Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Pentagon

  • How Hawkish Are Americans?

    Lawrence Wittner


    This article was originally published by History News Network.


    In the midst of a nationwide election campaign in which many politicians trumpet their support for the buildup and employment of U.S. military power around the world, the American public’s disagreement with such measures is quite remarkable. Indeed, many signs point to the fact that most Americans want to avoid new wars, reduce military spending, and support international cooperation.


    The latest evidence along these lines is a nationwide opinion survey just released as a report (Foreign Policy in the New Millennium) by the highly-respected Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Conducted in late May and early June 2012, the survey resulted in some striking findings.


    One is that most Americans are quite disillusioned with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars of the past decade. Asked about these conflicts, 67 percent of respondents said they had not been worth fighting. Indeed, 69 percent said that, despite the war in Afghanistan, the United States was no safer from terrorism.


    Naturally, these attitudes about military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan fed into opinions about future military involvement. Eighty-two percent of those surveyed favored bringing U.S. troops home from Afghanistan by 2014 or by an earlier date. Majorities also opposed maintaining long-term military bases in either country. And 71 percent agreed that “the experience of the Iraq war should make nations more cautious about using military force to deal with rogue states.”


    Certainly Americans seem to believe that their own military footprint in the world should be reduced. In the Chicago Council survey, 78 percent of respondents said that the United States was playing the role of a world policeman more than it should. Presented with a variety of situations, respondents usually stated that they opposed the use of U.S. military force. For example, a majority opposed a U.S. military response to a North Korean invasion of South Korea. Or, to take an issue that is frequently discussed today – Iran’s possible development of nuclear weapons — 70 percent of respondents opposed a U.S. military strike against that nation with the objective of destroying its nuclear facilities.


    Yes, admittedly, a small majority (53 percent) thought that maintaining superior military power was a “very important goal.” But this response was down by 14 points from 2002. Furthermore, to accomplish deficit reduction, 68 percent of respondents favored cutting U.S. spending on the military — up 10 points from 2010. Nor are these opinions contradictory. After all, U.S. military spending is so vast – more than five times that of the number 2 military spender, China – that substantial cuts in the U.S. military budget can be made without challenging U.S. military superiority.


    It should be noted that American preferences are anti-military rather than “isolationist.” The report by the Chicago Council observes: “As they increasingly seek to cut back on foreign expenditures and avoid military entanglement whenever possible, Americans are broadly supportive of nonmilitary forms of international engagement and problem solving.” These range from “diplomacy, alliances, and international treaties to economic aid and decision making through the UN.”


    For example, the survey found that 84 percent of respondents favored the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty (still unratified by the U.S. Senate), 70 percent favored the International Criminal Court treaty (from which the United States was withdrawn by President George W. Bush), and 67 percent favored a treaty to cope with climate change by limiting greenhouse gas emissions. When asked about China, a nation frequently criticized by U.S. pundits and politicians alike, 69 percent of respondents believed that the United States should engage in friendly cooperation with that country.


    The “isolationist” claim falls particularly flat when one examines American attitudes toward the United Nations. The Chicago Council survey found that 56 percent of respondents agreed that, when dealing with international problems, the United States should be “more willing to make decisions within the United Nations,” even if that meant that the United States would not always get its way.


    Overall, then, Americans favor a less militarized U.S. government approach to world affairs than currently exists. Perhaps the time has come for politicians to catch up with them!

  • Deep Cuts in the US Nuclear Arsenal Being Considered

    David KriegerThe Associated Press is reporting that the Obama administration is examining options for deep cuts in the US nuclear arsenal.  According to the report, the administration is considering options for three levels of cuts in deployed strategic nuclear weapons: 1,000 to 1,100; 700 to 800; and 300 to 400. 


    Any decrease in the size of the US nuclear arsenal would be a step in the right direction, but the lower level being considered would be a major step toward a world free of nuclear weapons.  It would also demonstrate to the world that the US is serious about achieving nuclear disarmament, as it is obligated to do under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  The same obligation applies to Russia, the UK, France and China. 


    Currently, under the New START agreement with Moscow, which entered into force in February 2011, the US and Russia are obligated to reduce their deployed strategic nuclear arsenals to 1,550 weapons each by 2017.  Moving the number downward to 300 to 400 would be a major game changer in lowering the risk of nuclear war, nuclear accidents, nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. 


    In his Prague speech in April 2009, President Obama expressed hope that America might lead the way toward a world free of nuclear weapons.  “I state clearly and with conviction,” he said, “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”  He tempered this by indicating that it might not happen during his lifetime and that “patience and persistence” will be needed.  He has an opportunity now to take a major step during his time in office toward achieving this commitment.


    President Obama also pointed out in his Prague speech what nuclear weapons do: “One nuclear weapon exploded in one city — be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague — could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be — for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival.” 


    Some will attack the President for being bold in seeking to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the US arsenal.  But boldness is needed, for there are many ways in which nuclear deterrence can fail, including its requirement of rationality in a real world of irrational leaders and terrorist extremists.  At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we applaud the President for considering these options for lowering the size of the US nuclear arsenal, and we encourage his boldness in moving to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons use by accident, miscalculation or intent.


    If President Obama is successful in reducing the size of the US nuclear arsenal to 300 to 400 weapons and bringing the Russians along with the US, this will leave the other seven countries in possession of nuclear weapons roughly at parity with between 100 and 300 nuclear weapons each.  This would be a strong place from which to launch multilateral negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.  Such a Convention would be a great achievement for humanity and a gift to ourselves and the generations that will follow us on the planet.

  • Cow Most Sacred: Why Military Spending Remains Untouchable

    This article was originally published by TomDispatch.com.


    In defense circles, “cutting” the Pentagon budget has once again become a topic of conversation.  Americans should not confuse that talk with reality.  Any cuts exacted will at most reduce the rate of growth.  The essential facts remain: U.S. military outlays today equal that of every other nation on the planet combined, a situation without precedent in modern history.


    The Pentagon presently spends more in constant dollars than it did at any time during the Cold War — this despite the absence of anything remotely approximating what national security experts like to call a “peer competitor.”  Evil Empire?  It exists only in the fevered imaginations of those who quiver at the prospect of China adding a rust-bucket Russian aircraft carrier to its fleet or who take seriously the ravings of radical Islamists promising from deep inside their caves to unite the Umma in a new caliphate.


    What are Americans getting for their money?  Sadly, not much.  Despite extraordinary expenditures (not to mention exertions and sacrifices by U.S. forces), the return on investment is, to be generous, unimpressive.  The chief lesson to emerge from the battlefields of the post-9/11 era is this: the Pentagon possesses next to no ability to translate “military supremacy” into meaningful victory.


    Washington knows how to start wars and how to prolong them, but is clueless when it comes to ending them.  Iraq, the latest addition to the roster of America’s forgotten wars, stands as exhibit A.  Each bomb that blows up in Baghdad or some other Iraqi city, splattering blood all over the streets, testifies to the manifest absurdity of judging “the surge” as the epic feat of arms celebrated by the Petraeus lobby.


    The problems are strategic as well as operational.  Old Cold War-era expectations that projecting U.S. power will enhance American clout and standing no longer apply, especially in the Islamic world.  There, American military activities are instead fostering instability and inciting anti-Americanism.  For Exhibit B, see the deepening morass that Washington refers to as AfPak or the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater of operations.


    Add to that the mountain of evidence showing that Pentagon, Inc. is a miserably managed enterprise: hide-bound, bloated, slow-moving, and prone to wasting resources on a prodigious scale — nowhere more so than in weapons procurement and the outsourcing of previously military functions to “contractors.”  When it comes to national security, effectiveness (what works) should rightly take precedence over efficiency (at what cost?) as the overriding measure of merit.  Yet beyond a certain level, inefficiency undermines effectiveness, with the Pentagon stubbornly and habitually exceeding that level.  By comparison, Detroit’s much-maligned Big Three offer models of well-run enterprises.


    Impregnable Defenses


    All of this takes place against the backdrop of mounting problems at home: stubbornly high unemployment, trillion-dollar federal deficits, massive and mounting debt, and domestic needs like education, infrastructure, and employment crying out for attention.


