Nuclear Bomb // Current

Cold War Remnant: Cancer for Baby Boomers

Even with a half-century's hindsight, the U.S. government's willingness to risk the health of the nation's children seems somewhere between unfathomable and unconscionable.

Between 1951 and 1962, the Atomic Energy Commission detonated more than 100 nuclear bombs in the atmosphere over its Nevada Test Site, just 65 miles from Las Vegas. The radioactive fallout menaced not only the ranchers and the miners unlucky enough to live in that remote area of southern Nevada, but -- as a new study unveiled Tuesday demonstrated -- untold millions of unsuspecting Americans as well.

The winds carried Strontium-90, Iodine-129 and other lethal particles across a broad swath of the country. Infants who were bottle-fed, which was then considered the modern approach, were particularly vulnerable to the Strontium-90 that ended up in cows' milk.

In 1961, as John Kennedy was poised to resume atmospheric testing after a two-year moratorium, he met with White House science adviser Jerome Wiesner in the Oval Office one rainy day. The president wondered how fallout reached the earth. Wiesner explained that it was washed out of the clouds by rain. "You mean," Kennedy asked, "it's in the rain out there?" As Wiesner tells it, the president then "looked out the window, looked very sad and didn't say a word for several minutes." Nonetheless JFK, fearful that the Soviet Union might score a nuclear breakthrough, authorized a new round of above-ground testing before negotiating the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963.

With Nov. 9, 2009 marking the 20th anniversary of the breaching of the Berlin Wall, Cold War retrospectives are again in season. But the grim legacy of nuclear testing is apt to be lost amid the memories of Josef Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, the Berlin airlift, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Ronald Reagan's famed exhortation at the Brandenburg Gate. The mushroom clouds over the Nevada desert seem so long ago, so devoid of any real-world consequences.

But a study released Tuesday documents the enhanced cancer risk that Baby Boomers face because of these long-ago atmospheric tests. Epidemiologist Joseph Mangano analyzed the lingering radiation in infant teeth (donated long ago by the parents of baby boys born in the St. Louis area between 1959 and 1961) and compared the results to contemporary cancer data from the subjects. "What we found out was shocking," Mangano said. "Persons who had died of cancer had more than double the Strontium-90 in their (baby) teeth than did healthy persons." The original variance in Strontium-90 levels among individuals, he explained, was caused by seemingly small factors such as how much milk expectant mothers drank, diet and the source of the municipal water supply.

more at link...Even with a half-century's hindsight, the U.S. government's willingness to risk the... more

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The Deal to Disarm Iran

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FAREED ZAKARIA: 'WE MUST STOP EXAGGERATING THE IRANIAN THREAT'

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Rising Sun: 64th anniversary of nuclear warfare

Today is the anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Once a year, we have the opportunity to pause and reflect on the devastation dropped upon Japan in 1945. 260,000 dead. A city burnt to the ground by firestorms. A nation's pride and psyche damaged in a way firebombs couldn't.

War is, and always will be, "politics by other means." Or more accurately, politics is war by other means. Japan was already economically ravaged, and Japan was already militarily defeated. But Japan was an ethnically homogeneous island, whose religious and political leaders wielded all the power of the society. There were two options with Japan: unconditional surrender, or months of limited peace negotiations. The later was politically nonviable.

What could the US hope to accomplish from Okinawa in terms of negotiations? A communist Manchuria and Korea? Claim on thousands of sparsely inhabited Pacific Islands? Returning Taiwan to the Kuomintang? This was an imperialist power that could and would rebuild like Germany had after World War 1, except that no Allied troops were ever going to breach the mainland Japanese defenses. There would be no conquering Japan - not without causing the US so many casualties that public support for the war would end.

There's a reason Operation Sealion (Hitler's invasion of Great Britain) never occurred - an amphibious invasion of such a well prepared defender would have devastating losses if you have both naval and air superiority. The invasion of Normandy was 3:1 attackers to defenders, the Allied attackers were liberating home soil in France, and they were only 130 km from the home logistical base, their home airbases, and their home naval bases. Naha to Kagoshima is 660 km, more than five times longer journey undefended against air and naval attacks. Okinawa was cordial to the Allies, but not as friendly as Portsmouth, England. Manila, Honolulu, Hong Kong, Singapore, Jakarta, and Darwin were all pretty damn far from Kyushu. The command and control would have been terrible. Japan was staking its peace negotiations on the fact that it could decisively defeat the US when they invaded Kyushu. No good would have come to America from invading Japan.

