Pentagon's plan to build nuclear weapons expressly for such an attack, just in case, undermines the credibility of that pledge...

The Pentagon's nuclear force will continue to shrink both in numbers, and in megatonnage, as some of the new weapons would carry small special-purpose warheads. That does not altar the Bush administration's unapologetic premise that the quilt of arms control agreements stitched together during the cold war era should be consigned to the reliquary."That old process is incompatible with the flexibility U.S. planning and forces now require," the report says...

And partly because a nuclear superpower is always thinking the unthinkable, and often building weapons that can do the unthinkable. Deterrence ultimately requires both the right kind of weapons to do the job AND THE EXPRESSED WILLINGNESS TO USE THEM. The New York Times.

U.S. NUCLEAR PLAN SEES NEW TARGETS AND NEW WEAPONS

Contingencies for North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya

By Michael R. Gordon

WASHINGTON__Outlining a broad overhaul of American nuclear policy, a secret Pentagon report calls for developing new nuclear weapons that would be better suited for striking targets in Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Libya...

One of the most sensitive portions of the report is a secret discussion of contingencies in which the United States might need to use its "nuclear strike capabilities" against a foe...The Pentagon issued a statement noting that the purpose of the review was to analyze nuclear weapons, not to specify targets...Earlier this month, Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, repeated the policy but then added that "if a weapon of mass destruction is used against the United States or its allies, we will not rule out any specific type (of weapon) or response."...

"I would not say that developing a bunker-busting nuclear weapon for use against these countries would by itself violate that pledge," the former American official said. "But using nuclear weapons against them would unless they violated their assurance by acquiring nuclear weapons (themselves)."

The Pentagon report discussed other contingencies as well. THE REPORT STATED THAT CHINA IS ALSO A POTENTIAL ADVERSARY and is modernizing its nuclear and conventional forces. WHILE RUSSIA HAS THE MOST FORMIDABLE NUCLEAR FORCE, the report took the view that relations with Moscow have vastly improved...STILL, THE REPORT SAID THAT THE UNITED STATES CANNOT BE SURE THAT RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA WILL ALWAYS BE SMOOTH AND THUS MUST BE PREPARED TO "REVISE ITS NUCLEAR FORCE LEVELS AND POSTURE."...

Adding new detail to previous briefings, the Pentagon says that its future force structure will have the following componants. By 2012 (2012...get it)? the United States will have 14 Trident submarines with two in overhaul at one time. They will be part of a Triad that will include hundreds of Minuteman III land-based missiles and about 100 B-52 and B-2 bombers...

The need to maintain the capability to rapidly expand the American nuclear arsenal in a crisis, SUCH AS "REVERSAL OF RUSSIA'S PRESENT COURSE," is also a theme of the report. The Pentagon calls this hedge "the responsive force." The notion that the United States is reserving the right to rapidly expand its nuclear forces has been an important concern for Moscow...

The report says that the United States needs a new capability to produce plutonium "pits," a hollow sphere made out of plutonium around which explosives are fastened. When the explosives go off they squeeze the plutonium together into a critical mass, which allows a nuclear explosion. The Pentagon said the production of Tritium for nuclear warheads will resume during the fiscal year 2003. The New York Times.

THE BOMB IS BACK
What Can Be Done About The Growing Nuclear Threat?

by Jonathan Schell

The world has entered a new nuclear age, a second nuclear age. The danger is rising that nuclear weapons will be used against the United States. Just as bad, the danger is rising that the United States will use nuclear weapons against others. A paradoxical product of the new danger is the Bush administration's proposal to achieve the nuclear disarmament of Iraq (which may or may not be trying to build nuclear weapons) by overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein. To understand why, we have to look back to the beginning of the post-Cold War period.

When the Cold War ended, many Americans, encouraged by official statements, came to believe that nuclear danger might be a thing of the past. The conclusion was not surprising. The world's great nuclear arsenals, we had been told for some 40 years, were built for a purpose—waging the Cold War—and that purpose melted away with the disappearance of the Soviet Union. Might not the arsenals also melt away? What earthly purpose did they serve? Russia was our friend. Could it possibly make sense any longer to threaten it with annihilation—and to go on enduring the threat of annihilation at Russian hands? And indeed, reductions were occurring under the auspices of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, and more could be expected. Perhaps nuclear weapons were now simply the detritus of an age of peril that had passed, and would be carted away. PERHAPS ONE DAY WE'D WAKE UP and discover that the last warhead had been dismantled.

The large hopes and modest achievements of the early post-Cold War years, however, bred complacency rather than a determination to act. Opportunity was mistaken for accomplishment, and little was done. Nuclear danger dropped out of public consciousness. Nuclear arms control negotiations slowed to a creep. In the ensuing atmosphere of official and public indifference, a shockingly different future began to take shape. IT WAS A FUTURE THAT HAD ITS ROOTS IN THE VERY GENETIC CODE OF THE NUCLEAR THREAT. Nuclear arsenals are based on scientific and technical knowledge. It is the destiny of knowledge to spread. In the absence of clear political decisions to constrain the weapons, nuclear proliferation must be the result. During the Cold War, nuclear danger grew to threaten all points of the compass. In the post-Cold War period, if current trends are not reversed, nuclear danger will in addition arise at all points of the compass.

Yet if we are to understand the origins of the new nuclear dangers, we must grasp their connection with the old ones. Existing nuclear arsenals—the legacy of the Cold War—are inextricably linked to the budding arsenals of our time. Proliferation (to new countries or terrorists), in a word, is linked to possession (by the existing nuclear powers), and we cannot hope to address the former without addressing the latter.

IN THE EARLY years of the Clinton administration, it became clear that the United States would not seize the immense opportunity for nuclear disarmament that the end of the Cold War presented. The United States had already brushed aside Gorbachev's proposal to eliminate nuclear weapons by the year 2000. Clinton's Nuclear Posture Review, announced as an attempt to reconsider the need for nuclear forces in the post-Soviet era, concluded that things should remain substantially the same as before: Even in the absence of the Cold War enemy, the United States would retain immense nuclear arsenals and threaten their use—not merely in retaliation but even in a first strike. In early 1998, news leaked out that a new Presidential Decision Directive had been issued. One of its conclusions, as Robert G. Bell, a member of Clinton's National Security Council, told The Washington Post, was that the United States should retain nuclear weapons "for the indefinite future."

These critical decisions by the United States, matched by comparable decisions by the other Cold War nuclear powers, were little remarked on by the public, but they were watched closely in other capitals, where decisions whether to build new nuclear arsenals were being made. The most important were New Delhi, where the Indian government, already the possessor of a "peaceful" non-weaponized bomb, was deciding whether to become a full-fledged nuclear power, and Islamabad, where the Pakistani government, nervously eyeing India, was asking itself the same question. If nuclear weapons were to be the currency of power in the new age, India reasoned, then India must have them. Continued renunciation would constitute "nuclear apartheid," its foreign minister said.

In May 1998, India conducted five nuclear tests. Pakistan responded with six. The South Asian nuclear arms race was underway. In early 2002, the two powers engaged in the first full-scale nuclear confrontation of the nuclear age entirely unrelated to the Cold War. Other countries—including Iraq, Iran, and North Korea—also were developing nuclear programs. Recently Yasuo Fukuda, chief of staff to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, aired his opinion that Japan might have to reconsider its ban on nuclear weapons in its armed forces, and though the government disavowed any such intention, other important figures in Japan voiced their agreement.

Meanwhile, proliferation was increasing the danger of nuclear terrorism. Plainly, the more nuclear powers there are in the world, the more likely it is that nuclear weapons or nuclear materials will fall into the hands of terrorists. The poor guardianship of Russian materials is an enduring international scandal. The danger is acute that Pakistani weapons or materials, many of whose managers are Islamic fundamentalists, will fall into terrorist hands. Before Sept. 11, one veteran of the Pakistani weapon program, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, paid several visits to Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden has claimed to possess nuclear weapons, and though we may doubt the truth of his claim, no one can dismiss the possibility that his al Qaeda network or some other terrorist group may soon acquire one and use it against the United States or another country.