    Yet the defense budget — a misnomer since for Pentagon, Inc. defense per se figures as an afterthought — remains a sacred cow.  Why is that?


    The answer lies first in understanding the defenses arrayed around that cow to ensure that it remains untouched and untouchable.  Exemplifying what the military likes to call a “defense in depth,” that protective shield consists of four distinct but mutually supporting layers.


    Institutional Self-Interest: Victory in World War II produced not peace, but an atmosphere of permanent national security crisis.  As never before in U.S. history, threats to the nation’s existence seemed omnipresent, an attitude first born in the late 1940s that still persists today.  In Washington, fear — partly genuine, partly contrived — triggered a powerful response.


    One result was the emergence of the national security state, an array of institutions that depended on (and therefore strove to perpetuate) this atmosphere of crisis to justify their existence, status, prerogatives, and budgetary claims.  In addition, a permanent arms industry arose, which soon became a major source of jobs and corporate profits.  Politicians of both parties were quick to identify the advantages of aligning with this “military-industrial complex,” as President Eisenhower described it.


    Allied with (and feeding off of) this vast apparatus that transformed tax dollars into appropriations, corporate profits, campaign contributions, and votes was an intellectual axis of sorts  — government-supported laboratories, university research institutes, publications, think tanks, and lobbying firms (many staffed by former or would-be senior officials) — devoted to identifying (or conjuring up) ostensible national security challenges and alarms, always assumed to be serious and getting worse, and then devising responses to them.


    The upshot: within Washington, the voices carrying weight in any national security “debate” all share a predisposition for sustaining very high levels of military spending for reasons having increasingly little to do with the well-being of the country.


    Strategic Inertia: In a 1948 State Department document, diplomat George F. Kennan offered this observation: “We have about 50 percent of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population.”  The challenge facing American policymakers, he continued, was “to devise a pattern of relationships that will permit us to maintain this disparity.”  Here we have a description of American purposes that is far more candid than all of the rhetoric about promoting freedom and democracy, seeking world peace, or exercising global leadership.


    The end of World War II found the United States in a spectacularly privileged position.  Not for nothing do Americans remember the immediate postwar era as a Golden Age of middle-class prosperity.  Policymakers since Kennan’s time have sought to preserve that globally privileged position.  The effort has been a largely futile one.


    By 1950 at the latest, those policymakers (with Kennan by then a notable dissenter) had concluded that the possession and deployment of military power held the key to preserving America’s exalted status.  The presence of U.S. forces abroad and a demonstrated willingness to intervene, whether overtly or covertly, just about anywhere on the planet would promote stability, ensure U.S. access to markets and resources, and generally serve to enhance the country’s influence in the eyes of friend and foe alike — this was the idea, at least.


    In postwar Europe and postwar Japan, this formula achieved considerable success.  Elsewhere — notably in Korea, Vietnam, Latin America, and (especially after 1980) in the so-called Greater Middle East — it either produced mixed results or failed catastrophically.  Certainly, the events of the post-9/11 era provide little reason to believe that this presence/power-projection paradigm will provide an antidote to the threat posed by violent anti-Western jihadism.  If anything, adherence to it is exacerbating the problem by creating ever greater anti-American animus.


    One might think that the manifest shortcomings of the presence/power-projection approach — trillions expended in Iraq for what? — might stimulate present-day Washington to pose some first-order questions about basic U.S. national security strategy.  A certain amount of introspection would seem to be called for.  Could, for example, the effort to sustain what remains of America’s privileged status benefit from another approach?


    Yet there are few indications that our political leaders, the senior-most echelons of the officer corps, or those who shape opinion outside of government are capable of seriously entertaining any such debate.  Whether through ignorance, arrogance, or a lack of imagination, the pre-existing strategic paradigm stubbornly persists; so, too, as if by default do the high levels of military spending that the strategy entails.


    Cultural Dissonance: The rise of the Tea Party movement should disabuse any American of the thought that the cleavages produced by the “culture wars” have healed.  The cultural upheaval touched off by the 1960s and centered on Vietnam remains unfinished business in this country.


    Among other things, the sixties destroyed an American consensus, forged during World War II, about the meaning of patriotism.  During the so-called Good War, love of country implied, even required, deference to the state, shown most clearly in the willingness of individuals to accept the government’s authority to mandate military service.  GI’s, the vast majority of them draftees, were the embodiment of American patriotism, risking life and limb to defend the country.


    The GI of World War II had been an American Everyman.  Those soldiers both represented and reflected the values of the nation from which they came (a perception affirmed by the ironic fact that the military adhered to prevailing standards of racial segregation).  It was “our army” because that army was “us.”


    With Vietnam, things became more complicated.  The war’s supporters argued that the World War II tradition still applied: patriotism required deference to the commands of the state.  Opponents of the war, especially those facing the prospect of conscription, insisted otherwise.  They revived the distinction, formulated a generation earlier by the radical journalist Randolph Bourne, that distinguished between the country and the state.  Real patriots, the ones who most truly loved their country, were those who opposed state policies they regarded as misguided, illegal, or immoral.


    In many respects, the soldiers who fought the Vietnam War found themselves caught uncomfortably in the center of this dispute.  Was the soldier who died in Vietnam a martyr, a tragic figure, or a sap?  Who deserved greater admiration:  the soldier who fought bravely and uncomplainingly or the one who served and then turned against the war?  Or was the war resister — the one who never served at all — the real hero?


    War’s end left these matters disconcertingly unresolved.  President Richard Nixon’s 1971 decision to kill the draft in favor of an All-Volunteer Force, predicated on the notion that the country might be better served with a military that was no longer “us,” only complicated things further.  So, too, did the trends in American politics where bona fide war heroes (George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, John Kerry, and John McCain) routinely lost to opponents whose military credentials were non-existent or exceedingly slight (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama), yet who demonstrated once in office a remarkable propensity for expending American blood (none belonging to members of their own families) in places like Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  It was all more than a little unseemly.


    Patriotism, once a simple concept, had become both confusing and contentious.  What obligations, if any, did patriotism impose?  And if the answer was none — the option Americans seemed increasingly to prefer — then was patriotism itself still a viable proposition?


    Wanting to answer that question in the affirmative — to distract attention from the fact that patriotism had become little more than an excuse for fireworks displays and taking the occasional day off from work — people and politicians alike found a way to do so by exalting those Americans actually choosing to serve in uniform.  The thinking went this way: soldiers offer living proof that America is a place still worth dying for, that patriotism (at least in some quarters) remains alive and well; by common consent, therefore, soldiers are the nation’s “best,” committed to “something bigger than self” in a land otherwise increasingly absorbed in pursuing a material and narcissistic definition of self-fulfillment.


    In effect, soldiers offer much-needed assurance that old-fashioned values still survive, even if confined to a small and unrepresentative segment of American society.  Rather than Everyman, today’s warrior has ascended to the status of icon, deemed morally superior to the nation for which he or she fights, the repository of virtues that prop up, however precariously, the nation’s increasingly sketchy claim to singularity.


    Politically, therefore, “supporting the troops” has become a categorical imperative across the political spectrum.  In theory, such support might find expression in a determination to protect those troops from abuse, and so translate into wariness about committing soldiers to unnecessary or unnecessarily costly wars.  In practice, however, “supporting the troops” has found expression in an insistence upon providing the Pentagon with open-ended drawing rights on the nation’s treasury, thereby creating massive barriers to any proposal to affect more than symbolic reductions in military spending.


    Misremembered History: The duopoly of American politics no longer allows for a principled anti-interventionist position.  Both parties are war parties.  They differ mainly in the rationale they devise to argue for interventionism.  The Republicans tout liberty; the Democrats emphasize human rights.  The results tend to be the same: a penchant for activism that sustains a never-ending demand for high levels of military outlays.


    American politics once nourished a lively anti-interventionist tradition.  Leading proponents included luminaries such as George Washington and John Quincy Adams.  That tradition found its basis not in principled pacifism, a position that has never attracted widespread support in this country, but in pragmatic realism.  What happened to that realist tradition?  Simply put, World War II killed it — or at least discredited it.  In the intense and divisive debate that occurred in 1939-1941, the anti-interventionists lost, their cause thereafter tarred with the label “isolationism.”


