Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz - Real Life Dr. Strangeloves - Their Nuclear Madness Continues

posted by admin on Wednesday April 23, @08:01AM

Just What The Enviornment Needs More Radioactive Clouds

Administration moves ahead on nuclear 'bunker busters'

By Dan Stober

Mercury News

Demonstrating a significant shift in America's nuclear strategy, the Bush administration intends to produce -- not just research -- a thermonuclear bunker-busting bomb to destroy hardened, deeply buried targets, the Pentagon has acknowledged for the first time.

The weapon -- known as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator -- would be a full-power hydrogen bomb that would throw up enormous clouds of radioactive dust while wreaking large-scale damage and death if used in an urban area. It would be thousands of times more powerful than the conventional ``bunker busters'' dropped on Baghdad in an attempt to kill former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

According to a variety of participants, impetus for a renewed interest in battlefield nuclear weapons comes primarily from civilian Pentagon officials such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his second-in-command, Paul Wolfowitz, rather than uniformed generals and admirals.

``I've talked to the military extensively, and I don't know anybody in the military who thinks they need a nuclear weapon to accomplish this,'' said U.S. Rep. Ellen Tauscher, a Walnut Creek Democrat whose district includes Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

``If you can find somebody in a uniform in the Defense Department who can talk about a new need'' for nuclear bunker busters ``without laughing, I'll buy him a cup of coffee,'' said Robert Peurifoy, a retired vice president of Sandia National Laboratory. The New Mexico lab fashions the outer casings and other non-nuclear aspects of nuclear weapons and will play a role in the project.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/5695249.htm

<  GNN: AfterMath: Unanswered Questions from 9/11 | N. Korea Raises The Stakes and Calls. Tells Shrub, We Have NUKES!  >