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Pastimes : The New Qualcomm - write what you like thread. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jackmore who wrote (5343)	10/4/2002 3:26:52 PM
From: waitwatchwander	Respond to of 12231

Don't sell our national secrets charlotte.com Legislation would permit foreign sales of advanced research WILLIAM SAFIRE New York Times WASHINGTON - They never learn. Remember, a couple of years ago, the scandals about the way corporate giants like Hughes Electronics and Loral Space, led by big Democratic contributors, sold secret U.S. satellite technology to Chinese aerospace companies and semiconductor manufacturers? Remember how right-wingers like me got all worked up about our shortsighted government and venal executives placing the interests of international trade over the needs of national defense? I am ashamed to report that the Bush administration is getting ready to let our ever-hungry multinationals do the same thing. This time, however, it would all be legalized. If current legislation (Senate 149, the Export Administration Act) being urged by the White House passed, American executives would be encouraged to sell the fruits of their most advanced research to foreign nationals who may not wish us well. The arguments used by the merchants of American defense technology: (1) selling technology overseas that is "mass marketed" here helps bring down our unit cost at home, as well as benefiting business; (2) we're only selling it for good uses, even though its "dual use" could help them penetrate our defenses; (3) "foreign availability" -- they could always buy something almost as good from the Germans or French. What's more, say the sell-anybody-anything advocates in the Clinton-Bush Commerce Department, because we have an embargo on sales to Iraq, relaxed rules won't help Saddam Hussein. Last things first: Iraq buys dual-use nuclear components through cutouts who could easily buy them from us. Take high-strength aluminum tubes, for example, which can be used in bicycles -- but a thousand of them in easily hidden gas centrifuges can produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear bomb every year. Under the proposed law, a country like Russia or Jordan could buy ours and resell them to Saddam with no weapons inspectors the wiser. A sinister use of the composite glass fibers in your tennis racket is to form the rotors of those centrifuges, and their export has been controlled for 20 years. No more, if those who would sell our technology have their way. We should not fall for the "dual use" dodge. Germany's Siemens, reported Gary Milhollin of the watchdog Wisconsin Project, legally sold Saddam krytron electronic switches, which doctors now use to destroy kidney stones. When Iraq then sought 120 more as "spare parts," it dawned on Siemens that the switches are also used in setting off the chain reaction in nuclear weapons. Export controls -- which worked well for decades against the Soviets -- need strengthening, not weakening. Perhaps our National Security Council has been getting pressure from India and Pakistan, each of which wants our missile technology. By accommodating these nuclear powers, we might gain two allies but would make the world more dangerous. America does not need this dirty business. It amounts to only a few billion dollars in sales, and its military misuse costs American taxpayers far more than that to defend against. A handful of hard-line senators (Jon Kyl, Jesse Helms, Richard Shelby, John McCain and Fred Thompson) wrote Bush this month to stop pushing this bill this year. They urged instead that he create a new bill "that strikes the right balance between national security and trade" lest it cause "public divisions among strong supporters of your administration at a time when cohesiveness is an absolute necessity." Some old hands remember the predations of yesteryear. Newcomers have to be reminded. William Safire