How Clinton Set the Stage for Bush
10/18/07 "ICH"
-- -- At the
end of the Cold War the peoples of the earth shared a rare
moment in human history. In fact, nothing like it had ever
happened before. The United Sates stood alone as the lone
planetary Superpower. The American star which had been
rising since the second World War had now reached its
zenith. For whatever reason, it seemed that destiny had
selected the United States for a special role: to guide the
community of nations into a period of unparalleled peace and
prosperity. With the fading of East-West tensions this and
much more seemed within reach. For a brief time it did
appear that anything was possible. And why not? After all,
the United States faced no serious military challenges. The
US dollar was the favored currency in international
exchange. In fact, it had been for decades. English was the
lingua franca of science, diplomacy and commerce.
Almost the entire world acknowledged US leadership. American
culture was widely imitated. Together, this was
unprecedented. Never had one nation, let alone a democracy,
achieved such global influence. America had both the
prestige and the power literally to shape the future of
humanity.
The
world was desperate for a new vision. This was true for many
reasons, but primarily because the titanic struggle between
capitalism and socialism had been enormously destructive.
The forty-five year Cold War had been waged on many fronts
and in the most improbable places. It was an ideological
war, not a clash of civilizations. As the vying spheres of
influence ebbed and flowed across the continents, numerous
nations were drawn in. Proxy wars raged along the tectonic
margins and at the friction points where East and West
collided. Neither side could defeat the other militarily
without destroying itself, because the epic struggle was
governed by a mad doctrine, Mutually Assured Destruction
(MAD). It was a fitting acronym for an insane time, and also
a cruel paradox. For decades the world, rigged to a trip
wire, could neither stand still nor move forward. The added
rub, which I believe the world sensed intuitively, was that
the precarious balance could not be sustained indefinitely.
Of course, looking back it is now clear that that the Cold
War itself, I mean the idea of the Cold War, was a carefully
cultivated illusion: a false reality; but that is another
story. Certainly the consequences were real enough. Citizens
of the planet who lived through the period know what it
means to live wedged between impossible alternatives–––the
unthinkable on one hand and the unendurable on the other.
Many were crushed beneath these wheels. Some nations were
utterly destroyed, even beyond hope of recovery. The list of
victims is long, and includes Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia,
Chile, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, East Timor, Ethiopia,
Granada, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Laos, Mozambique,
Nicaragua, Panama, Somalia, Sudan, and Viet Nam. No doubt,
there are others...
Even
as the Cold War trampled on the rights of indigenous people
everywhere it despoiled the global environment. Toxic mayhem
on a vast scale accompanied the nuclear arms race. Entire
regions were affected and many were ruined or left
permanently scarred. The open wounds from the heyday of
uranium mining still deface the landscapes of the American
southwest. As I write, Navaho children play on the tailing
piles, amidst the radioactive dust, left behind by soul-less
corporations that appeared on the scene, eager to make a
fast buck, boomed briefly, then disappeared or were
swallowed, in turn, by still larger corporations with even
less of a conscience. Even worse scars can be found in the
former Soviet republics where whole provinces were poisoned
by catastrophic accidents at Sverdlovsk and Chernobyl, and
entire districts, such as the Aral Sea region, were
despoiled by central planning gone amok.
By any
measure, the toll of the Cold War was incalculable, and it’s
no wonder that when the corrupt old Soviet state finally
collapsed under its own weight the world’s response was:
good riddance! The dismantling of the Iron Curtain was
attended by joyous celebration across Europe. For a brief
moment hope soared. In the US there was even talk of a peace
dividend. Everywhere people dared to believe that the
victory of the West presaged a new era of international
cooperation, now desperately needed to address a long list
of pressing problems, among them Third World poverty,
overpopulation, the challenge of sustainable development,
the energy crisis, AIDs, and the environment. Most
importantly, at long last real progress toward nuclear
disarmament seemed within reach. All eyes now turned to the
West and especially to Washington for answers and for
leadership. Yet, as I write in October 2007 it is painfully
obvious, and has been for most of the presidency of George
W. Bush, that the high hopes have been dashed. All that
remains is the question: How and why did this happen? It is
a difficult question, admittedly, but if we are to find our
way back and regain a measure of hope, we must face it with
brutal honesty.
Today,
many Americans hold G. W. Bush personally responsible for
the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere that have
brought about America’s increasing isolation in the world.