    The passage of time has transformed World War II from a massive tragedy into a morality tale, one that casts opponents of intervention as blackguards.  Whether explicitly or implicitly, the debate over how the United States should respond to some ostensible threat — Iraq in 2003, Iran today — replays the debate finally ended by the events of December 7, 1941.  To express skepticism about the necessity and prudence of using military power is to invite the charge of being an appeaser or an isolationist.  Few politicians or individuals aspiring to power will risk the consequences of being tagged with that label.


    In this sense, American politics remains stuck in the 1930s — always discovering a new Hitler, always privileging Churchillian rhetoric — even though the circumstances in which we live today bear scant resemblance to that earlier time.  There was only one Hitler and he’s long dead.  As for Churchill, his achievements and legacy are far more mixed than his battalions of defenders are willing to acknowledge.  And if any one figure deserves particular credit for demolishing Hitler’s Reich and winning World War II, it’s Josef Stalin, a dictator as vile and murderous as Hitler himself.


    Until Americans accept these facts, until they come to a more nuanced view of World War II that takes fully into account the political and moral implications of the U.S. alliance with the Soviet Union and the U.S. campaign of obliteration bombing directed against Germany and Japan, the mythic version of “the Good War” will continue to provide glib justifications for continuing to dodge that perennial question: How much is enough?


    Like concentric security barriers arrayed around the Pentagon, these four factors — institutional self-interest, strategic inertia, cultural dissonance, and misremembered history — insulate the military budget from serious scrutiny.  For advocates of a militarized approach to policy, they provide invaluable assets, to be defended at all costs.

  • Remembering Eisenhower’s Farewell Address

    President Eisenhower's farewell addressJanuary 17, 2011 marked the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the nation in which he warned of the dangers of the unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex.  I think he would be shocked to see how this influence has grown over the past half century and how it has manifested in the country’s immense military budgets, the nuclear arms race, our permanent war footing, the failure to achieve meaningful disarmament, and the illegal wars the US has initiated.  In addition to all of this, there is the influence of the military-industrial complex on the media, academia, the Congress and the citizenry.  It has also ensnared US allies, like those in NATO, in its net.  Eisenhower believed that the only way to assure that the military-industrial complex can be meshed “with our peaceful methods and goals” is through “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry.”


    Eisenhower was 70 years old when his term as president came to an end.  He had been a General of the Army and hero of World War II, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces Europe, and for eight years the president of the United States.  His Farewell Address was, above all else, a warning to his fellow Americans.  He stated, “The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience.”  He worried about what this conjunction would mean in the future, famously stating, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.  The potential for misplaced power exists and will persist.”


    Eisenhower feared that this powerful complex would weaken democracy.  “We must never,” he said, “let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”  He felt there was only one force that could control this powerful military-industrial complex, and that was the power of the people.  In Eisenhower’s view it was only “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry” that was capable of defending the republic “so that security and liberty prosper together.”


    What kind of report card would President Eisenhower give our country today if he could come back and observe what has transpired over the past 50 years?  For starters, I believe he would be appalled by the enormous increase in influence of the military-industrial complex.  Today the military receives over half of the discretionary funds that Congress allocates, over $500 billion a year for the Department of Defense, plus the special allocations for the two wars in which the country is currently engaged.  The Department of Defense budget does not take into account the interest on the national debt attributable to past wars, or the tens of billions of dollars in the Energy Department budget for nuclear arms, or the funds allocated for veterans benefits.  When it is totaled, the US is spending over a trillion dollars annually on “defense.”


    Surely Eisenhower would be dismayed to see how many national institutions have been drawn into and made subservient to the military-industrial complex, which some would now refer to as the military-industrial-Congressional-academic-media complex.  Every district in Congress seems to have links to the complex through jobs provided by defense contractors, putting pressure on Congressional representatives to assure that public funds flow to private defense contractors.  At the same time, academia and the mainstream media provide support and cover to keep public funds flowing for wars and their preparations.


    Near the end of his speech, Eisenhower lamented that he had not made greater progress toward disarmament during his time in office.  He said, “Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.”  It was true then, and remains so today.  He continued, “Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.  Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment.”  Indeed, there was reason for his disappointment, since the number of nuclear weapons in the US arsenal increased under his watch from approximately 1,400 in 1953 to over 20,000 in 1960.  I suspect that he would be even more disappointed today to find that the US has not been more proactive in leading the way toward disarmament and particularly nuclear disarmament since the end of the Cold War.


    Fifty years ago, Eisenhower feared the threat that nuclear war posed to the world and to our country, and expressed his desire for peace: “As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.”  He recognized that much remains to be done to “reach the goal of peace with justice.”  That was true when Eisenhower made his Farewell Address and it remains true today.


    We would do well to reflect upon the deeply felt concerns of this military and political leader as he retired from public service.  He prayed “that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.”  That was his vision, and he passed the baton to us to overcome the unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex.   Our challenge is to exercise our power as citizens of a democracy and to use that power to attain a more peaceful and nuclear weapons-free world.

  • The New US Nuclear Posture

    In April 2009, President Obama went to Prague and told the world that the United States seeks “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” A year later, his administration is moving forward toward this goal. The Obama administration released its Nuclear Posture Review on April 6, 2010. On April 8, 2010, the president flew back to Prague to sign a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russians.

    In both tone and substance the new Nuclear Posture Review is far more positive and hopeful than that of the George W. Bush administration. The Obama nuclear posture puts its primary focus on preventing nuclear proliferation and terrorism. “The threat of global nuclear war has become remote,” it says, “but the risk of nuclear attack has increased.” It views nuclear terrorism as “today’s most immediate and extreme danger.”  

    To prevent terrorists, such as al Qaeda, from obtaining nuclear weapons, the Obama administration seeks to bolster the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and secure all loose nuclear materials globally. It convened a Nuclear Security Summit on April 12-13, 2010 in Washington, with leaders of 46 other countries participating in making plans to prevent nuclear terrorism. The Obama administration is also pursuing arms control efforts, including the New START agreement, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty.  

    The administration has been straight forward in stating that it is taking these steps “as a means of strengthening our ability to mobilize broad international support for the measures needed to reinforce the non-proliferation regime and secure nuclear materials worldwide.”  In other words, the Obama administration understands that the US needs to show that it is taking steps to meet its own nuclear disarmament obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (something the Bush administration never grasped) if it hopes to have the support of other parties to that treaty for keeping nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists.

    Many advocates of a nuclear weapon-free world, including the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, encouraged the Obama administration to go further and adopt a policy of No First Use; that is, committing to use nuclear weapons only in response to a preceding nuclear attack.  While the administration did not demonstrate this level of leadership, it did consider a policy of making the deterrence of a nuclear attack the “sole purpose” of nuclear weapons. However, it dismissed even this step, while offering some hope that it will work toward this end in the future.  

    The administration did take a smaller step by committing in the new Nuclear Posture Review not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states that are in compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It referred specifically to North Korea and Iran as countries out of compliance with the treaty. The new nuclear posture will please some advocates of nuclear weapons by leaving open “a narrow range of contingencies in which U.S. nuclear weapons may still play a role in deterring a conventional or CBW [chemical or biological weapons] attack against the United States or its allies and partners.”  

    The new Nuclear Posture Review states that the “fundamental role of U.S. nuclear weapons, which will continue as long as nuclear weapons exist, is to deter nuclear attack on the United States, our allies, and partners.” This suggests confusion in the policy. If terrorists are, in fact, the greatest threat to the country, and as non-state actors they cannot be deterred, then who exactly are the weapons deterring? The review may be contemplating Russia or China, but it also recognizes that the US is interconnected with these countries and the chances of war with them are very low. Or, it may be contemplating some unknown contingency in the future, but if this is the case then wouldn’t the country be better off moving more rapidly toward the goal of a world without nuclear weapons?  The review makes clear that the US “would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.” This approach, and the vagueness of “vital interests,” will likely be viewed internationally as an unfortunate double standard that other countries may also choose to rely upon.

