Bush White House Guided Military to Develop Nuclear Strike Plans Against Rogue States

[elehhhhna]

The Federation of American Scientists' director of the nuclear information project Hans Kristensen reports that he has gotten ahold of a surprising document that shows the Bush White House guided the US military to change the US nuclear posture in 2002 to develop nuclear strike plans against rogue states, including North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

"Everybody got so afraid of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and terrorists and the combination of the two that White House guidance ordered the military to prepare nuclear strike plans against them," Kristensen tells me in a phone interview Monday. "This particular document is the main surprise here. It is a briefing that that US strategic command held sometime in 2002 which is about national nuclear war plans that went into effect in March 2003. Since then, there has been only upgrade of the plan."

Kristensen says the document he got hold of is a compilation of slides, 126 pages. "They only released 23 of those, and most of that is heavily redacted," Kristensen says. "But one thing they surprisingly let through is the identification of new strike plans against rogue states. And this is a surprise. ... This shows nuclear strike planning rose all the way to the top, the national strategic war plan, a new development."

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/11/6058_bush_white_hous_1.html

[ananda]

1. But but..

.. the USA is the worst rogue state of all.

[L. Coyote]

2. WOW, if this gets out they may follow our pre-emptive example. Ooooppps!

[aquart]

3. We're going to nuke ourselves?

[tridim]

4. Another piece of evidence for the impeachment trial.

This aggression cannot stand.

[L. Coyote]

5. TPM: U.S. Plan Envisioned Nuking Iran, Syria, Libya

U.S. Plan Envisioned Nuking Iran, Syria, Libya
By Spencer Ackerman - Nov 5, 2007, 1:00PM
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004639.php


Despite years of denials, a secret planning document issued by the U.S. military's nuclear-weapons command in 2003 ordered preparations for nuclear strikes on countries seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction, including Iran, Saddam Hussein-era Iraq, Libya and Syria.

A briefing (pdf http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/united_states/revision03.pdf) on the document obtained by the Federation of American Scientists, showed that the document itself was created to flesh out a 2001 Bush administration revision of long-standing nuclear-weapons policy, known as the Nuclear Posture Review (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm). That review was a Defense Department-led attempt to wean nuclear policy off a Cold-War focus on Russia and China, but the shift raised questions about what purpose nuclear forces would serve apart from deterring an attack. In March 2002, leaks indicated (http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2002_04/nprapril02.asp) that the review would recommend preparations for nuclear attacks against WMD-aspirant states. Arms Control Today pointed out at the time that planning to attack non-nuclear states that were signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty reversed decades of U.S. nuclear policy.

The administration's response was to deny that the review moved the U.S. from deterrence to a first-strike posture. After the leaks, the Defense Department issued a statement (http://www.fas.org/news/usa/2002/dodnpr031002.htm) in March 2002 saying cryptically, "This administration is fashioning a more diverse set of options for deterring the threat of WMD. ... A combination of offensive and defensive, and nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities is essential to meet the deterrence requirements of the 21st century." Speaking to CNN around the same time, General Richard Myers, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Nuclear Posture Review was "not a plan, it's not an operational plan. It's a policy document. And it simply states our deterrence posture, of which nuclear weapons are a part." Vice President Dick Cheney said (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A10783-2002Mar11¬Found=true) at the time that the notion that the review paved the way for "preemptive nuclear strikes" was "a bit over the top." .........

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