Theory: The case for nukes. War is a greater threat than proliferation is.

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

It is absolutely false that the United Nations "authorized" the invasion of Iraq. The line of bullsh*t used by the Bush administration to justify the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with gassing Kurds. The Bush administration claimed that Iraq had programs to develop weapons of mass destruction and was stockpiling such weapons. Hans Blix, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was requested by the Secretary General of the United Nations to monitor reports of the two agencies which had conducted the inspection regime to assure that Iraq complied with UN resolutions to disarm and destroy or turn over all weapons of mass destruction, and to end any programs to develop and make weapons of mass destruction. In 2004, Blix stated that: "There were about 700 inspections, and in no case did we find
weapons of mass destruction," referring to his brief tenure in that role, which ended just before the invasion. Do you just make this sh*t up as you go along?

yeparooty

0 Replies

@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

However the wars that have been fought to prevent acquisition of weapons of mass destruction have resulted in many more people dying than a nuclear terror attack would likely cause.

I doubt that is the case, unless we use the bogus death tolls produced by anti-American propagandists.

Robert Gentel wrote:

What do you think? I am all in favor of preventing nuclear proliferation through peaceful means (treaties, economic enticement) but when it comes to doing it by force it seems like a case of killing people on the off chance that people might possibly be killed and if countries like Iraq had nukes I think that the war would have been avoided and many more lives spared than the risks of Iraq having nukes posed.

I'm all for trying peaceful means first, but if peaceful means fail (say part of the world chooses not to participate in sanctions, rendering them ineffective), then I'm all for sending in the Air Force.

0 Replies

@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

I agree with this and to me it strengthens the point I am making. The nuclear club can offer incentives and disincentives to acquiring nukes but short of invading and occupying the countries there is little they can do to deter a sufficiently motivated state as it is not all that difficult to make nukes.

Invasion and occupation isn't necessary. Just bomb the illegal nuclear sites.

0 Replies

@Builder,

Quote:

Excellent summation of the timeline. Thank you.

You mean this:

Stephen Pelletiere was the CIA senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. He was a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000.

He says: This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.

He goes on to say: Immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas.

He also said: The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent - that is, a cyanide-based gas - which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.
___________________________________________

The invasion of Iraq was illegal. The reason for the invasion of Iraq, and the killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and the creation of four million refugees was to find and remove WMDs. Here is a chronological sequence of events concerning that:

“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”

~Dick Cheney, August 26, 2002

“Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.”

~George W. Bush, September 12, 2002

“Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons...We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.”

~George W. Bush, October 5, 2002

“The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas.

“We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States. The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his “nuclear mujahideen” - his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.”

~George W. Bush, October 7, 2002

“If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again...”

~Ari Fleischer, December 2, 2002

“The president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it.”

~Ari Fleischer December 6, 2002

“We know for a fact that there are weapons there.”

~Ari Fleischer January 9, 2003

“It appears to be a re-run of a bad movie. [Iraqi President Saddam Hussein] is delaying. He's deceiving. He's asking for time. He's playing hide-and-seek with inspectors. One thing is for certain -- he's not disarming.”

~George W. Bush, January 21, 2003

“Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.”

~George W. Bush, January 28, 2003

“We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.”

~Colin Powell, February 5, 2003

“We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.”

~George W. Bush, February 8, 2003

“So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad?... I think our judgment has to be clearly not.”

~Colin Powell, March 7, 2003

“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”

~George W. Bush, March 17, 2003

“Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.”

~Ari Fleisher, March 21, 2003

“There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And . . . as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.

~Gen. Tommy Franks, March 22, 2003

“One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites.”

~Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark, March 22, 2003

“We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”

~Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003

“We are in the process of trying to liberate that country. And at the moment where the war ends and the coalition forces occupy the areas where those capabilities -- chemical and biological weapons -- are likely to be, to the extent they haven't been moved out of the country, it obviously is important to find them.”

~Donald Rumsfeld, April 9, 2003

“We have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about.”

~Ari Fleischer, April 10, 2003

After the “fall” on April 10, 2003

“When there happens to be a weapon of mass destruction suspect site in an area that we occupy and if people have time, they'll look at it.”

~Donald Rumsfeld, April 11, 2003

“I don't think we'll discover anything, myself. I think what will happen is we'll discover people who will tell us where to go find it. It is not like a treasure hunt where you just runaround looking everywhere hoping you find something. I just don't think that's going to happen. The inspectors didn't find anything, and I doubt that we will. What we will do is find the people who will tell us.”

~Donald Rumsfeld, April 17, 2003

“We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them.”

~George W. Bush, April 24, 2003

“There are people who in large measure have information that we need . . . so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country.”

