Hiroshima Revisited

Reports today claim that President George W. Bush is planning for nuclear "bunker-buster" strikes against Iran's nuclear program sites.

This cannot be accurate, this cannot be true. This just cannot be. No sane American President would initiate a "pre-emptive" nuclear attack on anybody, anywhere.

Let me tell you why.

These atomic weapons, so casually referred to as "bunker-busters", are in reality atomic bombs many times larger than the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs. The fantasy idea that the detonation of these weapons underground would successfully limit collateral damage, is exactly that: Fantasy.

Ok, so one of these things can penetrate 10, 20, even 30 yards into solid rock before exploding. The crater it creates would be close to three or four times as deep and far larger across. It would destroy a bunker alright, but what else will it destroy in the process? How large is the blast radius? How far is the distance in which total destruction would occur? Thousands will die instantly, many thousands later, due to radiation poisoning.

Radiation?

Of course. These are atomic weapons we're talking about here. We brag about our "clean" bombs, but they're not really "clean"... they're just "cleaner" than the very "dirty" bombs the Russians made.

We have been shown how just one of those "suitcase bombs" the Russians developed would destroy Manhattan. These "bunker-busters" are far, far larger.

We are told Bush is worried about Iran attacking Israel or US troops abroad if they develop some sort of nuclear weapon. Well, me too, but the use of atomic weapons -- no matter what we call them -- because we're worried, is absolutely out of the question.

America got away with using atomic bombs in WW2. We were at war with a nation that attacked us without warning. They were just much bigger bombs, and nobody came close to understanding the long-lasting consequences of their use... political, enviornmental, the effect on health worldwide... you name it.

I do not believe for a second that America can escape the consequences this time around, particularity if Bush orders their use in one of these totally un-American "preemptive" attacks.

If Iran attacks our troops stationed overseas, we certainly have the conventional military capability to handle the problem. If they attack us with their imagined and non-existent nuclear weapons, our imagined and non-existant response would to be remove Iran from the face of the earth. There is no way the Iranian government cannot understand that.

For America to use nuclear weapons preemptively against any nation on earth to "protect" Israel from an imagined attack is complete and total insanity. Israel and the Jews -- based on their own particular and unique religious beliefs -- have made their own bed in the Middle East. They are wholly responsible for whatever consequences their actions have produced.

Use a nuclear weapon many times more powerful than the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs on a people not at war with us? Incomprehensible! It's just like I said:

No sane American president would ever do such a thing.

If George W. Bush is actually considering such an action, he needs to be removed from office immediately -- along with all his neocon warmongering advisers -- before he sets America on a course that would ultimately result in national suicide.

The stigma, the scar, the shame of such an action imposed apon us by the entire world would be non-ending. That is not the America we want to leave our children.