Many also blame Bush for the general decline in our fortunes
and for the dimming of hope. While I am no friend of the
Bush administration, I do not entirely agree with this view,
because I take issue with those who still naively believe in
a partisan solution. The truth is more complex. In fact, the
previous Democratic administration of William Jefferson
Clinton bears a large measure of responsibility for the
disasters that have befallen us. In many ways the Clinton
White House set the stage for George W. Bush. Dr. Helen
Caldicott, the tireless campaigner against nuclear oblivion,
writes that she got the wake-up call about Clinton in 1999
when she was invited to attend a meeting in Florida about
the weaponization of space. Caldicott was aghast as she
listened to knowledgeable individuals describe US military
planning, then current. Like many of us, she had trusted
Bill Clinton, and had believed he was taking care of the
nation’s business. Suddenly, Caldicott realized she had been
living in a fool’s paradise. She writes:
“To my
horror I found that seventy-five military industrial
corporations such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, TRW
Aerojet, Hughes Space, Sparta Corp, and Vista Technologies
had produced a Long Range Plan, written with the cooperation
of the US Space Command, announcing a declaration of US
space leadership and calling for the funding of defensive
system and ‘a seamlessly integrated force of theatre land,
sea, air and space capabilities through a world-wide global
defense information network.’ The US Space Command would
also ‘hold at risk’ a finite number of ‘high-value’ earth
targets with near instantaneous force application–––the
ability to kill from space...I also discovered that the
much-vaunted missile defense system was to be closely
integrated with the weaponization of space, and that all of
the hardware and software would be made by the same firms,
at the combined cost of hundreds of billions of dollars to
the US taxpayers.”[1]
The
plan envisaged “full spectrum dominance,” that is, US
military domination of land, sea, air and space. Although US
planners sought to portray this next generation of
technological wizardry as defensive, in actuality, the
planned systems, if implemented, amounted to a major break
with the 1972 ABM Treaty, and with long-standing US
commitments to maintain the peaceful status of outer space.
The cold logic of dominance meant that the project was
offensive in nature. But why? Exactly who was to be
targeted? Which enemies? Remember, this was 1999. The Cold
War had been over for some years. Both Russia and the US
were then cooperating to reduce the size of their nuclear
arsenals. The START reductions were limited, to be sure, but
the process was moving in the right direction and further
reductions were possible. Obviously, the US military’s
sweeping new plans for the domination of space threatened to
undo all of this progress toward a more sane planet. It was
obvious to Caldicott that a precious opportunity was in
danger of being squandered, perhaps forever. The new space
weapons threatened to trigger a new arms race and, very
likely, another cycle of world conflict. Caldicott writes
that she staggered home from the meeting determined “to
become re-involved in educating the public about the
impending catastrophe associated with the mad plans of the
US Space Command and its associated corporations…”
The
point is that not even one of the new weapons systems being
planned were needed. In fact, the grand plan for space, if
implemented, would have benefited no one but a few arms
manufacturers and, of course, the bankers who finance such
deranged schemes–––all at immense cost to the US taxpayer.
The plans were in direct conflict with then-current US
foreign policies. The weaponization of space was
diametrically opposed to the limited nuclear arms reductions
then in progress, yet, was being presented as in the best
interests of America: a case of mendacity so brazen one has
to wonder how the selfish individuals who cooked it up could
sleep at night.
As
I’ve noted, the end of the Cold War presented America and
the world with a golden opportunity to move in a new
direction, a direction that was, in fact, essential for the
survival of our planetary civilization. As a younger man I
was an admirer of the late R. Buckminster Fuller. The
inventor is probably best known for the geodesic dome, but
Fuller also popularized the concept of the “critical
path.”[2] It is an expression used by engineers and it means
exactly what it suggests. The idea is that if we are to
become sustainable on “spaceship earth” and avoid destroying
our planetary home we must learn to live within the physical
limitations or budget imposed by Nature. This, in turn,
requires that we drastically reduce our human “footprint” by
becoming much more efficient in the way we use energy and
natural resources. Fuller was a firm believer in human
ingenuity, and he often argued that our predicament called
for a designer revolution on various levels, both economic
and social. None of the steps in the critical path are
optional, from the standpoint of survival. Taken together,
they should be understood as the minimum requirements
necessary for the long-term success of the human enterprise.
While experts often disagree, at the end of the Cold War the
single most urgent step was obvious, or should have been, to
every thinking person; and this includes the newly elected
President Bill Clinton, who entered the White House in 1992
on a wave of high hopes.
