The Festival of Nukes

Okay...I'm sitting here scanning through my Google Reader with the morning's first cup of coffee...and the headline of this story grabs my attention, "Bush administration picks Lawrence Livermore warhead design!





My first thought is "Warheads?". But as I read on this little tid-bit of information seemed to add weight to the already bad start of this news release!

United States and its allies are trying to curb the spread of nuclear technology.

OH...but wait...I'm reading on and the story continues to spiral out of control, and my increasing apprehension is fueled by another pertinent question, "What the Hell?".

Many of the warheads in the nation's stockpile were designed and built 40 years ago, and their plutonium and other components are deteriorating in ways researchers do not fully understand.

Now that is some real important information! The words plutonium ...deteriorating...and don't understand...just somehow automatically raise the hair on the back of my neck. So let me see if I have this right...

Our nuclear weapons are getting old and the thousands of self-destruct warheads we have are becoming unstable. And the answer to this problem is to make more warheads to replace the old warheads that are already unstable in ways our best scientists and researchers still do not understand. And while we're doing all this, we're honestly attempting to convince the entire world's population that we are trying to curb the spread of nuclear technology!!?? Could this be more hawkish posturing for Iran's benefit?

But perhaps I'm reading this all wrong? Maybe the mindset is we're not expanding...only replacing. We're not adding to the number...we're merely occupying high ground we already hold. But I guess in all their wisdom, it's smarter to have the new warheads "first", before we dismantle the unstable old ones? Then when our specialists finally disarm the old heads, all we have to do is go bury them out their in Navajo Land, and not worry about the deadly radiation anymore! Besides, the operation could make a millionaire out of a few Navajos right?

There is an interesting OpEdNews article concerning the supposedly good reasons for newer nukes!

In September 2000, PNAC drafted a report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century." The conservative foundation- funded report was authored by Bill Kristol, John Bolton and others. The report called for: ". . . significant, separate allocation of forces and budgetary resources over the next two decades for missile defense," and claimed that, despite the "residue of investments first made in the mid- and late 1980s, over the past decade, the pace of innovation within the Pentagon had slowed measurably." Also that, "without the driving challenge of the Soviet military threat, efforts at innovation had lacked urgency."

The only hope we have seems to lie so far in the unsupportive nature Congress has shown towards the idea of introducing new nukes! But there is growing concern that the new democrats may defend the building of these new nukes even though common sense tells us "real people" that this is a "deadly" mistake!

According to the Nuclear Posture Review Report which was leaked and reported on by the Los Angeles Times back in 2002, our nuclear direction has been planned for a good while now. But now as we continue to open windows and expose the entire story, we all are beginning to be offered a good view of the destructive nature of our increasingly omnipotent politicians and their desire to perform in the "The Festival of Nukes".