BUT MOST STARTLING HAS BEEN THE REVOLUTION IN THE UNITED STATES' NUCLEAR POLICY UNVEILED SINCE THE ATTACK OF SEPT. 11. IT THREATENS NOTHING LESS THAN FULL-SCALE NUCLEAR REVIVAL--A WORLDWIDE RE-LEGITIMIZATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND A RESURGENCE, IN THIS COUNTRY AND ELSEWHERE, OF RELIANCE UPON THEM FOR MILITARY PURPOSES. (continued)...

Woe unto thee Babylon and Asia! woe unto thee, Egypt, and Syria,

Gird up yourselves with cloths of sack and hair, bewail your children, and be sorry, for your destruction is at hand.

A sword is sent among you, and who may turn it back?...

A FIRE SHALL GO FORTH FROM HIS WRATH, AND WHO IS HE THAT MAY QUENCH IT?...(2 Esdras 16:1-13).

WORLD MAY BE HEADED FOR NUCLEAR DESTRUCTION, El BARADEI SAYS
February 12, 2004

Vienna

VIENNA (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Thursday the world could be headed for destruction if it does not stop the spread of atomic weapons technology, which has become widely accessible.
In an opinion piece in the New York Times, Mohamed El Baradei wrote that nuclear technology, once virtually unobtainable, is now obtainable through "a sophisticated worldwide network able to deliver systems for producing material usable in weapons." Above all El Baradei echoed President Bush's call in a speech on Wednesday for states to tighten up the control of their companies' nuclear exports to proliferators.

El Baradei, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general, said the world must act quickly because inaction would a create a proliferation disaster. "The supply network will grow, making it easier to acquire nuclear weapon expertise and materials. Eventually, inevitably, terrorists will gain access to such materials and technology, if not actual weapons," he wrote. "If the world does not change course, we risk self-destruction," ElBaradei said.

The father of Pakistan's atom bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, admitted last week that he and scientists from his Khan Research Laboratory in Pakistan leaked nuclear secrets. They are believed to have been part of a global nuclear black market organized to help countries under embargo such as Iran, North Korea and Libya skirt international sanctions and obtain nuclear technology that could be used to make weapons. The massive illicit network has touched on at least 15 countries around the world.

El Baradei said the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the global pact aimed at stopping the spread of atomic weapons, needed to be revisited and toughened to bring it in line with the demands of the 21st century. He said it should not be possible to withdraw from the NPT, as North Korea did last year, while the tougher inspections in the NPT Additional Protocol should be mandatory in all countries. Currently fewer than 40 of the more than 180 NPT signatories have approved the protocol.

Yet for the present be ye founded, O ye cities, and adorned all of you with temples and race courses, with markets and statues of gold and silver and stone, that ye may come to the day of bitterness. FOR COME IT WILL,WHENEVER THE ODOUR OF BRIMSTONE PERVADES ALL MANKIND.

Woe unto thee Babylon and race of Assyrian men (the sons of Adam), a rushing destruction is coming one day upon the whole country of men, even the scourge of the Mighty God (from heaven shall come down to thee from the Holy Place) and to the children of wrath eternal perdition.

And thou shalt be as thou wast before as though thou hadst not been born. And thou shalt be surfeited with blood, as formaly thou thyself didst spill the blood of good men and just, whose blood even now cries to the farthest heaven...(The Sibylline Books, III.57-61, 303-313).

(continued)...The United States has always been the world's leader in matters nuclear. Our country invented the atomic bomb, was its first and only user, invented the H-bomb, developed the strategy of deterrence that guided and rationalized the Cold War buildup, and pioneered almost every innovation in delivery vehicles of the nuclear age. Now, by finding new uses for nuclear weapons, building new nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles, and building new anti-nuclear defenses, the United States once again is taking the lead in the nuclearization of the international arena. (Understand the prophetic implications of Psalm 106:34-40).

Reversing 50 years of precedent, the Bush administration has decided to deal with proliferation not through diplomacy and treaties but through the use of force, including nuclear force. This is the radical policy shift that underlies the administration's call to overthrow the government of Iraq by force. In his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush melded nonproliferation policy into the war on terrorism, lumping three potential nuclear proliferators—Iraq, Iran, and North Korea—together in the "axis of evil," to whom he delivered something of an ultimatum. "THE UNITED STATES," he announced, "WILL NOT PERMIT THE WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS REGIMES TO THREATEN US WITH THE WORLD'S MOST DESTRUCTIVE WEAPONS." (Revelation 13:4-10). If in the '90s continued possession had led to proliferation, proliferation now had led to pre-emption. That is, having failed to put a stick in the gears of proliferation by committing itself to abolition, the United States now proposes to stop it by military means—by "counter proliferation." Meanwhile, the United States will seek to defend itself against retaliation by building a missile defense system—a system that will do nothing, of course, to protect against bombs delivered by car, boat, or truck.

A new policy, called "offensive deterrence," has come into effect. Its linchpin, as in the planning for war in Iraq, is the pre-emptive strike, conventional and nuclear. The president has made it known to the world in the bluntest terms. Though deterrence and containment—the mainstays of Cold War policy—will remain in effect in some areas, the new policy will be to attack first. America, the president said in his speech to the graduating class at West Point, must "be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world." For "Deterrence—the promise of massive retaliation against nations—means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies." Thus the United States must "be ready for pre-emptive action."

A new Nuclear Posture Review, leaked to the press in March, added detail to the new policy. New nuclear weapons, including something actually called a "Robust Earth Penetrator," would be built. A new plant to build nuclear weapons would start production in 2030. A new ICBM would be readied for the year 2020, a new submarine-launched missile for 2030, a new bomber for 2040. A widening array of nuclear targets—RUSSIA, CHINA, LIBYA, SUDAN, NORTH KOREA, IRAQ, IRAN—were named.

As these new dangers were being born, were the old dangers from the Cold War arsenals at least being liquidated? No. The recently signed agreement by Bush and President Vladimir Putin of Russia cutting operational strategic weapons to about 2,000 on each side over the next 10 years will remove the weapons from delivery vehicles but not dismantle them. In the year 2012—21 years after the fall of the Soviet Union—there would still be more than 10,000 nuclear warheads in the American arsenal. Even the operational arsenal of some 2,000 will be enough for the two countries—putative allies—to destroy one another many times over.

The new American policy provides the missing link in a vicious circle that is as dangerous as the arms race of the Cold War, if not more so. In this new process, nuclear possession goads proliferation (including proliferation to terrorist groups); proliferation goads missile defenses and pre-emption; and missile defenses and pre-emption in turn goad proliferation.

The policy, whose first step is the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, seeks to prevent proliferation and safeguard the United States. IT CAN DO NEITHER. It in fact generates the very threat it hopes to remove. IT IS THE PATH NOT TO SAFETY BUT TO NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION AND NUCLEAR WAR. The vicious circle needs to be disrupted by a beneficial one, in which a commitment by the nuclear powers to abolition and a negotiated program of nuclear reductions becomes the foundation for an effective policy of nonproliferation, and these lead over time to abolition itself, the only sane goal of nuclear policy for the 21st century.

BUT HISTORY SUGGESTS THAT THE IMPULSE FOR SUCH A PROFOUND REORIENTATION IS UNLIKELY TO COME FROM THE POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT. IT MUST COME—as other profound moral and political changes, such as the abolition of slavery, have so often done in American history—FROM THE PEOPLE. The Urgent Call...is an instrument offered to help serve this purpose. The bomb is back. BUT THOSE OF US WHO OPPOSE THE BOMB ARE BACK TOO. And we're not going away. (Jonathan Schell, a peace fellow at the Nation Institute, is author of The Fate of the Earth and The Gift of Time: The Case for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons Now. He lives in New York City).