As the
first US president to be inaugurated in the post-Cold War
era, Bill Clinton’s number one priority should have been to
meet with our Russian neighbors at an early date, and to
negotiate with them a mutual halt in nuclear weapons
production and research, as well as a rapid build-down of
existing nuclear stockpiles and delivery systems. It was
also imperative that Clinton give firm direction to the US
military. The Pentagon had to be made to understand that
because the Cold War was now thankfully over the nation must
chart a new path, one that required the urgent redeployment
of resources away from the nuclear arms race. A key part of
this redirection would be the announcement of a vital new
mission for the national weapons labs (Lawrence, Los Alamos,
and Sandia). Henceforth, the labs would cease most
weapons-related research/development and would redirect
their considerable energies and talents in a positive
direction, the new mission being a Manhattan-scale project
to solve the nation’s energy problem. The goal would be to
wean America from its unhealthy dependence on coal and
foreign oil. Clinton would instruct the labs to engineer a
phased transition toward abundant and clean energy
alternatives at the earliest possible date; and to make it
happen he would also press Congress to appropriate the
needed funding. Efforts would focus on a range of promising
technologies, but especially wind, solar, tidal, and
hydrogen. Meanwhile, the nuclear establishment would be
stripped of its vast subsidies. Although in a bye-gone era
these were a sound idea, the nuclear establishment had
produced no energy solutions, despite years of preferential
treatment. Indeed, the vast monies lavished upon it had
succeeded only in creating another bureaucratic dinosaur. In
fact,the nuclear industry itself had become an impediment to
change, because its enormous subsidies undermined healthy
market forces. Henceforth, nuclear power would have to
compete on a more equal playing field with other
alternatives. Assisting market forces to operate would be
essential to the transition to clean energy; and for this
reason another goal would be to achieve the economies of
scale necessary to bring down the costs of clean and
renewable alternatives. The end result would be greatly
enhanced national productivity, the creation of whole new
sectors of the economy, boosted foreign earnings, and
millions of high-paying new jobs here in the US. Resources
would also be redirected to a long list of outstanding
social and environmental problems. At the top of the latter
list: the urgent clean-up of the toxic mess created by the
nuclear establishment during a profligate half-century of
out-of-control weapons development. This alone would cost an
estimated $350 billion (in 1995 dollars, according to the
Department of Energy [DoE]), a whopping figure that does not
even include the costs associated with cleaning up the mess
at the Hanford reservation, the Nevada Test Site, and the
Savannah and Clinch nuclear facilities, all so contaminated
that a solution may not even be feasible.
Some
will argue that the above visionary plan was (and is)
unrealistically utopian–––too much to expect of any US
president, let alone the Clinton White House. But I take
strong exception with this viewpoint, because in the 1990s
the transition I have described was already within reach.
Few major technological breakthroughs were needed. Many of
the important alternatives were already “on the shelf” and
could have been brought to maturity without undue economic
strain. Some, no doubt, would have become mainstream long
since but for bureaucratic inertia and because powerful
vested interests have actively suppressed them–––interests,
I should add, that have long sought to keep America addicted
to oil. No, what was needed more than anything was genuine
leadership in the Clinton White House, in order to beak
through the inertial barriers and confront the vested
interests. What is the role of a president, after all, if
not to use the power of his office (the bully pulpit) to
catalyze changes that are needed for the good of the nation?
This is precisely why a president must stand above special
interests. In the early years of his presidency Clinton did
not lack for popular support. A solid majority of the
American people elected Clinton because they wanted change;
and they looked to him to make the tough decisions. This is
not just my opinion. Other commentators have also pointed
this out. Bill Clinton entered office with tremendous
political capital, yet, incredibly, he never used it. The
crucial factor was leadership, and he simply failed to
deliver. There are various theories as to why. Dr.
Caldicott's frank assessment will make Democrats
uncomfortable, but in my opinion it carries the ring of
truth. Caldicott thinks Clinton lacked the necessary
strength of character, and she has it right.
Clinton’s Nuclear Policy Review:
Like
other newly elected presidents, Bill Clinton soon ordered a
policy review of US nuclear weapons doctrine. The review was
of vital importance and required that Clinton become
personally involved to insure its success. This also meant
taking charge of the Pentagon as the commander-in-chief.
