Bush Would Use Mini-nukes, Prof Warns
by Dave Zweifel
Is George Bush the most dangerous president in U.S. history?
If you ask Professor John Swomley, he is.
Swomley, who teaches Christian ethics at the St. Paul School of Theology in
Kansas City, has authored an indictment of the Bush administration's foreign policy
that includes actual plans to use nuclear bombs as pre-emptive weapons.
It is essential, he says in a magazine article, for Americans to understand that the
administration has directed the military to prepare plans to use nuclear weapons
against at least seven countries - China, Russia, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Libya and
Iraq.
Presumably, had Iraq had those so-called weapons of mass destruction and had
used them when we invaded the country this spring, we were prepared to drop a
weapon of mass destruction of our own.
And Swomley warns that we shouldn't buy the argument that these nukes are small
and won't be all that horrific.
"Nuclear weapons, even if they are smaller than those of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, will
not only kill on impact, but raise immense radioactive dust, with the terrible results
of slow, agonizing death from radiation," he writes.
"Some people make the assumption that using smaller nuclear weapons will allow
accurate precision bombing, such as was claimed for the bombing of Iraq," he adds.
"What was not reported by officials is that although the Iraq 'smart' bombs rarely
missed a target by more than 13 feet, when a bomb blew up it sent high-speed
shrapnel flying as far as a mile, causing many civilian casualties. The additional
power of a nuclear bomb, together with its dispersal of radioactivity , is sure to
produce infinitely more harm."
Nevertheless, the U.S. Senate has already approved Bush's request to lift a 10-year
ban on research, development and production of nuclear weapons of less than 5
kilotons.
Continues..........
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