THE GRAND CHESSBOARD

A WAR IN THE PLANNING FOR FOUR YEARS

by Michael Ruppert

Zbigniew Brzezinski and the CFR (Council of Foreign Relations) put War Plans in a 1997 Book – It is “A Blueprint for World Dictatorship,” Says a Former German Defense and NATO Official Who Warned of Global Domination in 1984, in an Exclusive Interview With FT.

“THE GRAND CHESSBOARD American Primacy And It’s Geostrategic Imperatives,” Zbigniew Brzezinski, Basic Books, 1997.

These are the very first words in the book, “Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some five hundred years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power.” - p. xiii. Eurasia is all of the territory east of Germany and Poland, stretching all the way through Russia and China to the Pacific Ocean. It includes the Middle East and most of the Indian subcontinent. The key to controlling Eurasia, says Brzezinski, is controlling the Central Asian Republics. And the key to controlling the Central Asian republics is Uzbekistan. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Uzbekistan was forcefully mentioned by President George W. Bush in his address to a joint session of Congress just days after the attacks of September 11 as the very first place that the U.S. military would be deployed.

As FTW has documented in previous stories, major deployments of U.S. and British forces had taken place before the attacks. And the U.S. Army and the CIA had been active in Uzbekistan for several years. There is now evidence that what the world is witnessing is a cold and calculated war plan - at least four years in the making – and that, from reading Brzezinski’s own words about Pearl Harbor, the World Trade Center attacks were just the trigger needed to set the final conquest in motion.

FTW, November 7, 2001, 1200 PST – There’s a quote often attributed to Allen Dulles after it was noted that the final 1964 report of the Warren Commission on the assassination of JFK contained dramatic inconsistencies. Those inconsistencies, in effect, disproved the Commission’s own final conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone on November 22, 1963. Dulles, a career spy, Wall Street lawyer, the CIA director whom JFK had fired after the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco - and the Warren Commission member who took charge of the investigation and final report - is reported to have said, “The American people don’t read.”

Some Americans do read. So do Europeans and Asians and Africans and Latin Americans. World events since the attacks of September 11, 2001 have not only been predicted, but also planned, orchestrated and – as their architects would like to believe – controlled. The current Central Asian war is not a response to terrorism, nor is it a reaction to Islamic fundamentalism. It is in fact, in the words of one of the most powerful men on the planet, the beginning of a final conflict before total world domination by the United States leads to the dissolution of all national governments. This, says Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member and former Carter National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, will lead to nation states being incorporated into a new world order, controlled solely by economic interests as dictated by banks, corporations and ruling elites concerned with the maintenance (by manipulation and war) of their power. As a means of intimidation for the unenlightened reader who happens upon this frightening plan – the plan of the CFR - Brzezinski offers the alternative of a world in chaos unless the U.S. controls the planet by whatever means are necessary and likely to succeed.

This position is corroborated by Dr. Johannes B. Koeppl, Ph.D. a former German defense ministry official and advisor to former NATO Secretary General Manfred Werner. On November 6, he told FTW, “The interests behind the Bush Administration, such as the CFR, The Trilateral Commission – founded by Brzezinski for David Rockefeller – and the Bliderberger Group, have prepared for and are now moving to implement open world dictatorship within the next five years. They are not fighting against terrorists. They are fighting against citizens.”

Brzezinski’s own words – laid against the current official line that the United States is waging a war to end terrorism - are self-incriminating. In an ongoing series of articles, FTW has consistently established that the U.S. government had foreknowledge of the World Trade Center attacks and chose not to stop them because it needed to secure public approval for a war that is now in progress. It is a war, as described by Vice President Dick Cheney, “that may not end in our lifetimes.” What that means is that it will not end until all armed groups, anywhere in the world, which possess the political, economic or military ability to resist the imposition of this dictatorship, have been destroyed. These are the “terrorists” the U.S. now fights in Afghanistan and plans to soon fight all over the globe.

Before exposing Brzezinski (and those he represents) with his own words, or hearing more from Dr. Koeppl, it is worthwhile to take a look at Brzezinski’s background. According to his resume Brzezinski, holding a 1953 Ph.D. from Harvard, lists the following achievements: Counselor, Center for Strategic and International Studies Professor of American Foreign Policy, Johns Hopkins University National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter (1977-81) Trustee and founder of the Trilateral Commission International advisor of several major US/Global corporations Associate of Henry Kissinger Under Ronald Reagan – member of NSC-Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy Under Ronald Reagan – member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board Past member, Board of Directors, The Council on Foreign Relations 1988 – Co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force.

Brzezinski is also a past attendee and presenter at several conferences of the Bliderberger group – a non-partisan affiliation of the wealthiest and most powerful families and corporations on the planet.

THE GRAND CHESSBOARD

Brzezinski sets the tone for his strategy by describing Russia and China as the two most important countries – almost but not quite superpowers - whose interests that might threaten the U.S. in Central Asia. Of the two, Brzezinski considers Russia to be the more serious threat. Both nations border Central Asia. In a lesser context he describes the Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Iran and Kazakhstan as essential “lesser” nations that must be managed by the U.S. as buffers or counterweights to Russian and Chinese moves to control the oil, gas and minerals of the Central Asian Republics (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan).

He also notes, quite clearly (p. 53) that any nation that might become predominant in Central Asia would directly threaten the current U.S. control of oil resources in the Persian Gulf. In reading the book it becomes clear why the U.S. had a direct motive for the looting of some $300 billion in Russian assets during the 1990s, destabilizing Russia’s currency (1998) and ensuring that a weakened Russia would have to look westward to Europe for economic and political survival, rather than southward to Central Asia. A dependent Russia would lack the military, economic and political clout to exert influence in the region and this weakening of Russia would explain why Russian President Vladimir Putin has been such a willing ally of U.S. efforts to date. (See FTW Vol. IV, No. 1 – March 31, 2001)

An examination of selected quotes from “The Grand Chessboard,” in the context of current events reveals the darker agenda behind military operations that were planned long before September 11th, 2001:

“…The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world’s paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power…(p. xiii)

“… But in the meantime, it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America. The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geostrategy is therefore the purpose of this book. (p. xiv)

“The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (pp 24-5)

“For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia… Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia – and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained. (p.30)

“America’s withdrawal from the world or because of the sudden emergence of a successful rival – would produce massive international instability. It would prompt global anarchy.” (p. 30)

“In that context, how America ‘manages’ Eurasia is critical. Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent. About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world’s GNP and about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.” (p.31)

Two basic steps are thus required: first, to identify the geostrategically dynamic Eurasian states that have the power to cause a potentially important shift in the international distribution of power and to decipher the central external goals of their respective political elites and the likely consequences of their seeking to attain them;… second, to formulate specific U.S. policies to offset, co-opt, and/or control the above… (p. 40)

“…To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.” (p.40)

“Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America’s status as a global power.” (p.55)

“Uzbekistan – with its much more ethnically homogeneous population of approximately 25 million and its leaders emphasizing the country’s historic glories – has become increasingly assertive in affirming the region’s new postcolonial status.” (p.95)

“Thus, even the ethnically vulnerable Kazakhstan joined the other Central Asian states in abandoning the Cyrillic alphabet and replacing it with Latin script as adapted earlier by Turkey. In effect, by the mid-1990s a bloc, quietly led by Ukraine and comprising Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and sometimes also Kazakhstan, Georgia and Moldova, had informally emerged to obstruct Russian efforts to use the CIS as the tool for political integration.” (p.114)

