- Note - The author Will Be Jeff's Guest This Thursday
-EIR
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- In the third week of February a number of newspapers
in the United States and Great Britain published segments of a Pentagon
document suggesting that the Bush Administration is moving ahead with plans
to develop a new generation of "mini" nuclear weapons, to be
used against "Third World despots" who collude with terrorists
and possess weapons of mass destruction--i.e., Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
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- The Jan. 10, 2003 memo from Dr. Dale Klein outlined plans
for an August 2003 conference at the Omaha, Neb. headquarters of the U.S.
Strategic Command, where scientists and military planners will gather to
make decisions on the production and deployment of a new generation of
"mini" nuclear bombs, "bunker busters," and other nuclear
devices that will become part of the U.S. military's arsenal of {offensive}
weapons. No longer is the first use of nuclear weapons taboo. No longer--unless
the madness is stopped--will the United States refrain from the use of
nuclear weapons against non-nuclear nations.
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- Already, a number of prominent Democrats, including 2004
Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche and Sens. Edward Kennedy (Mass)
and Dianne Feinstein (Calif), are making a big stink over this insane utopian
shift in policy. LaRouche has identified the push for the use of nuclear
weapons against Iraq as an outrageous move that can backfire, to stop the
war drive now. Senators Kennedy and Feinstein are reportedly circulating
a draft resolution among Senate colleagues, to take up the issue. And senior
Democratic Party figures in the circles of former President Bill Clinton,
have confirmed that there is intense debate and worry behind the scenes,
over the Bush Administration war party's being just insane enough to actually
use such nuclear weapons in an attack on Iraq. The prospect of the United
States using nuclear weapons against Iraq adds a new, even more horrifying
dimension to the threat of war in the Persian Gulf. LaRouche has already
called on President Bush to renounce this madness. - The Path to Destruction
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- The leak of the Jan. 10 memo did not come out of the
blue. For the past year, the Bush Administration has been moving, step
by step, to overturn a 50-year policy of keeping nuclear weapons on the
shelf as part of America's strategic deterrent. Here is a short chronology:
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- * In January 2002, the Bush Administration issued its
Nuclear Posture Review, a Congressionally mandated report on the U.S. nuclear
weapons program. For the first time, the 2002 report openly discussed the
possible use of nuclear weapons, naming seven countries that could be targets
of the American nuclear arsenal: Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, North Korea,
Libya, and Syria.
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- * On Feb. 22, 2002, John Bolton, a leading Administration
Chickenhawk who runs the arms control and disarmament office at the State
Department, gave an interview to the Washington Times in which he boasted
about the Bush Administration's intent to use nuclear weapons, under certain
circumstances. He candidly told the Times that the world had changed so
dramatically on Sept. 11, 2001, that it was no longer unthinkable to use
nuclear arms against rogue states thought to possess weapons of mass destruction.
Bolton said that to continue with the doctrine of no first use of nuclear
weapons reflected "an unrealistic view of the international situation.
The idea that fine theories of deterrence work against everybody, which
is implicit in the negative security assurances, has just been disproven
by Sept. 11." He concluded paradoxically, "What we are attempting
to do is create a situation where nobody uses weapons of mass destruction
of any kind."
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- It is no coincidence that Bolton's chief deputy at the
State Department is David Wurmser, one of the authors, along with Richard
Perle and Doug Feith, of the 1996 "Clean Break" report to then-Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That report called on Israel to abrogate
the Oslo Accords, launch preemptive war on the Palestinian Authority, and
drive America into an armed attack on Iraq.
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- * On Sept. 14, 2002, President Bush signed a secret document,
National Security Presidential Directive 17, which stated, in part, "The
United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to
respond with overwhelming force--including potentially nuclear weapons--to
the use of [weapons of mass destruction] against the United States, our
forces abroad, and friends and allies."