Unfortunately, instead of asserting his authority, Clinton
vacillated, as if he were unclear himself about priorities
and objectives. The policy review was eventually delegated
to mid-level officials who were easily outmaneuvered by
hard-liners in the military. The generals opposed any
changes in US nuclear policy and they ultimately won a
decisive victory. This was a major defeat for Clinton, and
one from which it seems he never recovered. Caldicott
speculates that Clinton, thereafter, sought to compensate
for his loss of standing by using military force abroad on
more occasions than any president in two decades. She may be
right. The point is that Clinton’s attempts to placate the
Pentagon were no substitute for leadership. This probably
explains why, even today, Clinton is widely viewed with
contempt within the US armed services. Soldiers naturally
respect strength and revile weakness.
Clinton’s diminished presidency did not become evident,
however, for some years. Certainly none of this was
immediately obvious. At the 1995 Nonproliferation Review (NPT)
Conference the Clinton administration, to all appearances,
achieved a major success by persuading a majority of nations
to agree to an indefinite extension of the NPT. This success
was probably due to Clinton’s vocal support for the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and because the US
delegation agreed to a list of noble principles reaffirming
the US obligation under Article VI of the NPT to take steps
in the near future toward complete disarmament. The world
did not then know that Clinton was about to violate those
same principles, by succumbing to a deal with hard-line
elements within his own administration. This in itself is an
indication of Clinton’s failed leadership, for only a weak
president would ever agree to such a back-room deal. What
was this deal? The US Department of Energy (DoE),
representing the national weapons labs, agreed to back
Clinton’s support of the Comprehensible Test Ban only
if Clinton agreed to preserve the labs’ traditional role as
nuclear overseers; which, of course, meant preserving the
nuclear arsenal itself. And so was born the Stockpile
Stewardship and Management Program, otherwise known as
Manhattan II. Although its stated purpose seemed innocuous:
to insure the safety and reliability of the US nuclear
stockpile, in reality, the program would maintain various
nuclear research and development programs at roughly Cold
War levels for many years. Additionally, the package created
new computational and simulation programs to compensate for
the anticipated ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty. It is known that nuclear research secretly continued
at Los Alamos–––in violation of the NPT. This came to light
in 1995 when Dr. Don Wolkerstorfer, a Los Alamos manager,
mentioned a new bunker buster, the B-61-11, during a radio
debate.[3] The B-61-11 is a variable-yield nuclear
penetrator (maximum yield: 340 kilotons). The following year
Department of Defense (DoD) spokesperson Kenneth Bacon
revealed that other earth penetrators were also in
the works. Bacon told reporters that “We are now working on
a series of weapons,
both nuclear and conventional,
to deal with deeply buried targets.”[4] There were even
indications that the labs were moving ahead on an even more
ambitious effort to develop the next generation of nuclear
weapons. On April 25, 1997, the physicist Hans Bethe, the
most senior surviving scientist from the Manhattan Project,
sent a letter to Clinton, a letter that one day may have
historic significance. In it Bethe urged the president to
halt research on new weapons designs, including a pure
fusion bomb, long regarded as the nuclear Holy Grail. Bethe,
who led the theoretical division at Los Alamos during the
development of the Atomic Bomb, was long retired. Yet, he
maintained contacts in the labs and was informed about the
kind of research that was underway. Bethe informed Clinton
that the US already possessed more than sufficient weapons
for it security, and he urged that
“...the time has come for our Nation to declare that it is
not working, in any way, to develop further weapons of mass
destruction of any kind. In particular, this means not
financing work looking toward the possibility of new designs
for nuclear weapons. And it certainly means not working on
new types of nuclear weapons, such as pure-fusion
weapons.”[5]
Bethe
deserved to be taken seriously. After all, he won the 1967
Nobel Prize in physics for describing the fusion process
that drives the stars. In his letter Bethe further wrote
that because “new types of weapons [i.e., a pure fusion
bomb] would, in time, spread to others and present a threat
to us, it is logical for us not to pioneer further in this
field.” Although the great physicist affirmed his support
for the stewardship program, he also cautioned that
computational experiments could be used to design new
categories of weapons, even in the absence of underground
testing. For this reason Bethe urged Clinton not to fund
such programs. Again, this was sage counsel. It is believed
that Israel evaded international detection while
clandestinely developing nuclear weapons by this very means,
i.e., through the use of computational models and computer
simulations. Israel, which has never signed the NPT, is
known to have staged only a very few small nuclear tests,
perhaps even as few as one.[6] Yet, Israel succeeded in
developing a large and advanced nuclear arsenal. Six weeks
later Bethe received a polite reply from Clinton, in which
the president deftly side-stepped all of the main points
Bethe had raised.