~Donald Rumsfeld, April 25, 2003

“He tried to fool the United Nations and did for 12 years by hiding these weapons. And so, it's going to take time to find them. But we know he had them, and whether he destroyed them, moved them or hid them, we're going to find out the truth.”

~George W. Bush April 25, 2003

“We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so.”

~George W. Bush, May 3, 2003

“I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now.”

~Colin Powell, May 4, 2003

“We never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.”

~Donald Rumsfeld, May 4, 2003

“I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein -- because he had a weapons program.”

~George W. Bush, May 6, 2003

“U.S. officials never expected that 'we were going to open garages and find' weapons of mass destruction.”

~Condoleeza Rice, May 12, 2003

“I just don't know whether it was all destroyed years ago -- I mean, there's no question that there were chemical weapons years ago -- whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they're still hidden.

~Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, Commander 101st Airborne, May 13, 2003

“Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we're interrogating, I'm confident that we're going to find weapons of mass destruction.”

~Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, May 26, 2003

“They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer.”

~Donald Rumsfeld, May 27, 2003

“For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.”

~Paul Wolfowitz, May 28, 2003

“It was a surprise to me then -- it remains a surprise to me now -- that we have not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal sites. Believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there.”

~Lt. Gen. James Conway, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, May 30, 2003

“The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit. We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light -- through the prism of our experience on 9/11.”

~Donald Rumsfeld, June, 2003

The CIA gave us bad intelligence.

~George W. Bush, July 11, 2003

“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things we know we don't know. But, there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don't know we don't know.”

~Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
__________________________________________

Thanks. It certainly puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Isent this about the 100th time these facts have been posted here? One would think they would give up trying to change history.

3 Replies

@RABEL222,

More like the thousandth, or ten thousandth, or hundred thousandth. Walter Hinteler started a thread in 2002 in the run-up the invasion of Iraq which morphed into "The US, the UN and Iraq," which ran for years and years.

0 Replies

I have been completely unable to find the original thread, which was entitled "Anti War Movement," and was started by Walter Hinteler on October 22nd, 2002. One of the moderators split that off and retitled the thread "The US, UN and Iraq" on November 14, 2002. That lead to a dozen or more iterations of the theme, and it ran for years and years.

0 Replies

@Glennn,

Not sure if I understand the question. One of the problems is that Arabic is such an old language and dialects have existed for thousands of years that leave people living on the same street unable to understand each other. In Kurdistan there are about 30 different dialects of Arabic alone. This leaves to much confusion as each different sect creates a new name for something. I am not familiar with the word 'Halabja' as a noun. I know enough to be conversational-and that is all-in the area of Agribusiness which is why I was chosen. The best source for these events is Lawrence Wright-he has won 2 Pulitzer prizes for his books not only about 9/11 but the lifestyles and history as well. His 'The Looming Tower' is the best source book on 9/11 you will find.
On the subject of Nuclear proliferation today we find out that the Russians have a new class of submarine, along with a new class of tactical armaments, believed to be a form of a cruse missile with battlefield capability that we can only guess at. It is almost certain that it is in the conventional form. So much for nukes.

0 Replies

@RABEL222,

Who's trying to change history?

1 Reply

@Glennn,

You need to go back and read some of the posts on this site and you will see for yourself.

0 Replies

@RABEL222,

Quote:

One would think they would give up trying to change history.

You're referring to someone in this thread. Who?

0 Replies

@Glennn,

Those 'facts' are irrelevant because Saddam Hussein, at his trial, admitted his secular hatred for the Kurdish people, and was proud as hell for what he had done!
The entire trial, including his closing-final- argument, can be read at the library of Congress or a scant few other sites around the internet. This final statement-was more bizarre, and downright hate filled, than the Fuhrer's political testament when he called for the end of world Jewry through genocide.
He was planning on killing every damn one of them but he "underestimated the will of the United States and President Bush"
Of course, google would never allow a search string to lead to that quote-and like Hussein-they are damn proud of it. Try to use google to find out anything about the trial-anything at all. Amazing that some of you-not all of course-don't understand that google only allows information that slants peoples opinion to the particular political position they want on any selected issue. Grammar school kids know it-that is why it is not a source.
That entire posted quote is meaningless considering what happened in an Iraq court of law, when Hussein admitted using poison gas and his only regret was he didn't kill every single one of them-but was damn proud that the majority of the weapons somehow made it in to Syria. See if google will allow you to see his quote right before they strung him-with a loose noose so he danced for almost a minute before he finally gave up and died.
That entire 'timeline' is null and void because of what happened later and Pelletiere knows that as well as anyone. This is also the reason that the media-the entire media from left to right-simply will not allow a discussion on Saddam's trial-it made them look like idiots.

