Mushroom-Clouded Thinking (TomPaine.com)

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Mushroom-Clouded Thinking
Devin Helfrich
March 21, 2007



Devin Helfrich is a legislative assistant with the Friends Committee on National Legislation in Washington and works on defense and foreign policy issues.

Over the past year , a group of nuclear physicists has been studying a site on the banks of a beautiful river. Hidden from international nuclear inspectors, they are drawing up plans for a new facility, possibly along this river, designed to perform research on plutonium and build new nuclear bombs by the year 2020.

Where is this river? Is it the Volga in Russia, the Karun in Iran, or Kuryong-gang in North Korea? Actually, it was none of these. These scientists are all looking at the Savannah River on the border of South Carolina and Georgia, only a few miles from where Tiger Woods will be playing in the Masters Golf Tournament next month.

Buried deep within the volumes of the Bush administration’s annual budget proposal is an initial request for funds to start rebuilding its nuclear weapons system—at a price tag of over $150 billion. One possible location for this new H-bomb plant is the Savannah River site in South Carolina.

Why, in a world where the United States is legitimately worried about countries like Iran and North Korea building new nuclear weapons, is the Bush administration rebuilding its own nuclear weapons complex? While common in Washington, this type of hypocrisy is astonishing. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/03/21/mushroomclouded_thinking.php