Just
five months later, in November 1997, Clinton issued a
presidential directive, PDD-60, formalizing the outcome of
his nuclear policy review. Most of the document remained
classified, but more than enough was released to serve
notice to the world that the United States had now become a
far greater threat to the nonproliferation treaty than any
terrorist or rogue state.[7] Clinton’s directive flew
squarely in the face of the noble principles he had agreed
to at the 1995 NPT conference. The directive reaffirmed the
logic of the Cold War and announced a cornucopia of new
spending to be showered upon the nuclear establishment over
the next two decades. The directive announced that the US
would maintain the status quo, that is, the Cold War triad
of nuclear forces (i.e., bombers, ICBMs and submarines) as
well as the hair-trigger launch-on-warning posture. The US
insisted upon the right to nuclear first-use and even the
right to use nukes against non-nuclear states that might
somehow threaten US “interests.” These shocking revelations
were unprecedented. The US also rejected a Russian proposal
for deeper cuts in the number of strategic warheads.
Instead, the US would move ahead with plans to upgrade the
US Trident missile force and the B-2 bomber. The US would
also resume production of plutonium pits, which are the
fissile cores used in nuclear weapons. The directive
reaffirmed the new emphasis on sub-critical testing and
advanced computer modeling procedures: the very thing that
Hans Bethe had cautioned against. Additionally, the US
announced that it would resume production of tritium, an
isotope of hydrogen used in thermonuclear weapons. The
stated purpose was to provide additional supplies for the
stewardship program. Because tritium has a half-life of
twelve years, the tritium gas used in nuclear weapons decays
and periodically must be replenished. Even so, the
explanation was dubious, since tritium can be scavenged from
deactivated weapons and recycled. Given even modest
reductions in the size of the US nuclear force, in 1997
there was at least a thirty-year supply for the stewardship
program.[8] This hinted that Hans Bethe was correct and the
US was already secretly developing the next generation of
nukes. As if all of this were not enough, the directive also
announced that the US would complete construction of a brand
new National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence
Livermore laboratory, where the world’s most powerful lasers
would be used to study nuclear fusion–––another clue.
These
policies had been decided with no public debate or
consultations with Congress. Ten years later, it appears
that Clinton had made a bargain with the devil. He may have
acted in the mistaken belief that the much-anticipated
ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban by the US Senate
would provide him some flexibility, allowing him to later
rescind at least some of the newly announced policies. As we
know, of course, in 1998 the Republican-controlled Senate
rejected the Test Ban, dealing Clinton a stinging defeat.
Obviously, Clinton’s attempts to placate the militarists in
his administration backfired, with the tragic result of
locking the US into a Cold War posture for many years to
come, even though the Cold War was long over. All of which
raises serious questions about Bill Clinton’s style of
leadership, or lack thereof. But his character issues were
not limited to placating generals. The more fundamental
problem is that he chose to serve a small group of rich and
powerful men, instead of serving the nation.
Clinton’s Expansion of NATO
For
many years, during the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) was the first line of defense against a
possible Soviet attack on Western Europe. But when the old
Soviet state collapsed in the late 1980s during the
presidency of Mikhail Gorbachev, NATO’s original purpose
also ceased to exist. Later, when the Berlin wall came down,
President George Bush Sr. assured Gorbachev that the US
would not expand NATO into eastern Europe, if Russia
did not oppose the reunification of Germany. The agreement
was mutually beneficial, and Russia was true to its word.
However, during his second term in the White House Clinton
reneged on Bush’s promise by proposing to admit eastern
European nations to the NATO alliance, starting with Poland,
the Czech Republic, and Hungary. Clinton’s Secretary of
State, Madeleine Albright, went on tour promoting the new
plan. She argued that NATO expansion was a good idea because
it would stabilize central Europe politically and
economically. Thoughtful critics, however, such as former
Senator Sam Nunn (R-GA), a long-time expert on US nuclear
policy, pointed out that because Moscow would naturally view
the eastward expansion of NATO as a threat to its national
security, the probable consequence would be exactly the
opposite. Clinton’s plan would destabilize Europe, stall
progress toward arms reductions, and over the long term
might even lead to a new Cold War. The critics also warned
that the US taxpayer would pick up much of the tab for NATO
expansion to the tune of many billions of dollars, most of
which would end up in the bank accounts of various arms
merchants. Yet, in 1998, with almost no debate the US
Congress closed ranks behind Clinton and voted to support
NATO expansion.