A single atomic bomb had the destructive power of 2000 bomb loads from B-29's. The US had been relentlessly firebombing Japan's cities since February. For example, on March 9th, 1945, the US firebombed Tokyo, burning down 16 square miles of the city, and killing 100,000, and destroying around 300,000 buildings where around 1.5 million people lived. The atomic bombs were merely more efficient at a task the US was doing by other means.

"Strategic bombing" and "area bombing" and "precision bombing" were very intentional euphemisms for what was called "terror bombing" when it was done to Great Britain. These bombing attacks rarely hit within a mile of the declared target, which itself was rarely hit even by an armada of bombers. The real strategic reason is to be a "counter value" strike - to make staying in the war as painful as possible for the civilians and politicians, who then would see surrender as a more viable option. It is inherently an act of brutality, of psychological warfare, of doing what no one wants to ever see done.

As Mr. Kozak as published in the Journal before, Curtis LeMay could be considered a war criminal today for ordering the mass executions of so many civilians from the air. But war is a strange world where killing a hundred thousand people may save two hundred thousand lives. Of course, we'll never know LeMay himself said, long after the war: "I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal."

Today, we have nukes. Nuclear weapons aren't so much more powerful than conventional weapons, though the mystique remains a powerful psychological force. Most nukes are relatively tiny compared to popular imagination, but at least they symbolize correctly the horror of mass destruction.Today is the anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Once a year, we have... more

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Nevada scientist discusses nuclear bombs

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'If you go outside...you may die': The BBC script prepared in event of nuclear attack revealed

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Russian plans to station nuclear bombers in Cuba

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U.S. to take North Korea off terror list

TOKYO — North Korea took a major step on Thursday toward re-integration into the world community and rapprochement with the United States by submitting for outside inspection a long-delayed declaration of its nuclear program

The Bush administration almost immediately announced it would remove the country it once described as part of the “axis of evil” from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The declaration from North Korea, one of the world’s most isolated and impoverished nations, was expected to describe in previously undisclosed detail its capabilities in nuclear power and nuclear weapons — meeting a major demand of the United States and other countries that consider the North a dangerous source of instability.

“This can be a moment of opportunity for North Korea,” said President Bush, announcing the declaration at the White House. “If it continues to make the right choices it can repair its relationship with the international community.”

Mr. Bush said in the principle of “action for action,” the United States would lift some restrictions on commercial dealings with North Korea and within 45 days end its designation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism.

China, which has been the host of the six-nation talks on the North’s nuclear program, said Thursday afternoon that the North was submitting its declaration. The White House confirmed the exchange shortly afterward and said that it would remove North Korea from the terrorism list and thus make it eligible for aid and assistance, a goal long sought by the cash-starved country.

American officials expected that the declaration, which had been due at the end of last year, would provide important details about North Korea’s nuclear facilities and programs, including the amount of plutonium produced at its nuclear reactor in Yongbyon.

"I do think it’s important to note that if we can verifiably determine the amount of plutonium that has been made, we then have an upper hand in understanding what may have happened in terms of weaponisation," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said after arriving in Kyoto, Japan, on Thursday for a meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized powers.

Ms. Rice added that the declaration was “a natural step on the way to dealing verifiably with the devices or weapons themselves."

Partly to deflect criticism from hard-line critics in Washington that the current deal was too soft on North Korea, American officials have emphasized the importance of the information on plutonium. The North is believed to have produced enough weapons-grade plutonium at its reactor in Yongbyon to make as many as half a dozen bombs.
TOKYO — North Korea took a major step on Thursday toward re-integration into the... more

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Israel flies 100 planes to show Iran its striking power

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tagged w/ Nuclear Bomb

Cold War Remnant: Cancer for Baby Boomers

The Deal to Disarm Iran

FAREED ZAKARIA: 'WE MUST STOP EXAGGERATING THE IRANIAN THREAT'

Iran, the World, and the Bomb

Nuclear Weapon Effects-Federation of American Scientist [FAS]

Rising Sun: 64th anniversary of nuclear warfare

GOOD: Nuclear Weapons

Missing for 50 years - US nuclear bomb

A U.S./Israeli Conflict a Possibility?

67 Computers Missing from US Nuclear Weapons Lab

Nevada scientist discusses nuclear bombs

'If you go outside...you may die': The BBC script prepared in event of nuclear attack revealed

Nuclear Fuel Recycling: More Trouble Than It's Worth

Israel asked US for a green light to bomb Iran's nuclear sites

Iran: secret nuclear bomb? Blocking IAEA probe

Is Iran ending cooperation with IAEA?

Russian plans to station nuclear bombers in Cuba

Nuclear explosions key to detecting counterfeit paintings?

U.S. to take North Korea off terror list

Israel flies 100 planes to show Iran its striking power

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