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- * On Dec. 11, 2002, the Bush Administration released
a declassified version of NSPD-17, under the title "National Strategy
to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction." The reference to the use of
nuclear weapons was not included in the declassified version, but instead
said that the government would "resort to all of our options,"
an only slightly camouflaged version of the same idea.
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- * On Jan. 31, 2003, the Washington Times published a
front-page story revealing the existence of NSPD-17, which warned, "The
disclosure of the classified text follows newspaper reports that the planning
for a war with Iraq focuses on using nuclear arms not only to defend U.S.
forces, but also to preempt deeply buried Iraqi facilities that could withstand
conventional explosives."
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- * On Feb. 19, 2003, the London Guardian was the first
newspaper to publish the Jan. 10, 2003 Pentagon minutes of the planning
for the Omaha session in August. The Guardian and other major newspapers
have received copies of Dr. Klein's memorandum from Greg Mello, who heads
a group called the Los Alamos Study Group, which initially received the
leak. - A Decade-Old Plot -
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- The push for a new generation of nuclear weapons, to
be used as part of America's offensive military arsenal, has been underway
for a decade. It first surfaced in the immediate aftermath of the 1991
Persian Gulf War, just as the current Bush Administration's supposedly
"new" national security doctrine of preventive war was first
promoted by Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby, Eric Edelson, and
Zalmay Khalilzad back in 1991, when they were all together at the Pentagon.
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- In April 1991, shortly after Operation Desert Storm,
then-Secretary of Defense Cheney commissioned a study of how the United
States should respond to the new military strategic reality of the fall
of the Soviet Union, leaving the U.S. as the world's unchallenged military
superpower. Wolfowitz, then Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy,
teamed up with his deputies Libby, Edelman, and Khalilzad, and presented
Cheney with a plan for an American military empire, striking out against
any nation or alliance of nations threatening American military hegemony.
The use of a new generation of nuclear weapons was included in the proposed
new arsenal.
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- In 1992, when Cheney and his cohorts attempted to include
the idea of preventive war, and the offensive use of mini-nukes in their
draft Defense Planning Guidance, the proposal was vetoed by the elder President
George Bush, at the urging of his top national security aides, National
Security Adviser Gen. Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State James Baker
III.
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- Nevertheless, in January 1993, after Bush had been defeated
by Bill Clinton, Cheney did put the same utopian ideas into his final policy
pronouncement, "Defense Strategy for the 1990s: The Regional Defense
Strategy." The document read, in part, "In the decade ahead,
we must adopt the right combination of deterrent forces, tactical and strategic
... to mitigate risk from weapons of mass destruction and their means of
delivery, whatever the source. For now this requires retaining ready forces
for a survivable nuclear deterrent, including tactical forces. In addition,
we must complete needed force modernization and upgrades."
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- While the language was vague to the average reader, it
was crystal clear to the utopians among the defense planners and scientists.
By October 1991, the Strategic Air Command of the U.S. Air Force had already
commissioned a study on the future uses of mini-nuclear weapons, and two
scientists from Los Alamos National Labs had published a declassified study
calling for the development and deployment of "mini," "micro,"
and "tiny" nuclear bombs.
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- Of course, the architects of this madness back in 1991-93
are now in power again. Cheney is Vice President, his chief of staff and
chief national security adviser is Lewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz is Deputy
Secretary of Defense, and Eric Edelman is one of Libby's chief strategists
at the Vice President's Office. Zalmay Khalilzad is the Bush Administration's
liaison to the Iraqi opposition.
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- At a Feb. 4. 2003 forum at the Willard Hotel in Washington,
Michael Ledeen, a leading Chickenhawk and self-professed "universal
fascist," bluntly stated that if the United States launches a war
against Iraq--which he fully endorses--it will, in reality, be a regional
war, also targetting Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia. If the
utopian schemers in the Bush Pentagon are not stopped, they may trigger
more than a regional war. As Lyndon LaRouche has warned, repeatedly, this
could be the trigger for World War III. And it could be a nuclear war.
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