With
hindsight, the critics were correct. Despite claims by the
Clinton administration to the contrary, the expansion of
NATO into eastern Europe was not in the best interests of
the United States, nor in the best interests of Europe. At
the time, the relatively poor nations of eastern Europe did
not have money to waste on arms. Their top priority was to
rebuild their infrastructure after the disaster of
communism, and to improve the lives of their people. Of
course, Washington promised that in return for purchasing
our weapons the US would support their entry in the European
Union (EU), which most of western Europe opposed at the
time. Yet, this was an illusion, since their purchase of
large quantities of US weapons actually slowed their
economic recovery, and this more than anything delayed their
entry into the European Union. No, the primary beneficiaries
of NATO expansion were the US arms makers and their
financial backers on Wall Street. All of whom saw in the
break-up of the former Soviet bloc an opportunity to enrich
themselves. A scurrilous lot, they can only be compared with
the wave of carpetbaggers who infested the southern states
after the American Civil War, for the purpose of exploiting
the defeated Confederacy. The US arms industry, the world's
largest, spent millions successfully lobbying the US
Congress and the Clinton administration to expand NATO, and
subsequently they cashed-in on this vast new arms bazaar. As
early as 1995 Clinton had telegraphed his obeisance to these
same powerful interests when he issued presidential
directive 41, which announced that arms sales were essential
for preserving US jobs. The directive instructed US
diplomats to get busy and boost foreign sales of US-made
weapons for the good of the economy. Obviously, Clinton
found it easier to maintain the status quo, however
perilous, rather than use the considerable power of his
office to change that reality and move the nation away from
the weapons economy built up during the Cold War. When
Moscow protested the expansion of NATO Clinton brushed aside
Russia’s security concerns with practiced aplomb. The
president insisted that NATO was a force for stability, and
his casual demeanor seemed to make light of this quaint idea
that NATO might somehow threaten the Russians. How absurd!
Today,
of course, as George W. Bush prepares to install an
anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system in Poland and a new ABM
radar site in the Czech Republic, on Russia’s doorstep, and
as we hover on the brink of world war, it is perfectly clear
that Moscow’s concerns were well-founded. The issue is why
our former president, a Rhodes scholar, was purblind to the
fact, ten years ago. The truth is that Bill Clinton’s
expansion of NATO was never about the stability of Europe.
It was never about US or global security. It was always
about one thing: the sale of weapons for profit. All of this
becomes more obvious as the world situation deteriorates,
yet, the Democratic candidates in the presidential marathon
apparently still don’t get it. As far as I can tell, they
have been conspicuously silent about Clinton’s failed NATO
policy. Which I take as a sober commentary on our deaf and
dumb political culture. Someone needs to corner Hillary and
ask her this pointed question, on camera: Why did your
husband put the interests of the weapons manufacturers and
bankers above the interests of our nation and our planet?
Why, Hillary? Because there is no doubt that Bill’s NATO
policy set the stage for the disasters that have overtaken
us. Perhaps the real issue is whether Hillary, or any
of the Democratic front-runners, have the integrity and
courage to answer a simple question.
[1] Helen Caldicott and Craig
Eisendrath, War in Heaven: The Arms Race and Outer Space,
The New Press, New York, 2007, p. ix; also see Helen Caldicott,
The New Nuclear Danger, The New Press, New York, 2004.
[2] Buckminster Fuller,
Critical Path, St. Martin’s Griffin, New York, 1982.
[3] Broadcast by radio station
KSFR in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on July 18, 1995. For more details
about the B-61-11 go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B61_nuclear_bomb
[4] Office of the Assistant
Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), DoD News Briefing,
Tuesday April 23, 1996.
[5] The text of Bethe’s letter,
and Clinton’s reply, have been posted by the Federation of
American Scientists.
http://www.fas.org/bethecr#letter
[6] Mark Gaffney, Dimona: The
Third Temple?, Amana Books, Brattleboro, 1989, chapters 4
and 5.
[7] For an excellent discussion
of PDD-60 see Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, USN (ret), “The NPT
Review -- Last Chance?”, The Defense Monitor, Vol. XXIX,
No. 3, 2000. Posted at
http://www.cdi.org/dm/2000/issue3/NPT.html
[8] Kenneth D. Bergeron,
Tritium On Ice, MIT Press, 2002. Also see Charles D.
Ferguson’s review in the March/April 2003 issue of The
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, (vol. 59, no. 02) pp.
70-72.
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