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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group

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To: Ish who wrote (34602)7/18/2002 1:45:13 PM
From: aladin  Read Replies (1) of 281500
 
Ish,

As usual for the FAS (or their counterparts at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists) - they essentially rule out any use of nuclear weapons. They do NOT address the issue of response to Biological or Chemical ordinance.

This is a real policy debate issue.

My own feeling is that weapons of mass destruction are just that and our policy should be -> use any large scale WMD on US territory or troops and we will nuke you. End of story.

This was the policy during the Gulf War and Saddam knew it.

Would it work? Well MAD worked for decades and despite a few hotspots we survived the cold war.

Your idea of incinerating bio or chemical stockpiles has great merit. If I were planning WMD responses, after an enemy had used one - all potential stockpile or launch locations would be hit.

If I were designing weapons to target these - I would use bunker buster technology armed with neutron weapons of less than 10 kilotons. No nasty aftereffects outside of the blast zone. There would be collateral damage - but its alpha and short lived.

Think about traditional ordinance hitting a bio-lab. If it doesn't do the job 110% - the collateral damage could be devastating. Imagine airborne polio...

John
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