“…Hence, support for the new post-Soviet states – for geopolitical pluralism in the space of the former Soviet empire – has to be an integral part of a policy designed to induce Russia to exercise unambiguously its European option. Among these states. Three are geopolitically especially important: Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine.” (p. 121) “Uzbekistan, nationally the most vital and the most populous of the central Asian states, represents the major obstacle to any renewed Russian control over the region. Its independence is critical to the survival of the other Central Asian states, and it is the least vulnerable to Russian pressures.” (p. 121)

Referring to an area he calls the “Eurasian Balkans” and a 1997 map in which he has circled the exact location of the current conflict – describing it as the central region of pending conflict for world dominance - Brzezinski writes: “Moreover, they [the Central Asian Republics] are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold.” (p.124) [Emphasis added]

The world’s energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia’s economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.” (p.125)

“Kazakhstan is the shield and Uzbekistan is the soul for the region’s diverse national awakenings.” (p.130)

“Uzbekistan is, in fact, the prime candidate for regional leadership in Central Asia.” (p.130) “Once pipelines to the area have been developed, Turkmenistan’s truly vast natural gas reserves augur a prosperous future for the country’s people. (p.132)

“In fact, an Islamic revival – already abetted from the outside not only by Iran but also by Saudi Arabia – is likely to become the mobilizing impulse for the increasingly pervasive new nationalisms, determined to oppose any reintegration under Russian – and hence infidel – control.” (p. 133).

“For Pakistan, the primary interest is to gain Geostrategic depth through political influence in Afghanistan – and to deny to Iran the exercise of such influence in Afghanistan and Tajikistan – and to benefit eventually from any pipeline construction linking Central Asia with the Arabian Sea.” (p.139)

“Moreover, sensible Russian leaders realize that the demographic explosion underway in the new states means that their failure to sustain economic growth will eventually create an explosive situation along Russia’s entire southern frontier.” (p.141) [This would explain why Putin would welcome U.S. military presence to stabilize the region.]

“Turkmenistan… has been actively exploring the construction of a new pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea…” (p.145)

“It follows that America’s primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it.” (p148)

“China’s growing economic presence in the region and its political stake in the area’s independence are also congruent with America’s interests.” (p.149)

“America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe’s central arena. Hence, what happens to the distribution of power on the Eurasian continent will be of decisive importance to America’s global primacy and to America’s historical legacy.” (p.194)

”…the Eurasian Balkans – threatens to become a cauldron of ethnic conflict and great-power rivalry.” (p.195)

“Without sustained and directed American involvement, before long the forces of global disorder could come to dominate the world scene. And the possibility of such a fragmentation is inherent in the geopolitical tensions not only of today’s Eurasia but of the world more generally.” (p.194)

“With warning signs on the horizon across Europe and Asia, any successful American policy must focus on Eurasia as a whole and be guided by a Geostrategic design.” (p.197)

“That puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America’s primacy…” (p. 198)

“The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role.” (p. 198)

“In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is also likely to be the very last.” (p.209)

“Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.” (p. 211) [Emphasis added]

THE HORROR– AND COMMENTS FROM SOMEONE WHO WORKED WITH BRZEZINSKI

Brzezinski’s book is sublimely arrogant. While singing the praises of the IMF and the World Bank, which have economically terrorized nations on every continent, and while totally ignoring the worldwide terrorist actions of the U.S. government that have led to genocide; cluster bombings of civilian populations from Kosovo, to Laos, to Iraq, to Afghanistan; the development and battlefield use of both biological and chemical agents such as Sarin gas; and the financial rape of entire cultures it would leave the reader believing that such actions are for the good of mankind.

While seconded from the German defense ministry to NATO in the late 1970s, Dr. Johannes Koeppl - mentioned at the top of this article - traveled to Washington on more than one occasion. He also met with Brzezinski in the White House on more than one occasion. His other Washington contacts included Steve Larabee from the CFR, John J. McCloy, former CIA Director, economist Milton Friedman, and officials from Carter’s Office of Management and Budget. He is the first person I have ever interviewed who has made a direct presentation at a Bliderberger conference and he has also made numerous presentations to sub-groups of the Trilateral Commission. That was before he spoke out against them. His fall from grace was rapid after he realized that Brzezinski was part of a group intending to impose a world dictatorship. “In 1983/4 I warned of a take-over of world governments being orchestrated by these people. There was an obvious plan to subvert true democracies and selected leaders were not being chosen based upon character but upon their loyalty to an economic system run by the elites and dedicated to preserving their power.

In 1983, Koeppl warned, through Op-Ed pieces published in NEWSWEEK and elsewhere, that Brzezinski and the CFR were part of an effort to impose a global dictatorship. His fall from grace was swift. “It was a criminal society that I was dealing with. It was not possible to publish anymore in the so-called respected publications. My 30 year career in politics ended.

“The people of the western world have been trained to be good consumers; to focus on money, sports cars, beauty, consumer goods. They have not been trained to look for character in people. Therefore what we need is education for politicians, a form of training that instills in them a higher sense of ethics than service to money. There is no training now for world leaders. This is a shame because of the responsibility that leaders hold to benefit all mankind rather than to blindly pursue destructive paths. “We also need education for citizens to be more efficient in their democracies, in addition to education for politicians that will create a new network of elites based upon character and social intelligence.”

Koeppl, who wrote his 1989 doctoral thesis on NATO management, also authored a 1989 book – largely ignored because of its controversial revelations – entitled “The Most Important Secrets in the World.” He maintains a German language web site at www.antaris.com and he can be reached by email at jbk@antaris.com.

As to the present conflict Koeppl expressed the gravest concerns, “This is more than a war against terrorism. This is a war against the citizens of all countries. The current elites are creating so much fear that people don’t know how to respond. But they must remember. This is a move to implement a world dictatorship within the next five years. There may not be another chance.”

RUSSIA SEES U.S. BID TO DOMINATE THE WORLD

MOSCOW__Russia unveiled its new national security doctrine yesterday, broadening the Kremlin's authority to use nuclear weapons and accusing the United States of trying to weaken Russia and become the world's dominant power.

The doctrine replaces one adopted in 1997,a time when political and military partnership with the West were still buzzwords and many Russians remain optimistic about the country's economic future. But Russia's attitude toward the West has hardened following the eastward expansion of NATO and the alliances intervention in Yugoslavia, and the nation's economic reform efforts have suffered serious setbacks. "The idea of partnership has vanished," said Sergei Sokut, a military affairs writer...

The most significant change in the lengthy document, which covers two full newspaper pages, concerns the use of Russia's powerful nuclear arsenal. In a section called :Ensuring the National Security of Russia," the new doctrine would allow the country's leaders to use all existing forces :including nuclear weapons" to oppose any attack--nuclear or conventional--if other efforts fail to repel the aggressor. The previous doctrine stated that Russia would use nuclear weapons only in cases when its national sovereignty was threatened.

"The level and scale of military threats is growing," the doctrine said, as if to justify the new emphasis on the potential use of nuclear weapons...The doctrine identifies two "mutually exclusive" trends in international relations following the end of the Cold War: one an attempt to create a multipolar world and the other an alleged effort led by the United States to dominate the world. The Associated Press.

PUTIN VISITS CHINA

by Craig S. Smith

HONG KONG__President Vladimir Putin of Russia arrived in Beijing tonight on a first stop of an Asian tour intended to revive his country's faded diplomatic role in the region and build what could become a Chinese-Russian axis to counter American influence.

Mr. Putin is expected to sign at least six accords with Chinese leaders...including a joint statement with President Jiang Zemin condemning American proposals for missile defense systems over North America and Asia. Opposition to the American plan has accelerated a relationship that Russia and China describe as "strategic partnership" intended to counter AMERICAN POWER. "The partnership is an effort to oppose hegemony and supremacy, and one single country domination the world," said Zhao Huasheng...