    In the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the US and Russia will reduce their deployed strategic nuclear weapons to 1,550 each and reduce deployed delivery vehicles to 700 each with 100 reserve delivery vehicles each by the year 2017.  It is not a large step forward, but it is a step in the right direction, and the Obama administration is committed to seeking further reductions with Russia.  Together the two countries have some 95 percent of the world’s 23,000 nuclear arms.  The new US nuclear posture indicates that the US “will place importance on Russia joining us as we move to lower levels.”  In the document, however, there are no constraints on the ability of the US to deploy missile defenses.  Since this is a major concern to Russia, it could limit the possibilities for additional progress toward nuclear disarmament.  

    One of the phrases that recurs throughout the new Nuclear Posture Review is “ensuring the safety, security and effectiveness” of nuclear warheads.  Safety and security both make sense.  If we are to retain nuclear weapons, we want them to be both safe from accident and secure from theft.  But what does “effective” mean?  That the weapons will serve the purpose of deterring?  If so, who?  Effectiveness would be impossible to measure unless we can answer the question, “Effective for what?”  In the end, “safe, secure and effective,” appear to be arguments for modernizing the US nuclear arsenal and spending an additional $5 billion on its nuclear weapons laboratories over the next five years.

    The Nuclear Posture Review concludes by looking toward a world without nuclear weapons. It recognizes that certain conditions are necessary for such a world. These include halting nuclear proliferation, achieving greater transparency into nuclear weapons programs, improving verification methods, developing effective enforcement measures, and resolving regional disputes. The review states that such conditions do not exist today. However, with the requisite political will, these conditions could be developed in the process of negotiating a Nuclear Weapons Convention – a treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons. While pausing to celebrate the incremental steps in arms reductions and the limitations on nuclear weapons use that are being made now, we should also recognize that a policy of No First Use and a commitment to negotiate a Nuclear Weapons Convention would move us far more rapidly toward the peace and security of the nuclear weapon-free world envisioned by President Obama.  

  • NATO Goes Anti-Nuclear?

    This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.

    President Obama’s call
    for a nuclear-weapons-free world in Prague last April unleashed a great
    outpouring of support from international allies and grassroots
    activists demanding a process to actually eliminate nuclear weapons.
    One recent and unexpected initiative has come from America’s NATO
    allies. Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Norway have called
    on NATO to review its nuclear policy and remove all U.S. nuclear
    weapons currently on European soil under NATO’s  “nuclear sharing”
    policy. Despite U.S. insistence on strict adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
    (NPT), which prohibits the transfer of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear
    weapons states, several hundred U.S. nuclear bombs are housed in
    Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Turkey.

    Citing Obama’s announcement in Prague of “America’s commitment to
    seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” the
    NATO allies have broken ranks with the United States. All five
    governments are experiencing domestic pressure to end the hypocrisy of
    the NPT, where nuclear “haves” disregard their disarmament requirements
    with impunity while using coercion, sanctions, threats of war, and even
    actual war (as in Iraq) to prevent the nuclear “have-nots” from
    acquiring nuclear bombs. Together with calls from major former political and military leaders to eliminate nuclear weapons, as well as UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon’s proposal for a five-point program
    “to rid the world of nuclear bombs,” these NATO members have seized the
    political moment. They have decided to do their part to maintain the
    integrity of the NPT in advance of the five-year review conference this
    May at the UN in New York.

    The NATO five put NATO’s nuclear policy on the agenda
    for an April strategy meeting in Estonia. They have neither been
    dissuaded by Obama’s cautionary note that the goal of a
    nuclear-weapons-free world “will not be reached quickly — perhaps not
    in my lifetime,” nor discouraged by Secretary of State Hillary
    Clinton’s mistaken qualification of Obama’s remarks when she said that “we might not achieve the ambition of a world without nuclear weapons in our lifetime or successive lifetimes” (emphasis added).

    Progress Elsewhere

    Japan has also called for more rapid progress on nuclear
    disarmament. The new Democratic Party government, which ended 60 years
    of one-party rule, wrote Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to
    disavow the pro-nuclear advocacy of former Japanese officials. U.S.
    militarists often cited such advocacy as a rationale for maintaining
    the U.S. nuclear “umbrella” over Japan. Supporting Obama’s call for a
    nuclear-weapons-free world, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada urged the
    United States to declare that nuclear weapons would be used only for
    the “sole purpose” of deterring a nuclear attack. The declaration would
    end current U.S. policy, first expanded by the Clinton administration
    and maintained throughout the Bush presidency, to preemptively use
    nuclear weapons against the threat or use of chemical, biological, or
    conventional forces. Additionally, over 200 Japanese parliamentarians wrote to reassure
    Obama that, contrary to assertions by U.S. military hawks, Japan would
    not seek the possession of nuclear weapons were the United States to
    declare a “sole use” limitation on its nuclear arsenal.

    These promising anti-nuclear positions come at an important
    political moment. Obama has been expected shortly to deliver to
    Congress a new nuclear posture review setting forth U.S. policy for the
    use of nuclear weapons. Originally scheduled for a January release, the
    review has been delayed several times. News of conflicting views among
    the drafters and of Obama’s dissatisfaction with the most recent
    version, which promotes the status quo on outdated Cold War nuclear policies, has been prominently reported in the mainstream press.

    Pentagon Pushback

    Gates has defended existing nuclear policy and expressed dissatisfaction with our NATO allies. At a meeting to discuss NATO’s 21st Century Strategic Concept — and on the heels of the Dutch government’s collapse over the decision to extend its troop deployment in Afghanistan — Gates stated that:

    The demilitarization of Europe — where
    large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to
    military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing
    in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st.

    At the same meeting, U.S. National Security Advisor General James
    Jones said, “NATO must be prepared to address, deny, and deter the full
    spectrum of threats, whether emanating from within Europe at NATO’s
    boundaries, or far beyond NATO’s borders.”

    Clinton, furthermore, urged the exponential growth of “missile defense throughout the world and warned that:

    [N]uclear proliferation and the
    development of more sophisticated missiles in countries such as North
    Korea and Iran are reviving the specter of an interstate nuclear
    attack. So how do we in NATO do out part of ensure that such weapons
    never are unleashed on the world?

    Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, commenting on the new NATO
    strategic concept, raised Russia’s deep concerns that NATO’s assertion
    of a right to use military force globally violated the UN Charter.
    Russia views U.S. plans to ring Europe with missiles in Bulgaria,
    Poland, and Romania, with a missile command center in the Czech
    Republic, as a threat. The Obama-Medvedev negotiations on the first
    round of nuclear arms cuts on START (the Strategic Arms Reduction
    Treaty) have been delayed repeatedly by disagreements on U.S. plans for missile proliferation.

    Momentum Builds

    Nevertheless, there is extraordinary momentum behind calls to
    abolish nuclear weapons. Thousands of international visitors are
    expected to join U.S. citizens to assemble, march, and rally in New York during the NPT Review Conference in May. Mayors for Peace is working to enroll 5,000 mayors in its Vision 2020 Campaign to complete negotiations on a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons by 2020. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and the Abolition 2000 Network
    are committed to work for a nuclear weapons convention regardless of
    the NPT outcome. Norway, host of the successful Oslo process to ban
    cluster bombs, noted that the Oslo and Ottawa processes banning
    landmines could be replicated to move forward on a nuclear disarmament based on
    “powerful alliances between civil society and governments.” There has
    been an unprecedented media focus on U.S. nuclear policy and debate
    about whether Obama can make good on his pledge and earn his Nobel
    Peace Prize.

    Nearly 25 years ago, Mikhail Gorbachev unleashed the forces of perestroika and glasnost
    in the Soviet Union. These forces kindled people’s aspirations for
    freedom, resulting in the fall of the Berlin Wall and dissolution of
    the Soviet empire. Despite the formidable array of powerful interests
    lawlessly brandishing their missiles and refurbishing their nuclear
    arsenals, Obama and Medvedev’s call for a nuclear-weapons-free world
    may similarly have unleashed forces that will transform the 20th-century paradigm of perpetual war and terror.

  • DU Syndrome Stricken Vets Denied Care

    Pentagon Hides DU Dangers to Deny Medical Care to Vets

     

    Far from the radioactive battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan , another war is being waged. This war, over the use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons, is being fought between the military top brass and the men who understand the dangers of DU: former military doctors and nuclear scientists.

    This war is for the truth about uranium weapons, and the consequences of their use, and has been waged for more than 13 years-since the U.S. government first used DU weapons against Iraq . Most Americans, however, are unaware of this historic struggle, because the Pentagon has used its power to prevent information about DU from reaching the public.

