Weird ideas from the editorial staff of the New York Times: America as Nuclear Rogue. (Link requires registration.) Referring, of course, to the supposed Nuclear Posture Review which was leaked to the L.A. Times this past weekend:
If another country were planning to develop a new nuclear weapon and contemplating pre-emptive strikes against a list of non-nuclear powers, Washington would rightly label that nation a dangerous rogue state. Yet such is the course recommended to President Bush by a new Pentagon planning paper that became public last weekend. Mr. Bush needs to send that document back to its authors and ask for a new version less menacing to the security of future American generations.
Isn't "contemplating" such a great word? Even if Bush is deciding not to enact this plan, that's still "contemplating" it, right? Aren't the editors of the New York Times guilty of contemplating it, too? I know I am. I wonder if I'm a rogue state. I'd like to think so.
The review also calls for the United States to develop a new nuclear warhead designed to blow up deep underground bunkers. Adding a new weapon to America's nuclear arsenal would normally require a resumption of nuclear testing, ending the voluntary moratorium on such tests that now helps restrain the nuclear weapons programs of countries like North Korea and Iran.
Uh, guys? The threat of annihilation is what restrains the nuclear weapons programs of countries like North Korea and Iran. Whether the United States blows up a few square miles of Nevada is of concern only to the punditocracy. Oh, and maybe to people who live in Nevada.