While it is not clear how warmly Mr. Putin will embrace the Chinese world view, Western analysts say the rapproachement between the countries is taking on an increasingly anti-American cast. "On one level, this is classic real-politik balance-of-power, but on another it has the appearance of a united front against the United States," said David Shambaugh, a China specialists at George Washington University and the Brookings Institute in Washington...

Weapons are likely to remain the strongest bond in the two countries' economic relationship. China wants weapons to modernize its military and Russia's overdeveloped arms industry is begging for customers with cash. Already China has bought advanced fighter aircraft, submarines and Russian guided-missile destroyers...

THEY PAY NO HEED

"They pay no heed to the real hidden meanings of things, but divert themselves instead with all kinds of iniquitous arcane lore…They do not know the hidden meaning of what is actually taking place, nor have they ever understood the lessons of the past. Consequently, they have no knowledge of what is coming upon them, and have done nothing to save their souls from the deeper implications of present events.

This, however, will symbolize things for you. What is going to happen is, as it were, that all iniquity is going to be shut up in the womb and prevented from coming to birth. Wrong is going to depart before Right, as darkness departs before light. As smoke disappears and is no more, so will Wrong disappear forever. But Right will be revealed like the Sun. The world will rest on the sound Foundation. All who cling to rarified arcane lore will cease to exist. The world will be filled with knowledge, and ignorance exist no more.

The thing is certain to come. The prophecy is true, and by this you may know that it will not be revoked:

Do not all peoples hate wrongdoing? Yet, is it not rampant among them all? Are not the praises of truth sung by all nations? Yet is there a single race or tribe that really adheres to it? What nation like to be oppressed by a stronger power? Or who wants his property plundered unjustly? Yet, is there a single nation that has not oppressed its neighbor? Or where in the world will you find a people that has not plundered the property of another?" The Dead Sea Scriptures, by. Theodor Gaster, p.429.

RUSSIA SLAMS US ON IRAQ AND "LIBERATION" CLAIM
By Maria Golovina
3-26-03

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia on Wednesday fired a new broadside against the United States over its military action against Iraq, scorning claims its troops were "liberating" Iraqis and accusing it of defying world opinion. Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, using language at times reminiscent of the Cold War rivalry with Washington, said: "What the United States is doing challenges not only Iraq, but the whole world."

Addressing parliament as U.S. and British forces pressed forward to Baghdad, Ivanov said the evidence so far gainsaid U.S. efforts to portray its troops as a liberating force freeing Iraqis from Saddam Hussein's rule. "It is already becoming clear how far removed from reality are their attempts to present military action against Iraq as a triumphant march for the liberation of the Iraqi people with minimal casualties and destruction," he told the Federation Council (upper house).

He counseled Washington and London not to make unsubstantiated claims to have found caches of banned weapons in Iraq to justify their military offensive. "If there are claims by coalition forces about discovering weapons of mass destruction...only international inspectors can make a conclusive assessment of the origin of these weapons," he said. "No other evaluation and final conclusion can be accepted."

PROTECTING TIES WITH U.S....Ivanov, mindful of the political capital Moscow has built up with Washington by backing the U.S.-led war on terror, strove to maintain a balance in his criticism, saying international relations depended on Russian and U.S. strategic ties. "It is the nature of our partnership that allows us to be honest with each other (and) discuss issues we do not agree on," he said.
A senior U.S. official, speaking to reporters in Moscow, played down the significance of Ivanov's comments saying that though U.S.-Russia relations were "strained" they were not irreparably damaged.
"I think strong language in public doesn't help to manage this disagreement, but we focus on the constructive assurances we are getting in private," the official, who requested anonymity, said.
"We also recognize the Russian leadership needs to project a principled position to the domestic audience and to the rest of the international community," he said.

But Ivanov's sharp attack, following President Vladimir Putin's fiece denunciation at the onset of U.S. military action on March 20, nonetheless marked another downturn in relations. Putin, who needs U.S. support and investment to turn Russia's economy round, has fought to protect his newly-forged ties with President Bush. But Russia's opposition to U.S. military action against its former close economic partner and Putin's call for a rapid end to military action has brought the relationship under pressure. Russia, with other U.N. heavyweights France and China, tried unsuccessfully to stop U.S. military action to topple Saddam.

All three argued for more time to be given to U.N. arms inspectors searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Baghdad denies holding any banned arms. The atmosphere has been further soured by Moscow's suspicions that Washington will disregard Russia's economic interests in Iraq after the war is over. Highlighting Russia's fears, the head of a Russian state firm with big oil interests in Iraq said Moscow had little chance of getting a slice of the pie after the war. "Americans don't need anyone else in Iraq, they will control Iraqi crude themselves. Nobody will give the green light for Russian or French firms in Iraq," said Nikolai Tokarev, head of Zarubezhneft, in an interview with Reuters.

Since the U.S. offensive, the two powers have become locked in a row over U.S. claims that Russian firms have supplied Iraq with banned military equipment including electronic jamming equipment and night vision goggles. Russia denies the sales were made...And the State Duma (parliament lower house) has delayed a vote to ratify a U.S.-Russia nuclear arms reduction treaty that would slash numbers of deployed warheads held by each side. Reuters Limited.

RUSSIAN MIILITARY ISSUES WARNING TO NATO

October 2, 2003

MOSCOW__A Defense Ministry document released Thursday emphasizes that Russia will have to make radical changes in its military reform plans--INCLUDING ITS NUCLEAR STRATEGY--if NATO continues to exist in its present form. Separately, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia would not rule out a pre-emptive attack anywhere in the world if Russia's interests demand it.

The blustery warniing to NATO came in a document on the modernization of the armed forces that was developed by the Ministry and distributed to reporters before President Vladimir Putin met with Ivanov and other top military officials to discuss plans to reform Russia's military, which have drawn opposition from top brass. "If NATO is preserved as a military alliance with its existing offensive military doctrine, this will demand a radical reconstruction of Russian military planning and the principles of construction of the Russian Armed Forces, INCLUDING CHANGES IN RUSSIAN NUCLEAR STRATEGY," the document says...

Last year, Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush signed a treaty under which the two sides are to slash their nuclear arsenals by about two-thirds over a decade. Putin has sharply improved ties with NATO, the Soviet Union's Cold War foe, and accepted its expansion into former Soviet republics on Russia's borders--a major source of Kremlin ire in the 1990s--without vehement opposition. (Think of the Grand Chessboard). But many in the military are angry about NATO's expansion and what they see as U.S. military ambitions in regions once dominated by Moscow. They are particulary worried that U.S. and other NATO forces might be based in former Soviet bloc nations of eastern Europe.

"Russia is attentively WATCHING the process of NATO's transformation and is counting on the complete removal of direct and indirect componants of an anti-Russian bent from both the military planning and the political declarations of alliance member nations," the document said. It also says that Russia is counting on expanded political, military and economic cooperation with the United States as well as cooperation in the fight against international terrorism. But it adds that "in relations with the United States, Russia proceeds from the need to strictly observe international law and the primacy of its own national interests."

In a clear reference to the U.S.-led war against Iraq without naming any specific countries, it says that the use of force without U.N. approval may prompt countries to seek to develop nuclear weapons as a potential deterrent, hurting international security instead of enhancing it. Putin has strongly criticized the war and has voiced similar worries...

A Russian national security doctrine unveiled in 2002 allowed the country's leaders to use all existing forces including nuclear weapons to oppose any attack if other efforts failed to repel the aggressor. The previous doctrine stated that Russia would use nuclear weapons only in cases when its national sovereignty was threatened.

Again without mentioning the United States, it also suggests the Russian military is concerned about U.S. efforts to develop new low-yield nuclear weapons and is considering how to respond. "Lowering the threshold of the use of nuclear weapons will require reforming the armed forces command system and approaches to responding to different threats," it says. The Star Online, Malaysia.