    John Hanchette, editor of USA Today from 1991 to 2001, in a recent interview with anti-DU activist Leuren Moret, said he had written several news stories about the effects of DU on gulf wars veterans. Every time he was ready to publish a story about the devastating illnesses afflicting soldiers, however, the Pentagon called USA Today and pressured him not to publish the story. Hanchette was eventually replaced as editor and now teaches journalism to college students.

    Dr. Doug Rokke, 37-year Army veteran and former director of the Army’s Depleted Uranium Project, has become an outspoken “warrior for peace” in the war against DU weapons. Rokke is fighting for medical care for all people exposed to DU: active soldiers, veterans and civilians, including Iraqis, and for “remediation” or cleansing of all DU-contaminated land.

    “Anyone who demands medical care and environmental remediation faces ongoing and blatant retaliation,” Rokke told AFP. “Anybody who speaks up-their career ends.”

    During Gulf War I, Rokke was theater health physicist with the 12th Preventive Medicine Command professional staff and served on three special operations teams. Rokke and members of his teams were exposed to large amounts of uranium during recovery of U.S. tanks and armored vehicles mistakenly hit by DU weapons.

    Today, Rokke is fighting to get the Pentagon to abide by its regulations regarding care for individuals exposed to uranium and remediation of contaminated areas.

    The military records of one of Rokke’s comrades, who suffers from the effects of DU exposure, have been completely “gutted” from Army archives, Rokke told AFP.

    “They [defense officials] willfully ignore existing Department of Defense directives that require prompt and effective medical care be provided to ‘all’ exposed individuals,” Rokke says.

    Rokke points to a U.S. Army Medical Command memo dated April 29, 2004, from Lt. Gen. James B. Peake about medical management of Army personnel exposed to DU. The memo, which says “all personnel with actual or potential exposures to DU will be identified, assessed, treated (if needed), and assigned a potential exposure level (I, II, or III),” reiterates the U.S. Army regulations originally written by Rokke in 1991, he said.

    “A radio bioassay has to be done within a few days of exposure,” Rokke said. “This means nasal and pharyngeal swabs being taken and 24-hour urine and fecal analysis.

    “Today,” Rokke writes, “although medical problems continue to develop, medical care is denied or delayed for all uranium-exposed casualties while Defense Department and British Ministry of Defense officials continue to deny any correlation between uranium exposure and adverse health and environmental effects.”

    Rokke said the individuals at the Department of Defense are engaged in a “criminal” conspiracy to deny the toxicity of DU weapons. “The lies by senior Defense Department officials are designed to sustain use of uranium munitions and avoid liability for adverse health and environmental effects,” he said. According to Rokke, a recent Gulf War Review reported that only 262 vets had been treated for DU poisoning through September 2003.

    The military’s strategy of lies and concealment about DU began in March 1991, shortly after the first widespread combat use of DU weapons by the U.S. government in Iraq , Rokke said.

    On March 1, 1991, Lt. Col. Michael V. Ziehmn of Los Alamos National Lab wrote a memo about the effectiveness of DU penetrators. The “future existence” of DU weapons should be ensured by active “proponency” by the Department of Defense, Ziehmn wrote.

    “If proponency is not garnered, it is possible that we stand to lose a valuable combat capability,” Ziehmn wrote. “I believe we should keep this sensitive issue at mind when after-action reports are written.”

    When American Free Press began this series on DU weapons, the U.S. Army alerted the Centers for Disease Control, an Atlanta-based agency of the Department of Health and Human Services.

    “The CDC is going to do a whitewash on DU,” Marion Fulk, a former nuclear chemical physicist at Lawrence Livermore Lab, said. Fulk told AFP he had received this information directly from CDC officials.

    AFP asked Stephanie C. Creel of the CDC about its position on the toxicity of DU. Creel said the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) on-line “fact sheet” would provide the “most in-depth information” on the subject.

    The ATSDR fact sheet: “The radiation damage from exposure to high levels of natural or depleted uranium are [sic] not known to cause cancer.”

    “No apparent public health hazard,” the CDC assessment of Livermore lab, published June 29, said about local exposure levels to tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, Fulk said.

    “It’s nonsense,” Fulk said. “It’s been dumped all around the area. It goes through glass and steel.”

    Depleted uranium is a misnomer, according to Fulk. Depleted uranium, mostly U-238, is uranium that has had the naturally occurring fissile material, U-235, removed. DU is very radioactive, however. While one gram of U-235 emits 81,000 alpha particles per second, U-238 emits 12,000 per second. These high-energy particles coming from DU particles lodged in the body cause the most damage, according to Fulk and others.

    “Depleted uranium dust that is inhaled gets transferred from the lungs to the regional lymph nodes, where they can bombard a small number of cells in their immediate vicinity with intense alpha radiation,” said Dr. Asaf Durakovic, former Pentagon expert on DU.

    Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), a defense contractor in San Diego , published an extensive article about the dangers of DU six months before President George H.W. Bush waged war against Iraq in 1991.

    “Under combat conditions, the most exposed individuals are probably the ground troops [who] re-enter a battlefield following the exchange of armor-piercing (DU) munitions,” SAIC published in its July 1990 magazine.

    “Short-term effects of high doses can result in death, while long-term effects of low doses have been implicated in cancer,” SAIC wrote.

    AFP submitted written questions to the U.S. Army Medical Command asking how the Army can claim that DU exposure is harmless when military documents have stressed its lethal toxicity.

    Mark A. Melanson, of the Army’s Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine in Aberdeen , Md. , responded in an email: “The two positions are not opposing. As with all potentially hazardous material, the amount determines the risk.”

    Melanson wrote that the Army was complying with its own regulations regarding medical care for DU exposure, saying: “Soldiers are being screened by completing the post deployment health questionnaire upon demobilization. Troops identified as being at potential risk for DU exposure are directed to provide a urine bioassay for analysis.”

    Rokke said: “That is too late. Hence they find a way out.”

    AFP repeatedly tried to speak to Melanson about the quantity of DU that the Army considered hazardous. He did not return phone calls.

    “An individual could [safely] breathe in up to a gram per year every year for 50 years,” Melanson recently told The New York Daily News.

    “That’s absolutely absurd,” Fulk said. Fulk said the number of alpha particle emissions from a gram of DU lodged in the body over a year would be about the same as one-10th of all the cells in his body.

    The inhaled DU particles have a tendency to bind with phosphate in the human body, found in the bones and the DNA. The alpha particle being emitted to the cells nearby “is doing the dirty work,” Fulk said.

    Painful breathing and respiratory problems are the first and most common symptoms of DU inhalation, Rokke said. Dr. Janette Sherman told AFP she met a 31-year-old female former soldier at a Maryland veteran’s hospital who had recently served in Kuwait . Sherman, a toxicologist, was shocked when the young woman told her that she required a lung transplant.

    Finis

  • Hiroshima Cover-up: How the War Department’s Timesman Won a Pulitzer

    Governments lie.
    —     I. F. Stone, Journalist

    At the dawn of the nuclear age, an independent Australian journalist named Wilfred Burchett traveled to Japan to cover the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The only problem was that General Douglas MacArthur had declared southern Japan off-limits, barring the press. Over 200,000 people died in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but no Western journalist witnessed the aftermath and told the story. The world’s media obediently crowded onto the USS Missouri off the coast of Japan to cover the surrender of the Japanese.

    Wilfred Burchett decided to strike out on his own. He was determined to see for himself what this nuclear bomb had done, to understand what this vaunted new weapon was all about. So he boarded a train and traveled for thirty hours to the city of Hiroshima in defiance of General MacArthur’s orders.

    Burchett emerged from the train into a nightmare world. The devastation that confronted him was unlike any he had ever seen during the war. The city of Hiroshima, with a population of 350,000, had been razed. Multistory buildings were reduced to charred posts. He saw people’s shadows seared into walls and sidewalks. He met people with their skin melting off. In the hospital, he saw patients with purple skin hemorrhages, gangrene, fever, and rapid hair loss. Burchett was among the first to witness and describe radiation sickness.

