http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=100480&lftnav=progressreportNUCLEAR POLICY IN SHAMBLES: During last year's presidential debate, President Bush stated that nuclear proliferation was the greatest threat to U.S. national security. Yet today, the administration's nuclear policy is alarmingly incoherent and in shambles. North Korea, which declared its withdrawal from the treaty in 2003 and claims to have built nuclear bombs, said this weekend it was giving up negotiating over its weapons program with a Bush-led United States. Iran, meanwhile, said it will probably restart operations this week related to its disputed uranium enrichment program. The administration's answer? "Keep doing the same thing, only louder," when what's really needed is a serious strategy. Last year, Rep. Dave Hobson (R-OH), chairman of a House Appropriations subcommittee, rejected the administration's plan for nuclear "bunker buster" bombs and asked instead, "What is the administration's overall plan?" John Hamre, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, recently noted that "he has yet to get an answer that makes any sense."
NEW NUKES: Meanwhile, the Bush administration is failing to uphold its end of the NPT bargain, developing a new generation of nuclear weapons. On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pressed Congress to fund research into the "bunker buster" nuclear bomb that was dropped from the budget last year. Despite new reports showing the weapon "could not go deep enough to eliminate fallout" and could kill "from a few hundred to more than a million," Sec. Rumsfeld told senators that further development of the program "makes all the sense in the world." The Bush administration is also actively undermining the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty – "the administration's 2005 budget refers for the first time to a list of test scenarios" for nuclear weapons.
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