U.S. SAYS CHINA EYES SHOWDOWN IN TAIWAN

July 31, 2003

WASHINGTON__China is boosting its missile stocks and military budget to prepare for what could be a quick and brutal showdown with Taiwan, the Pentagon said yesterday. (Think of the Grand Chessboard).

Defense officials said China is emphasizing a "surprise, deception and shock" doctrine it its campaign against Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province. "Preparing for a potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait is the primary driver for China's military modernization," the Pentagon said in its annual evaluation of China's military.

While focusing on Taiwan, China is developing weapons systems that would impede U.S. intervention on behalf of the island in any future conflict, the report found.

U.S. TO SEND SIGNAL TO NORTH KOREANS IN NAVAL EXERCISE

Joint Maneuvers Are Called Message to Halt Nuclear Weapons

by Steven R. Weisman

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18, 2003__The Bush administration, while preparing for talks soon with North Korea, is also stepping up military pressure with plans for a joint exercise next month to train for interdicting at sea arms and other materials being transported to and from the North...

Some diplomats are known to worry that exercises like the one in the Coral Sea might be seen as provocative by the government of Kim Jong II in North Korea, and perhaps by Russia and China, which oppose confrontational tactics toward North Korea.

WE WILL WIN ANY NUCLEAR WAR WITH U.S.

SEOUL: North Korea said on Monday that victory would be certain for the Communist state in any nuclear war with the United States thanks to Pyongyang's "army-first" political system. "Victory in a nuclear conflict will be ours and the red flag of army-first politics will flutter ever more vigorously," state radio said..."Our victory is certain and the future ever more radiant," it said, touting the dominance of the army in the world's most heavily militarised society....

The standoff over North Korea's suspected nuclear programme has been simmering since October when Washington said Pyongyang had admitted to pursuing a programme to enrich uranium in violation of major international treaty commitments...

Tenet said North Korea could recover enough plutonium for several additional weapons if it were to reprocess spent fuel from the reactor that had been frozen in 1994 under an agreement with the United States which Pyongyng abrogated in October.

The United States keeps 37,000 troops in South Korea under a fifty-year security alliance formed to deter a repeat of the North Korean invasion of the South that sparked the 1950-1953 Korean War. The Times of India.

NORTH KOREA TO U.S: WE'D USE OUR NUKES

WASHINGTON__The top North Korean official at nuclear weapons talks in China warned a U.S. envoy that his country not only has atomic weapons--it may test, export, or use them, depending on U.S. actions. The veiled threat was made by North Korean delegate Ri Gun to Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly during a social gathering yesterday...President Bush responded angrily, saying, "See, they're back to the old blackmail game."

According to the U.S. official, Ri said...that North Korea has reprocessed all 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods in its possession. If true, that would put North Korea much closer to building six to eight additional weapons--beyond the one or two it is presently believed to have at present.

MENNONITES IN NUCLEAR US AND CANADA

by Robert V. Peters

In the summer of 1978, David H. Janzen, a member of New Creation Fellowship in Newton, Kan., was given what he felt to be a prophecy from the Lord regarding a Christian witness against the arms race. His prophecy was later shared with the general assembly of the Mennonite World Conference meeting in Wichita. It reads in part: "I want to show you where the idols of this age are hidden. Learn where are the missile silos, the bomb factories, the centers of military command, the prisons for dissenters. Understand that those who bow down to fear trust in these idols for salvation. Stand beside their idols and proclaim my liberating kingdom. Invite them to share your life in me. Perfect love must be your weapon, for perfect love casts out fear."

The heart of the nuclear complex of two huge laboratories both sponsored by the University of California ("Let there be light") and operated by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The one at Los Alamos, N.M., is where scientists designed and built the world's first atomic bombs. The other lab is at Livermore, Calif., an hour from downtown San Francisco. Through the years these labs have conceived and designed every nuclear warhead in the US arsenal, and they continue to lobby for new weapons and against arms limitation treaties that might cut back on their work.

The making of nuclear weapons begins with the mining and milling of uranium, a mineral found abundantly in the Rocky Mountain and Great Plains states--principally Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota and Texas--and in northern Canada...The uranium ore is transported to three huge enrichment plants owned by the DOE. Plants are located in Paducah, Ky., Oak Ridge, Tenn. and in Piketon, Ohio. Union Carbide ("Today something we do will touch your life") operates the plant at Oak Ridge and Paducah for the DOE. These plants make the uranium, deuterium and lithium parts for the hydrogen bomb. In addition, United Nuclear Industries in Hanford, Wash. produces weapons grade plutonium and is a major waste management center for the DOE's nuclear programs.

WITNESS AT ROCKY FLATS. The DOE's principal nuclear fabrication facilities are in Colorado, Tennessee, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, South Carolina and Texas. Rockwell International ("Where science gets down to business") operates the Rocky Flats plant for DOE, near Denver. Plutonium trigger systems that ignite thermonuclear bombs are fabricated and assembled here. The Arvada Mennonite Church, one of four area Mennonite churches, has been a leader in bringing peace witnesses to Rocky Flats over the years. Several church members, including pastor Peter Ediger, have been arrested for various acts of holy obedience, such as praying at the railroad entering the plant...

There are more than 2,000 separate parts in a typical nuclear warhead. They all come together at a final assembly plant named Pantex (Mother Jones magazine calls it the "heart of darkness") and operated for the DOE by Mason & Hager-Silas Co., 23 miles northeast of Amarillo, Texas. Recently six Christian peacemakers were arrested for holding a prayer service inside the fence of the plant...

Hundreds of companies are involved in making additional parts for the Bomb--building warheads, electronic componants, planes, submarines, etc...Some Mennonites have participated in non-violent actions at the construction site of the Trident submarine base in Bangor, Wash. Mennonite papers reported that 16 people from the Warden Woods Mennonite Church in Toronto participated in a protest march to Litton Industries in nearby Rexdale. Litton produces the navigation system for the cruise missiles...

After the nuclear weapons are finally assembled in Texas, they are deployed at US military installations around the world. The Strategic Air Command ("Peace is Our Profession") has bases containing ICBM missiles and/or nuclear armed B-52 bombers near Mennonite communities in Kansas...Many of our Mennonite centers are near key targets in the event of a nuclear war, an event growing more likely every day. As this study shows, some Mennonite churches and individuals are taking Jesus' message of peace to these death-worshipping sites with the good news that they can repent of warmaking and choose life for themselves and their children. General Conference Mennonite Church, Newton, Kansas.

A NUCLEAR ROAD OF NO RETURN
BUSH''S BID FOR NEW KINDS OF WEAPONS COULD PUT WORLD ON A SUICIDAL COURSE.
Robert Scheer
May 13, 2003

It turns out the threat is not from Iraq but from us.

On Sunday, the Washington Post wrote the obituary for the United States' effort to find Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. "Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq," read the headline, confirming what has become an embarrassing truth — that the central rationale for the invasion and occupation of oil-rich Iraq was in fact one of history's great frauds. The arms inspectors "are winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms," reported the Post, putting the lie to Colin Powell's Feb. 6 claim at the United Nations that Iraq possessed a functioning program to build nuclear bombs and had hoarded hundreds of tons of chemical and biological materials.

Unfortunately, this does not necessarily mean the world is a safer place. The deadly weapons of mass destruction have proved phantom in Iraq, but the Bush administration is now doing its best to ensure that the world becomes increasingly unstable and armed to the teeth. Although the nuclear threat from Iraq proved to be nonexistent, the United States' threat to use nuclear weapons and make a shambles of nuclear arms control is alarmingly vibrant.

In its latest bid to frighten the planet into a constant state of shock and awe, our government is accelerating its own leading-edge weapons-of-mass-destruction program: President Bush's allies on the Senate Armed Services Committee have approved ending a decade-old ban on developing atomic battlefield weapons and endorsed moving ahead with creating a nuclear "bunker-buster" bomb. They also rubber-stamped the administration's request for funds to prepare for a quick resumption of nuclear weapons testing.