    Burchett sat down on a chunk of rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter. His dispatch began: “In Hiroshima, thirty days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly-people who were uninjured in the cataclysm from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague.”

    He continued, tapping out the words that still haunt to this day: “Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller has passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world.”

    Burchett’s article, headlined THE ATOMIC PLAGUE, was published on September 5, 1945, in the London Daily Express. The story caused a worldwide sensation. Burchett’s candid reaction to the horror shocked readers. “In this first testing ground of the atomic bomb I have seen the most terrible and frightening desolation in four years of war. It makes a blitzed Pacific island seem like an Eden. The damage is far greater than photographs can show.

    “When you arrive in Hiroshima you can look around for twenty-five and perhaps thirty square miles. You can see hardly a building. It gives you an empty feeling in the stomach to see such man-made destruction.”

    Burchett’s searing independent reportage was a public relations fiasco for the U.S. military. General MacArthur had gone to pains to restrict journalists’ access to the bombed cities, and his military censors were sanitizing and even killing dispatches that described the horror. The official narrative of the atomic bombings downplayed civilian casualties and categorically dismissed reports of the deadly lingering effects of radiation. Reporters whose dispatches convicted with this version of events found themselves silenced: George Weller of the Chicago Daily News slipped into Nagasaki and wrote a 25,000-word story on the nightmare that he found there. Then he made a crucial error: He submitted the piece to military censors. His newspaper never even received his story. As Weller later summarized his experience with MacArthur’s censors, “They won.”

    U.S. authorities responded in time-honored fashion to Burchett’s revelations: They attacked the messenger. General MacArthur ordered him expelled from Japan (the order was later rescinded), and his camera with photos of Hiroshima mysteriously vanished while he was in the hospital. U.S. officials accused Burchett of being influenced by Japanese propaganda. They scoffed at the notion of an atomic sickness. The U.S. military issued a press release right after the Hiroshima bombing that downplayed human casualties, instead emphasizing that the bombed area was the site of valuable industrial and military targets.

    Four days after Burchett’s story splashed across front pages around the world, Major General Leslie R. Groves, director of the atomic bomb project, invited a select group of thirty reporters to New Mexico. Foremost among this group was William L. Laurence, the Pulitzer Prize-winning science reporter for The New York Times. Groves took the reporters to the site of the first atomic test. His intent was to demonstrate that no atomic radiation lingered at the site. Groves trusted Laurence to convey the military’s line; the general was not disappointed.

    Laurence’s front-page story, U.S. ATOM BOMB SITE BELIES TOKYO TALES: TESTS ON NEW MEXICO RANGE CONFIRM THAT BLAST, AND NOT RADIATION, TOOK TOLL, ran on September 12, 1945, following a three-day delay to clear military censors. “This historic ground in New Mexico, scene of the first atomic explosion on earth and cradle of a new era in civilization, gave the most effective answer today to Japanese propaganda that radiations [sic] were responsible for deaths even after the day of the explosion, Aug. 6, and that persons entering Hiroshima had contracted mysterious maladies due to persistent radioactivity,” the article began.3 Laurence said unapologetically that the Army tour was intended “to give the lie to these claims.”

    Laurence quoted General Groves: “The Japanese claim that people died from radiation. If this is true, the number was very small.”

    Laurence then went on to offer his own remarkable editorial on what happened: “The Japanese are still continuing their propaganda aimed at creating the impression that we won the war unfairly, and thus attempting to create sympathy for themselves and milder terms . . . Thus, at the beginning, the Japanese described ‘symptoms’ that did not ring true.”

    But Laurence knew better. He had observed the first atomic bomb test on July 16, 1945, and he withheld what he knew about radioactive fallout across the southwestern desert that poisoned local residents and livestock. He kept mum about the spiking Geiger counters all around the test site.

    William L. Laurence went on to write a series of ten articles for the Times that served as a glowing tribute to the ingenuity and technical achievements of the nuclear program. Throughout these and other reports, he downplayed and denied the human impact of the bombing. Laurence won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.

    It turns out that William L. Laurence was not only receiving a salary from The New York Times. He was also on the payroll of the War Department. In March 1945, General Leslie Groves had held a secret meeting at The New York Times with Laurence to offer him a job writing press releases for the Manhattan Project, the U.S. program to develop atomic weapons. The intent, according to the Times, was “to explain the intricacies of the atomic bomb’s operating principles in laymen’s language.” Laurence also helped write statements on the bomb for President Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson.

    Laurence eagerly accepted the offer, “his scientific curiosity and patriotic zeal perhaps blinding him to the notion that he was at the same time compromising his journalistic independence,” as essayist Harold Evans wrote in a history of war reporting. Evans recounted: “After the bombing, the brilliant but bullying Groves continually suppressed or distorted the effects of radiation. He dismissed reports of Japanese deaths as ‘hoax or propaganda.’ The Times’ Laurence weighed in, too, after Burchett’s reports, and parroted the government line.” Indeed, numerous press releases issued by the military after the Hiroshima bombing-which in the absence of eyewitness accounts were often reproduced verbatim by U.S. newspapers-were written by none other than Laurence.

    “Mine has been the honor, unique in the history of journalism, of preparing the War Department’s official press release for worldwide distribution,” boasted Laurence in his memoirs, Dawn Over Zero. “No greater honor could have come to any newspaperman, or anyone else for that matter.”

    “Atomic Bill” Laurence revered atomic weapons. He had been crusading for an American nuclear program in articles as far back as 1929. His dual status as government agent and reporter earned him an unprecedented level of access to American military officials-he even flew in the squadron of planes that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. His reports on the atomic bomb and its use had a hagiographic tone, laced with descriptions that conveyed almost religious awe.

    In Laurence’s article about the bombing of Nagasaki (it was withheld by military censors until a month after the bombing), he described the detonation over Nagasaki that incinerated 100,000 people. Laurence waxed: “Awe-struck, we watched it shoot upward like a meteor coming from the earth instead of from outer space, becoming ever more alive as it climbed skyward through the white clouds. . . . It was a living thing, a new species of being, born right before our incredulous eyes.”

    Laurence later recounted his impressions of the atomic bomb: “Being close to it and watching it as it was being fashioned into a living thing, so exquisitely shaped that any sculptor would be proud to have created it, one . . . felt oneself in the presence of the supranatural.”

    Laurence was good at keeping his master’s secrets-from suppressing the reports of deadly radioactivity in New Mexico to denying them in Japan. The Times was also good at keeping secrets, only revealing Laurence’s dual status as government spokesman and reporter on August 7, the day after the Hiroshima bombing-and four months after Laurence began working for the Pentagon. As Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell wrote in their excellent book Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial, “Here was the nation’s leading science reporter, severely compromised, not only unable but disinclined to reveal all he knew about the potential hazards of the most important scientific discovery of his time.”

    Radiation: Now You See It, Now You Don’t

    A curious twist to this story concerns another New York Times journalist who reported on Hiroshima; his name, believe it or not, was William Lawrence (his byline was W.H. Lawrence). He has long been confused with William L. Laurence. (Even Wilfred Burchett confuses the two men in his memoirs and his 1983 book, Shadows of Hiroshima.) Unlike the War Department’s Pulitzer Prize winner, W.H. Lawrence visited and reported on Hiroshima on the same day as Burchett. (William L. Laurence, after flying in the squadron of planes that bombed Nagasaki, was subsequently called back to the United States by the Times and did not visit the bombed cities.)

    W.H. Lawrence’s original dispatch from Hiroshima was published on September 5, 1945. He reported matter-of-factly about the deadly effects of radiation, and wrote that Japanese doctors worried that “all who had been in Hiroshima that day would die as a result of the bomb’s lingering effects.” He described how “persons who had been only slightly injured on the day of the blast lost 86 percent of their white blood corpuscles, developed temperatures of 104 degrees Fahrenheit, their hair began to drop out, they lost their appetites, vomited blood and finally died.”

    Oddly enough, W.H. Lawrence contradicted himself one week later in an article headlined NO RADIOACTIVITY IN HIROSHIMA RUIN. For this article, the Pentagon’s spin machine had swung into high gear in response to Burchett’s horrifying account of “atomic plague.” W.H. Lawrence reported that Brigadier General T. F. Farrell, chief of the War Department’s atomic bomb mission to Hiroshima, “denied categorically that [the bomb] produced a dangerous, lingering radioactivity.” Lawrence’s dispatch quotes only Farrell; the reporter never mentions his eyewitness account of people dying from radiation sickness that he wrote the previous week.

