Is Bush Leading Us to Nuclear War?

[G_j]

http://www.alternet.org/story/51368/

Is Bush Leading Us to Nuclear War?

By William D. Hartung and Frida Berrigan, In These Times. Posted May 23, 2007.

While the United States demands that other countries end their nuclear programs, the Bush administration is busy planning a new generation of nuclear weapons known as "Complex 2030."
http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/future_of_the_nuclear_weapons_complex.htm

Only days before the fifth anniversary of September 11, President George W. Bush addressed military officers in Washington to warn that nuclear-armed terrorists could "blackmail the free world and spread their ideologies of hate and raise a moral threat to America."

This alarmist vision was accompanied by the White House's release of "A National Strategy for Combating Terrorism," which painted a picture of a "troubling potential WMD terrorism nexus emanating from Tehran." The administration is building the case for war against Iran -- a job made easier by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent announcement that Iran can now enrich uranium on an industrial scale -- despite the fact that many Iran-watchers and nuclear experts consider their claims of enrichment capacity to be an overblown boast.

This is not the first time the "no-nuclear-weapons-for-you" ploy has been used to lay the groundwork for a war. On Oct. 7, 2002, while making the case for regime change in Iraq, President Bush said: "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

Yellow cake, aluminum tubes and histrionics about Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities followed ... all of which were challenged at the time, and have turned out to be completely fabricated. And, when not grinding the axe of pre-emptive war as counter-proliferation strategy, the administration periodically raises the specter of nuclear terrorism, in the form of dirty bombs and suitcase-sized warheads
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[no_hypocrisy]

1. Add to that equation the fact that the U.S. plans to let the SALT Treaty lapse in 2009,

meaning that this country could build without restriction any number of new devices while retaining the older models and build more deadly weapons that would have been banned under SALT.