What's going on here? Having failed to stop a gang of marauders armed with nothing more intimidating than box cutters, the U.S. is now using the "war on terror" to pursue a long-held hawkish Republican dream of a "winnable nuclear war," as the president's father memorably described it to me in a 1980 Times interview. In such a scenario, nukes can be preemptively used against a much weaker enemy — millions of dead civilians, widespread environmental devastation and centuries of political blowback be damned.

Building a new generation of battlefield nuclear weapons sets the stage for another round of the most dangerous arms race imaginable. What has been forgotten in all of the patriotic hoopla is that it is our country that pioneered the creation of weapons of mass destruction over the last half-century. And it was our dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, that sparked the arms race of the Cold War.

Faced with the reality that nuclear weapons are useful only for mass international suicide, every U.S. president since World War II has pursued a policy of nuclear arms control. Every administration, that is, until this one, which from its first days has made clear its inveterate hostility to arms control. It attacked the Antiballistic Missile Treaty and resurrected the corpse of the "Star Wars" nuclear defense program, even as Bush's first Nuclear Posture Review telegraphed the development of battlefield nuclear weapons and threatened their use against "rogue" nations.

"We're moving away from more than five decades of efforts to delegitimize the use of nuclear weapons," warned Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a dissenter on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Following our lead, why shouldn't India and Pakistan develop battlefield nuclear weapons? Or Beijing for use against Taiwan and vice versa? After getting China and most nations to accept a testing ban, why would this administration seek to resume testing?

The current preponderance of our military power, combined with our overweening, xenophobic fear of the rest of the world, has corrupted all rational thought. Sadly, no one will listen to the mayor of Hiroshima, who last month wrote Bush to warn that new U.S. nuclear weapons development represented "a frontal attack on the process of nuclear disarmament."

But why listen to someone from Hiroshima? What do those people know about weapons of mass destruction?

If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.

U.S. DETONATES 'MOTHER OF ALL BOMBS' IN FLORIDA TEST
Reuters

Friday 21 November 2003

WASHINGTON - The most powerful conventional bomb in the U.S. arsenal exploded in a huge, fiery cloud on a Florida test range on Friday after being dropped by an Air Force cargo plane in the last developmental step for the nearly 11-ton''mother of all bombs.''

An MC-130E Combat Talon I dropped the 21,700-pound satellite-guided GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, or MOAB, over the test range at Eglin Air Force Base in northwestern Florida, said base spokesman Jake Swinson. A plume of smoke rose more than 10,000 feet in the air and was visible 40 miles away in Pensacola, Florida. ``It looked like a big mushroom cloud filled with flames as it grew and grew and grew,'' Swinson said after the afternoon test. ``It was one of the most awesome spectacles I've seen.''

The Air Force called the test successful, saying the bomb separated cleanly from the aircraft with the help of a parachute at 20,500 feet, glided 41 seconds to its target area and detonated as planned. Officials said the bomb was developed in only nine weeks to be available for use this spring in the Iraq war, but commanders opted not to use it. Its only previous live test came on March 11, the week before the U.S.-led invasion.

The MOAB, the most powerful nonnuclear U.S. bomb, carries 18,700 pounds of high explosives, detonating just above the ground when the tip of the 30-foot-long bomb hits the earth, Swinson said.He said the bomb was now available to U.S. commanders, but said there were no immediate plans for it to go into production. The United States has had larger conventional bombs in the past but none in the current U.S. arsenal is as big. The MOAB is envisioned as a successor to BLU-82, the 15,000-pound ``Daisy Cutter.''

The ``Daisy Cutter'' was used to clear helicopter landing areas in the Vietnam War and was used in the 1991 Gulf War and in 2001 in Afghanistan. In the latter two conflicts, U.S. commanders used the ``Daisy Cutter'' partly for the psychological effect of such a massive blast.

Swinson said it was the last of four developmental tests for the MOAB -- nicknamed the ``mother of all bombs'' by some in the military. The two live tests were preceded by two inert tests. Lynda Rutledge, MOAB program manager at Eglin, said there were minor modifications to the MOAB tested on Friday compared to the one detonated in March, adding that the latest test sought to give commanders a chance to understand how the big bomb performs, particularly relating to targeting.

Marching Toward Apocalypse
by Marko Beljac
August 26, 2003

One of the leading conservative hawks on Iraq, Charles Krauthammer, wrote in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq that, "before our eyes in a flash, politics has gone cosmic. The question before us is very large and very simple: can, and will, the civilized part of humanity disarm the barbarians who would use the ultimate knowledge for the ultimate destruction?"

For Krauthammer to frame the issue of rogue states and weapons of mass destruction in such an apocalyptic manner is entirely justified. If dangerous rogue states were to acquire the ultimate means of destruction, coupled with an international order characterised by might makes right, then our own extinction as a species becomes a distinct possibility. As the philosopher and antiwar campaigner, Bertrand Russell, stated, this would be "rather a pity."

As such it is a worthy question to ask: which rogue state poses the greatest threat to global security? Unfortunately for the hawks, the answer to this question is rather unflattering. Consider a key planning document drawn up by United States Strategic Command, a Clinton-era document mind you, which oversees America's vast nuclear weapons arsenal. This document states, "because of the value that comes from the ambiguity of what the US may do to an adversary if the acts we seek to deter are carried out, it hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool headed. The fact that some elements may appear to be potentially 'out of control' can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing doubts within the minds of an adversary's decision makers. This essential sense of fear is the working force of deterrence. That the US may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be a part of the national persona we project to all adversaries."

Moreover, the US reserves the right of first use of nuclear weapons, even against an adversary armed only with conventional weapons. As the recent Pentagon nuclear posture review stipulated, the US may use nuclear weapons if its conventional military forces face defeat on distant battlefields. If one were to have the temerity to defend oneself successfully from American attack then instant annihilation awaits.

If you happen to be a potential target of such an irrational nuclear armed state what responses are open to you? The answer to that question is pretty obvious: acquire weapons of mass destruction yourself. Precisely the reason why states such as North Korea have an abiding interest in weapons of mass destruction. It should be noted that this is well known to policy makers in Washington. For instance Donald Rumsfeld himself wrote in a congressional report during the Clinton years that, "for those seeking to thwart the projection of US power, the capability to combine ballistic missiles with weapons of mass destruction provides a strategic counter to US conventional and information based military superiority."

The US is also going along with plans to militarize space. The militarization of space is meant to give Washington, according to Rumsfeld, "space control" so that it may "project power in, through and from space." This directly threatens Russia and China's nuclear early warning system. Threatening these warning systems greatly increases the chances of a large scale accidental nuclear exchange. A part of this space programme is National Missile Defence. A National Intelligence report concluded that a National Missile Defence system would lead to Russia and China increasing the size and scope of its nuclear forces in order to strengthen their deterrents. As China increases its nuclear arsenal, so would India. As India expands its nuclear arsenal, so would Pakistan. Israel may do likewise, which may prompt Iran to enter the race.

The US, in waging a preventative (not pre-emptive) war against Iraq, has effectively torn up the entire fabric of international law. Middle powers such as Australia have a keen interest in the health of international law.

The US, like any rogue state, reserves the right to wage offensive war whenever and however it feels like. Yet this rogue state has thousands of nuclear weapons, which it chooses to brandish in an irrational and vindictive way. Moreover, Washington's nuclear unilateralism has resulted in the US scuttling existing strategic arms control regimes, which is what one would expect of a global rogue state posing a clear and present threat to global security. As we have noted the US is creating strong incentives for vertical nuclear proliferation, that is, arms racing amongst existing nuclear powers, just as it is creating incentives for further horizontal proliferation, that is, proliferation amongst non-nuclear powers. Furthermore, as a rogue state that stresses the right to act irrationally and vindictively, as well as to wage preventative war, the US threatens to effectively create a system of multiple overlapping nuclear arsenals where strategic command and control systems would be tightly coupled.