    The conflicting accounts of Wilfred Burchett and William L. Laurence might be ancient history were it not for a modern twist. On October 23, 2003, The New York Times published an article about a controversy over a Pulitzer Prize awarded in 1932 to Times reporter Walter Duranty. A former correspondent in the Soviet Union, Duranty had denied the existence of a famine that had killed millions of Ukrainians in 1932 and 1933. The Pulitzer Board had launched two inquiries to consider stripping Duranty of his prize. The Times “regretted the lapses” of its reporter and had published a signed editorial saying that Duranty’s work was “some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper.” Current Times executive editor Bill Keller decried Duranty’s “credulous, uncritical parroting of propaganda.”

    On November 21, 2003, the Pulitzer Board decided against rescinding Duranty’s award, concluding that there was “no clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception” in the articles that won the prize.

    As an apologist for Joseph Stalin, Duranty is easy pickings. What about the “deliberate deception” of William L. Laurence in denying the lethal effects of radioactivity? And what of the fact that the Pulitzer Board knowingly awarded the top journalism prize to the Pentagon’s paid publicist, who denied the suffering of millions of Japanese? Do the Pulitzer Board and the Times approve of “uncritical parroting of propaganda”-as long as it is from the United States?

    It is long overdue that the prize for Hiroshima’s apologist be stripped.

    Amy Goodman is host of the national radio and TV show “Democracy Now!.” This is an excerpt from her new national bestselling book The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them , written with her brother journalist David, exposes the reporting of Times correspondent William L. Laurence

    Democracy Now! is a national radio and TV program, broadcast on more than 240 stations.

    Originally published by CommonDreams.org

  • The Real Dirty Bombs: Depleted Uranium

    Lost in the media circus about the Iraq war, supposedly being fought to prevent a tyrant from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, is the salient fact that the United States and Britain are actively waging chemical and nuclear warfare in Iraq – using depleted uranium munitions.

    The corporate-controlled press has failed to inform the public that, in spite of years of UN inspections and numerous international treaties, tons of banned weapons of mass destruction (WMD) – used and unused – remain in Iraq. Indeed, both chemical and radioactive WMD have been – and continue to be used against U.S. and coalition soldiers.

    The media silence surrounding these banned WMD, and the horrendous consequences of their use, is due to the simple fact that they are being used by the U.S.-led coalition. They are the new “Silver Bullet” in the U.S. arsenal. They are depleted uranium weapons.

    Depleted uranium (DU) weapons were first used during the first Gulf War against Iraq in 1991. The Pentagon estimated that between 315 and 350 tons of DU were fired during the first Gulf War. During the 2003 invasion and current occupation of Iraq, U.S. and British troops have reportedly used more than five times as many DU bombs and shells as the total number used during the 1991 war.

    While the use of DU weapons and their effect on human health and the environment are subjects of extreme importance the Pentagon is noticeably reluctant to discuss these weapons. Despite numerous calls to specific individuals identified as being the appointed spokesmen on the subject, not one would answer their phone during normal business hours for the purpose of this article.

    Dr. Doug Rokke, on the other hand, former director of the U.S. Army’s Depleted Uranium Project, is very willing to talk about the effects of DU. Rokke was involved in the “clean up” of 34 Abrams tanks and Bradley armored vehicles hit by friendly fire during the 1991 Gulf War. Today he suffers from the ill effects of DU in his body.

    Rokke told American Free Press that the Pentagon uses DU weapons because they are the most effective at killing and destroying everything they hit. The highest level of the U.S. and British governments have “totally disregarded the consequences” of the use of DU weapons, Rokke said.

    The first Gulf War was the largest friendly fire incident in the history of American warfare, Rokke says. “The majority of the casualties were the result of friendly fire,” he told AFP.

    DU is used in many forms of ammunition as an armor penetrator because of its extreme weight and density. The uranium used in these missiles and bombs is a by-product of the nuclear enrichment process. Experts say the Department of Energy has 100 million tons of DU and using it in weapons saves the government money on the cost of its disposal.

    Rather than disposing of the radioactive waste, it is shaped into penetrator rods used in the billions of rounds being fired in Iraq and Afghanistan . The radioactive waste from the U.S. nuclear weapons industry has, in effect, been forcibly exported and spread in the environments of Iraq , Afghanistan , the former Yugoslavia , Puerto Rico , and elsewhere.

    THE REAL “DIRTY BOMBS”

    “A flying rod of solid uranium 18-inches long and three-quarters of an inch in diameter,” is what becomes of a DU tank round after it is fired, Rokke said. Because Uranium-238 is pyrophoric, meaning it burns on contact with air, DU rounds are burning as they fly.

    When the DU penetrator hits an object it breaks up and causes secondary explosions, Rokke said. “It’s way beyond a dirty bomb,” Rokke said, referring to the terror weapon that uses conventional explosives to spread radioactive material.

    Some of the uranium used with DU weapons vaporizes into extremely small particles, which are dispersed into the atmosphere where they remain until they fall to the ground with the rain. As a gas, the chemically toxic and radioactive uranium can easily enter the body through the skin or the lungs and be carried around the world until it falls to earth with the rain.

    AFP asked Marion Falk, a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore lab, if he thought that DU weapons operate in a similar manner as a dirty bomb. “That’s exactly what they are,” Falk said. “They fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way.”

    According to Falk, more than 30 percent of the DU fired from the cannons of U.S. tanks is reduced to particles one-tenth of a micron (one millionth of a meter) in size or smaller on impact.

    “The larger the bang” the greater the amount of DU that is dispersed into the atmosphere, Falk said. With the larger missiles and bombs, nearly 100 percent of the DU is reduced to radioactive dust particles of the “micron size” or smaller, he said.

    While the Pentagon officially denies the dangers of DU weapons, since at least 1943 the military has been aware of the extreme toxicity of uranium dispersed as a gas. A declassified memo written by James B. Conant and two other physicists working on the U.S. nuclear project during the Second World War, and sent to Brig. Gen. L.R. Groves on October 30, 1943, provides the evidence:

    “As a gas warfare instrument the [radioactive] material would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicles, or aerial bombs,” the 1943 memo reads. “In this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small. It has been estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulation in a person’s body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty.”

    The use of radioactive materials “as a terrain contaminant” to “deny terrain to either side except at the expense of exposing personnel to harmful radiations” is also discussed in the Groves memo of 1943.

    “Anybody, civilian or soldier, who breathes these particles has a permanent dose, and it’s not going to decrease very much over time,” Leonard Dietz, a retired nuclear physicist with 33 years experience told the New York Daily News . “In the long run . veterans exposed to ceramic uranium oxide have a major problem.”

    Inhaled particles of radioactive uranium oxide dust will either lodge in the lungs or travel through the body, depending on their size. The smallest particles can be carried through cell walls and “affect the master code – the __expression of the DNA,” Falk told AFP.

    Inhaled DU can “fool around with the keys” and do damage to “practically anything,” Falk said. “It affects the body in so many ways and there are so many different symptoms that they want to give it different names,” Falk said about the wide variety of ailments afflicting Gulf War veterans.

    Today, more than one out of every three veterans from the first Gulf War are permanently disabled. Terry Jemison of the Dept. of Veterans Affairs said that of the 592,561 discharged veterans from the 1991 war in Iraq , 179,310 are receiving disability compensation and another 24,763 cases are pending.

    The “epigenetic damage” done by DU has resulted in many grossly deformed children born in areas such as southern Iraq where tons of DU have contaminated the environment and local population. An untold number of Americans have also been born with severe birth defects as a result of DU contamination.

    The New York Daily News conducted a study on nine recently returned soldiers from the New York National Guard. Four of the nine were found to have “almost certainly” inhaled radioactive dust from exploded DU shells.

    Laboratory tests revealed two manmade forms of uranium in urine samples from four of the 9 soldiers. The four soldiers are the first confirmed cases of inhaled DU from the current Iraq war.

