- WASHINGTON - Top officials
in the Bush administration and in Congress have been urged to use a small
neutron bomb to wipe out Osama bin Laden in a quick first strike in the
war on terrorism.
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- Sam Cohen, the scientist who invented the neutron bomb,
has outlined for these officials his plan to 'do in' the Taliban and
terrorist
Osama bin Laden, and do it quickly.
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- That, says Cohen, would go right to the core of the
terrorist
threat and at the same time satisfy the typically American
impatience.
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- The neutron bomb has a limited blast and causes little
collateral damage or lasting radioactivity while killing its intended
targets.
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- "My offhand guess is that the majority of Americans
couldn't care less how we 'do in' the Taliban and bin Laden and company,
provided we get it done and [quickly]," he told NewsMax.com in a phone
interview from his West Coast home.
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- Cohen, whose views were often accepted by President
Reagan,
agrees with President Bush regarding the need for the American people to
resolve to hunker down for the long term.
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- The global terrorist threat is indeed "going to
go on for years," Cohen agrees, but he is telling policy-makers in
Washington, "the name of the game right now is Afghanistan [and] bin
Laden."
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- What we need, he says, is a quick, highly visible strike
to begin that war - one that Americans can see now. That, he believes,
would stiffen the public's resolve for the future. The president has
already
told Americans that the war itself won't be quick and easy and could take
years.
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- "I don't think they're going to be very tolerant
of a prolonged [ground war,]" argues the scientist. He cites Korea
and Vietnam as examples of the limits of America's patience.
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- At the same time, Cohen points to the 1991 Desert Storm
as an example of an air war of short duration that did not do the job,
given that Saddam Hussein remains in office today, as powerful as ever,
plus the fact that resulting civilian deaths in that conflict vastly
outnumbered
military casualties. Hardy consistent with the first President Bush's vow
to wage "a Christian war," in Cohen's view.
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- As a solution that would be both quick and effective,
the author of "Shame: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron
Bomb"
proposes reconfiguring Minuteman missiles. Remove the thermonuclear
"big
bang" component (hundreds of kilotons). Once that is done, these
weapons
could be deployed to target the hideouts of terrorists in
Afghanistan.
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- Cohen says his sources tell him the U.S. has "fair
intelligence" on the Taliban and "where their units and training
camps are spread around."
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- The problem with "bombing the hell out of them"
is that "we don't know where these guys are, and they're nobody's
fool" and now that they know they're under attack, "they're going
to be on the move." They will "burrow and bury themselves"
while continuing their training exercises.
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- To counteract this requires, first, the "element
of surprise."
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- Secondly, there will be a need for a weapon that imposes
"mass destruction" that is carefully targeted.
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- Each Minuteman missile has three warheads. The
thermonuclear
component could be defused, while keeping the "trigger" at the
kiloton level. "A kiloton bomb would do approximately the same amount
of harm" as the hijacked airliners did to the World Trade Center
Building.
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- "We hit them unannounced. All the president has
to do is punch a button to put the plan into operation, and [these
reconfigured
kiloton bombs] can be retargeted practically within minutes." Ridding
the weapons of the thermonuclear component can be done "within
days,"
Cohen argues.
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- Further, they would take "considerably less than
a half-hour" to reach their destinations. The "kiloton
fission"
would be a "deadly force," with a radius of about two-thirds
of a mile "towards killing people who are exposed." That would
be about a square mile, which "ought to cover the area of a training
camp." The radioactive fallout would be relatively limited in terms
of immediate death and death from prolonged effects.
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- The neutron bomb stockpile was eliminated after the Gulf
War. The weapon had the potential for destroying humans without destroying
property. Peace activists around the world had denounced it for that
reason.
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- In fact, Cohen noted, in contrast to his famous
invention,
the kiloton bomb could destroy property. Also, whereas the neutron bomb
can produce widespread radioactive fallout, the bomb he advocates for a
quick strike in the current war is more carefully targeted.
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- Cohen's plan is known to have elicited a very positive
reaction in some Washington quarters. Where it goes from there has yet
to be determined.Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: War on
Terrorism
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- Posted by permission of NewsMax.com
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