As the expert on nuclear command and control, Paul Bracken, has observed that tight coupling greatly increases the chances for technical error as a small perturbation in the system may lead to mutual accidental launch. As Bracken stated, "in the world in which people live, power grids fail, trains derail, bridges and dams fall down, DC-10 engines fall off, and nuclear power plants come close to meltdown. These things don't happen often, but they do occur." Writing in 1988 he goes on, "a 1965 power failure in the American Northeast was traced to a single inexpensive switch. It was said repeatedly after 1965 that such a cascading power blackout could never occur again, since the freak accident had been carefully considered in new designs based on the lessons of 1965. But it did happen again, in 1977, in New York." A sobering thought in these times.

Of course Bracken was writing of a simple linear system of coupling between the Soviet Union and the US. What we are seeing now is the onset of a system of multiple, overlapping command and control systems, in a world order increasingly characterised by global vertical and horizontal proliferation. This is very similar to the interacting strategic systems that helped to usher in a catastrophe in 1914. A small perturbation in such a system may indeed lead to a cascading blackout, one that would be permanent for Homo sapiens this time around. It is for good reason that even the people of Canada regard the US as the greatest threat to global peace and security, not to mention the Europeans. The world's leading rouge state can only be successfully deterred from within, by its own population, in what strategic analysts have long called "self deterrence."

The millions of people who marched for peace during the lead up to the invasion of Iraq represent the "civilized part of humanity" and they are determined to prevent the "barbarians from using the ultimate knowledge for the ultimate destruction." Unlike Krauthammer, they seek to disarm all the barbarians, including the biggest of them all. The prospects for continued human survival largely depend on the success of these popular movements.

ISRAEL URGED TO ABANDON NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Friday 12 December 2003

The head of a nuclear watchdog has urged Israel to relinquish its nuclear weapons arsenal as part of a future Middle East peace agreement. Muhammad al-Baradai, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told an Israeli newspaper on Friday that Israel and its neighbours should eliminate all weapons of mass destruction from the region.

Israel has never officially admitted to having the bomb, and positions itself outside international treaties which would make it subject to inspection. But al-Baradai told the Haaretz daily: "We operate under the assumption that Israel has nuclear arms... Israel has never denied this." He added there is "a lot of frustration" about Israel's suspected cache, and urged the country to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty - a global pact aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear arms.

Nuclear treaty...The UN General Assembly and IAEA General Conference have adopted 13 resolutions since 1987 appealing to Israel to join the treaty, but all have been ignored. "My fear is that without such a dialogue, there will be continued incentive for the region's countries to develop weapons of mass destruction to match the Israeli arsenal," he said.

Israel's nuclear programme was exposed in 1986 by Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu. After a British newspaper published the revelations, Mossad agents kidnapped Vanunu in Italy and illegally smuggled him back to Israel. He has now spent 17 years in jail, 11 of which were in a tiny solitary confinement cell - and he has just had his appeal for parole denied. Vanunu will stay in jail until 2004, when his term is expected to end.

Neil Kingsnorth, a spokesman for the London-based Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said Israel is estimated to have between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads. If deployed, they would be sufficient to obliterate the whole region. "Israel doesn't admit or deny having nuclear weapons, probably for legal reasons. They don't even try to justify having them but it is obviously because they are surrounded by what they perceive as hostile Arab states," he said. "But having nuclear weapons hasn't prevented Israel being attacked by the Palestinians. I think in the short term the principle of nuclear deterrance might work but in the long term tensions inevitably rise."

"Israel should own up to having nuclear weapons and sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty. If countries like Israel set an example, non-nuclear states would lose the incentive to acquire these weapons" However, Kingsnorth said the whole nuclear debate, which is focussing at the moment on Iran's nuclear programme, is replete with hypocrisy. "The US and Great Britian have thousands of nuclear warheads between them but are refusing to give them up. They are trying to make this false distinction between good states that can have nuclear weapons and bad ones who can't. "In practice, the good ones are the ones that are willing to work with them and the bad ones are the ones who are not. I think that is an incredible oversimplification of a complex international situation."

He added: "Israel should own up to having nuclear weapons and sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty. If countries like Israel set an example, non-nuclear states would lose the incentive to acquire these weapons. Then we could make strides to nuclear free world." Aljazeera

WHAT ABOUT THE WMDs THAT DO EXIST?

By Lawrence S. Wittner

Now that it's acknowledged by all but hard core supporters of the Bush administration that weapons of mass destruction were nor present in Iraq at the time of the U.S. invasion, IT'S TIME TO TAKE A LOOK AT SUCH WEAPONS THAT DO EXIST.

According to the authoritative Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, THERE ARE MORE THAN 30,000 NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN THE WORLD TODAY. Eight nations are known to possess them (the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel). And a ninth, North Korea, might have these as well.

The vast majority of these nuclear weapons are in the hands of the United States and Russia. EACH OF THESE NATIONS MAINTAINS MORE THAN 2,000 OF THEM ON HAIR-TRIGGER ALERT, READY AT A MOMENT'S NOTICE TO CREATE A GLOBAL HOLOCAUST IN WHICH HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WOULD DIE A HORRIBLE DEATH.

EVEN THE MUCH SMALLER NUCLEAR ARSENALS OF THE OTHER NUCLEAR POWERS HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO CAUSE UNIMAGINABLE DESTRUCTION.

Recognizing the unprecedented danger posed by nuclear weapons, the nations of the world have signed a number of important nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements over the past four decades. These include the Partial test Ban Treaty in 1963, the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 1972, and two Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties, the first in 1972, the second in 1979.

After a short hiatus occasioned by the revival of the Cold War, they were followed by the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, two Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START I in 1991 and START II in 1993) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT in 1996). These agreements limited nuclear proliferation, halted the nuclear arms race and reduced the number of nuclear weapons.

The linchpin of these agreements is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, in which the non-nuclear signatories agreed to forgo development of nuclear weapons in return for a pledge by the nuclear powers to move toward nuclear disarmament. A few non-nuclear countries, such as India, kept their options open by refusing to sign the treaty. But the overwhelming majority of nations signed the agreement, because they considered it a useful way to reverse the nuclear arms race.

As late as the year 2000, the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty promised an "unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapons states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals." This included taking specific steps, such as preserving and strengthening the ABM Treaty and ratifying and putting into force the CTBT.

Although the U.S. government is a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty--indeed, initiated it and lobbied hard for its acceptance--THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION HAS DECIDED THAT IT WILL NOT BE BOUND BY THE TREATY'S PROVISIONS. IT HAS PULLED OUT OF THE ABM TREATY, AND ACTION THAT ALSO HAS THE EFFECT OF SCRAPPING THE START II TREATY. THE ADMINISTRATION HAS ALSO REJECTED THE CTBT AND THIS PAST FALL PUSHED LEGISLATION THROUGH CONGRESS TO BEGIN BUILDING NEW NUCLEAR WEAPONS. A resumption of U.S. nuclear testing, halted in 1992, seems in the offing.

How long other nations will put up with the flouting by the United States of the world's arms control agreements before they resume the nuclear arms race themselves is anybody's guess...BY BUILDING ADDITIONAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND PROVOKING OTHER NATIONS TO DO THE SAME THING, the Bush administration has enhanced the prospect of "loose nukes" becoming available TO TERRORISTS AND OTHER FANATICS...While talking loosely (and misleadingly) of nuclear dangers from "evil" regimes, it has jettisoned the U.S. government's long-standing commitment to nuclear arms control and disarmament. UNLESS THIS POLICY IS REVERSED, THE WORLD FACES DISASTERS OF VAST PROPORTIONS.