    “These are amazing results, especially since these soldiers were military police not exposed to the heat of battle,” said Dr. Asaf Duracovic, who examined the soldiers and performed the testing. “Other American soldiers who were in combat must have more DU exposure,” Duracovic said. Duracovic is a colonel in the Army reserves and served in the 1991 Gulf War.

    The test results showing that four of nine New York guardsmen test positive for DU “suggest the potential for more extensive radiation exposure among coalition troops and Iraqi civilians,” the Daily News reported.

    “A large number of American soldiers [in Iraq ] may have had significant exposure to uranium oxide dust,” Dr. Thomas Fasey, a pathologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center and an expert on depleted uranium said, “And the health impact is worrisome for the future.”

    HOTTER THAN HELL

    “I’m hotter than hell,” Rokke told AFP. The Dept. of Energy tested Rokke in 1994 and found that he was excreting more than 5,000 times the permissible level of depleted uranium. Rokke, however, was not informed of the results until 1996.

    As director of the Depleted Uranium Project in 1994-95, Rokke said his task was three fold: determine how to provide medical care for DU victims, how to clean it up, and how to educate and train personnel using DU weapons.

    Today, Rokke says that DU cannot be cleaned up and there is no medical care. “Once you’re zapped – you’re zapped,” Rokke said. Among the health problems Rokke is suffering as a result of DU contamination is brittle teeth. He said that he just paid out $400 for an operation for teeth that have broken off. “The uranium replaces the calcium in your teeth and bones,” Rokke said.

    “You fight for medical care every day of your life,” he said.

    “There are over 30,000 casualties from this Iraq war,” Rokke said.

    The three tasks set out for the Depleted Uranium Project have all failed, Rokke said. He wants to know why medical care is not being provided for all the victims of DU and why the environment is not being cleaned up.

    “They have to be held accountable,” Rokke said, naming President George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and British prime minister Tony Blair. They chose to use DU weapons and “totally disregarded the consequences.”

  • Military Recruiting Law Puts Burden on Parents

    Originally Published in the Washington Post

    Christopher Schmitt is careful to protect his son from companies that want to give the teenager credit cards or sell him sneakers. So at this year’s parents night at his son’s Fairfax County high school, Schmitt was dismayed to see a new form in the usual stack of permission slips and reminders.

    This one invited him to sign if he wanted his son’s name, address and telephone number withheld from the Pentagon. Otherwise, the information would be included in a directory of the school’s juniors and seniors that will be given upon request to military recruiters.

    Schmitt signed the form — quickly.

    “Most people probably missed [the form], and it’ll probably be too late,” Schmitt said. “There is a commodity with your consumer history. With the military, the commodity happens to be your children’s information. . . . Once there’s a point of entry, you don’t know where the information is going to go.”

    High schools across the nation must provide the directory — what one school official called “a gold mine of a list” — under a sleeper provision in the new No Child Left Behind Act, which was enacted this year. Military officials pushed for it to counter a steady decline in the number of people who inquire about enlisting.

    Many schools already allow military recruiters on campus, sponsor ROTC programs or provide student information to the Pentagon if parents give permission. But many school officials say the mandatory provision — which puts the burden on parents to opt out rather than in — has them in an uncomfortable position.

    Part of their role as educators, they say, is to minimize intrusions so students can learn. Now, they risk losing federal funds if they don’t hand over students’ names to recruiters who, in the words of Chantilly High School Principal Tammy Turner, “want to capitalize on our captive audience.”

    Michael Carr, spokesman for the 38,000-member National Association of Secondary School Principals, said: “Student privacy is a big, big issue with schools. There are a lot of people trying to get identities of students — to get to that market.”

    There has been no uprising against the provision. Many parents and teachers see the armed forces as a possible career path and say that recruiters should have a chance to make their pitch.

    “There are great opportunities for these kids in the military,” said Donna Geren, a retired Navy commander whose son, Kyle, is a senior at West Potomac High School in Fairfax. “A lot of times, kids don’t find out about the scholarships they offer if schools are not allowed to share this information. I don’t see any downside to this.”

    Fairfax School Superintendent Daniel A. Domenech said that few parents have returned opt-out forms, but he thinks it may reflect a lack of attention rather than lack of opposition. “It makes me believe parents basically glossed over it,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll start getting calls from parents when they hear from the recruiters.”

    Although the number of military enlistees has remained fairly constant, the pool of prospective recruits continues to shrink, according to William Carr, director of military personnel policy for the Defense Department.

    More students are going to college, and in the 1990s, the tech boom created plenty of jobs, so the military was no longer the employer of last resort. Even students who express an interest say their parents don’t approve, especially as talk of war with Iraq escalates.

    In the past decade, the number of high school graduates who said they intended to join the military dropped from 32 percent to 25 percent, Carr said. At the same time, one-third of the nation’s 22,000 high schools refused recruiters’ requests for students’ names or access to campus, and the cost of recruiting one person rose from $6,000 to $12,000.

    After the military took its complaints to Congress, Rep. David Vitter (R-La.) sponsored an amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act, a sweeping federal measure passed last year that makes schools accountable for student achievement. Vitter said that military recruiters, who offer scholarships and jobs, deserved to be on par with college recruiters.

    The student directories will be used to contact students by phone and mail, William Carr said. The recruitment effort should not be compared to telemarketing in any way, he said, and it would be illegal to use the data for any purpose other than recruiting.

    “You cannot equate military readiness to a free baseball cap,” Carr said. “There’s a considerable difference.”

    The provision isn’t a perfect solution for recruiters, said Charles Moskos, a professor and military recruiting expert at Northwestern University, but it is more realistic than trying to persuade Jenna Bush — or, better yet, rap star Eminem — to join the Marines.

    “That would change people’s minds,” said Moskos, who was in the Army in 1958 when photographs of a newly drafted Elvis Presley in uniform gave the military a Cold War boost. When he asks recruiters whether they would rather have their advertising budget tripled or see Chelsea Clinton enlist, he said, “they unanimously choose the Chelsea option.”

    The directory, Moskos said, is partly aimed at improving the quality of enlistees, seeking to attract students who stay in school and have other career options. But he isn’t sure it will work. “I don’t think the prime market is high school anymore,” Moskos said. “My research says the most effective recruiter is a friend or family member who made it a career.”

    Rick Jahnkow, program director for the California-based Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft, said the measure misplaces the responsibility. Recruiters “had a lot of pressure to meet their quotas, so they decided to pass the buck to schools,” he said. “Now it’s a huge hammer over the heads of schools, parents and students who will have their privacy invaded.”

    Part of the burden is turning out to be administrative. Shannon Tully, director of student services at South Lakes High School in Fairfax, said a recruiter came to ask for a computer disk with the names on it before she had time to prepare it. “We told him we didn’t have it, and a week later we get an e-mail saying we were a non-cooperating school.

    “They didn’t even let us know” he was coming, Tully said. “What are we supposed to be — a fast-food restaurant?”

    William Carr, of the Defense Department, said he was unaware of that incident and could not comment on it.

    John Porter, principal of T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, said he doesn’t see any problems with the law. In the past, the school gave the Pentagon the names of students whose parents opted in, and now it will reverse the process.

    “I see it as one of many opportunities for kids to consider post-graduation,” said Porter, who opposes directories being released to any other group. “It’s a good career choice for some people.”

    Arlington’s assistant superintendent, Alvin Crawley, said that until now, the district has refused to release student directories to anyone, including military recruiters. This year, opt-out forms were sent to all 2,500 of the county’s juniors and seniors, he said, and 130 were returned. So far, he said, recruiters have requested the student directory for only one of the district’s three high schools, Yorktown.

    Jack Parker, principal of Potomac High School in Prince William County, said his school already was in the habit of giving names to military recruiters and letting them recruit on campus during lunch periods.

    “They are not trying to solicit anything,” Parker said. “And if a student doesn’t want to be called, we strike them off the list.”

    Christine Boehm, 17, who attends Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, is less concerned about privacy than about the expense of the unsolicited mailing she received from recruiters. “It’s a waste of government money,” she said. “I’m not planning on going into the military.”

    Kyle Geren, 17, said he has already been contacted by a military recruiter at home — and went to visit him. “I think it’s a good idea the recruitment office knows how to get hold of students before they leave school,” Geren said. “I’m keeping it open as an option.”