Carrying Out a Nuclear Attack

So, here we are in Any Big City USA. Some guy with a martyr complex, a citizen of some Middle Eastern country, slips through the airtight security surrounding actual citizens of our country, and he detonates his suitcase nuclear device. So now what, Condoleezza Rice? Now what, President Bush? Who gets the retaliation? No. 1 on the Bush administration “hit” parade? The country where the terrorist is a citizen? The country that provided him with the finances and security clearance assistance? The country where his mother and father live? How much of his DNA will need to be left for us to figure out where to send our bomb? I mean, like, nuclear deterrence is a real deterrent, duh?

This country’s administration is out of touch with reality. Who feeds them their 80% approval statistics? I personally know no one who approves of the Bush administration, and I do not live in a narrow little world of look-alikes, think-alikes, worship-alikes. These people need to be stopped before they permanently ruin our country, our relationships with the international community and our Earth. You go, Tom Daschle! You go, Michael Moore! Our country needs you.

Karen Robinson-Stark

Tujunga

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For decades, U.S. defense policy against the Warsaw Pact rested upon the threat of nuclear retaliation in the event of a massive conventional attack against NATO. During the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. did not exclude the use of nuclear weapons if Iraq deployed chemical or biological weapons against U.S. troops.

The willingness to use nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances is essential to the credibility of America’s global security policy. Maintaining a nuclear arsenal without planning for the use--however unwelcome--of such weapons defies logic. U.S. flexibility in considering nuclear options is a bitter but critical tool in credibly defending our national and allied interests in this new age of catastrophic terrorism.

John Sitilides

Executive Director

Western Policy Center

Washington

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Given the disingenuous backpedaling of Secretary of State Colin Powell and Rice (March 11) and the curious assertion from Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) that there are some (unspecified) new weapons of mass destruction, it is likely that the decision to abandon the “no first use” policy is part of the Pentagon’s new disinformation effort. Rice as much as admits this by claiming a deterrent effect, which could not occur if the policy remained a secret.

A plan of such massive stupidity is a sophomoric parody of “Dr. Strangelove,” but even as disinformation this plan provides the rhetorical justification for many nations to reconsider nuclear weaponry as part of their conventional arsenals. Nice job, guys!

Maybe there are others in government who would benefit from Prozac as much as the besieged Taliban did (March 11).

Michael Yeomans

Goleta

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What can you be thinking of with the screaming March 9 headline: “U.S. Works Up Plan for Using Nuclear Arms”?

Do you think the nations targeted, already unstable, do not read newspapers? What do you think their reaction will be? Oh, dear? Or, fire up the nukes and get in first.

There are some things that should be kept within the purview of Congress. This is one of them. You have chosen the path of irresponsible reporting at its worst.

Shirley Palmer

Woodland Hills

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If the U.S. is seriously considering using nukes against even some nonnuclear states (Syria, North Korea, Iran, Iraq), how can we credibly demand that these or any other states not develop their own weapons of mass destruction? If the U.S. ever had any claim to moral leadership, the Nuclear Posture Review has destroyed it. Like the Russians, I am wondering whether my (unelected) leaders have lost touch with reality. They are making “Dr. Strangelove” look pale by comparison to their own mad fantasies.

Jonathan Aurthur

Santa Monica

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George W. Bush, a man who cannot pronounce “nuclear,” is a figurehead in this administration. The likes of the Heritage Foundation and its cheerleaders, Vice President Cheney, Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and who knows who else are running this government, and the American electorate better wake up and take note of where they are taking us.

Nancy McAlindon

Laguna Beach