1. The majority of the weapons of mass destruction somehow made it in to Syria and are in the possession of Daesh' in Fallujah where they are surrounded by Iraqi Security Forces and American troops. Of course the White House says we only have 1,000 troops in Iraq so the other 12,000 combat forces are 'advisers'.
2. A double agent 'curveball' tricked the CIA and led to wide spread misinformation about the Regime of Saddam Hussein.
3. Saddam Hussein's much ballyhooed 'republican guard' was just another illusion which led to the escape of the central core of the Baath party which became AL-qedia in Iraq, that was defeated by American troop surge, yet, again, escaped to form Daesh'
4. The entire Iraq war, from the 2003 invasion to the present, has been a sad comedy of errors from start to finish and a damning perception of the America military and it's intelligence agency's.

1 Reply

@spooky24,

Quote:

The entire trial, including his closing-final- argument, can be read at the library of Congress or a scant few other sites around the internet.

Well then I suggest you produce something from those scant few other sites because nothing you've posted detracts from what I've provided. You're doing a lot of hand-waving, and nothing else.

1 Reply

Since nuclear proliferation is a given , membership of the 'be nice' club is an imperative.

Nuclear energy will own mc donna kebabs next century and be more ubiquitous.

You want fried with that?

0 Replies

@Glennn,

Quote:

nothing you posted detracts from what I've provided.

How do you figure that? My point is that google censors it's search strings to slant towards a particular political position.

All those quotes that you posted were made null and void because of what Saddam Hussein said at his war crimes trial. It is not my fault, or my responibillity, that google will not allow Americans to see these facts because of it's political censorship. Some of it is understandable and good proof is to search google for 'the American revolution and war for independence' then fly to London, deplane at Heathrow, use their WI-fi and search google for 'the American revolution and war for independence' and see how different the results are-night and day different, and again, to a point that is understandable.
Posting those quotes and saying that they are 'history' is wrong because you must understand that other viewpoints are censored.
Don't you know why the American media-from far left to far right-excluding far left extremist like salon or far right extremist like MM, never bring these issues up? Why msnbc or abc never discusses those very quotes about the run up to the invasion of Iraq? Because they are fully aware of what happened at Hussein's war crimes trial.

The point is you can't base an argument solely on what you can find searching google.
Evolution is another subject fraught with censorship because google is atheist and proud of it. Religious figures in history, and religious events throughout history, are treated like Saturday morning cartoons.
The topic of this thread-nuclear proliferation-for national security reasons very little information can be viewed without dedicated study from other sources and google is correct for limiting information.

You simply need to be aware of these limits.

1 Reply

@spooky24,

Quote:

My point is that google censors it's search strings to slant towards a particular political position.

I see.

Quote:

It is not my fault, or my responibillity, that google will not allow Americans to see these facts because of it's political censorship.

I see.

Quote:

Posting those quotes and saying that they are 'history' is wrong because you must understand that other viewpoints are censored.

I see.

Quote:

The point is you can't base an argument solely on what you can find searching google.

I see. And here I thought it was what you can't find that you can't base an argument on.

Quote:

You simply need to be aware of these limits.

I see.

0 Replies

@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
North Korea already has nuclear weapons. My hypothetic dealt with a regime that seemed to be in the process of developing them, but probably hadn't already.

North Korea developed them recently, we went thorugh this process and at no point during the build up was an invasion advisable.

Quote:
With North Korea, it's too late.

Before NK developed nukes the same cost calculus existed, Seoul is in range of their conventional artillery and war with North Korea is too costly with or without nuclear weapons.

As long as they are contained they should not be invaded.

They are not contained. They can use a nuclear weapons whenever they wish. They could bomb South Korea, but I agree with you that no sane regime would risk the possible retaliation. On the other hand, they could smuggle the pieces of a nuclear weapon into New York, reassemble it there, dentonate it and deny responsibility - even express sympathy and offer us aid. Even if we thought we knew who was responsible, and that's a big if, I doubt that we would attack them if we had little or no proof and they were insisting that they had nothing to do with it. It doesn't sound like containment to me. And, by the way, I should probably re-emphasize that I am not talking only about nuclear weapons, but biological weapons too.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
I am talking about a situation in which the question is whether to allow the country to complete its development and reach the status which North Korea now has.

And my point is that in all such situations so far invading has been the wrong choice.

Yes, we certainly disagree about this. Your opinion seems to be based on the assumption that a petty dictatorship which gains nuclear or biological weapons would be highly unlikely to use them. I agree that they would be unlikely to use them if they thought the attack could be traced to them, but there are ways they could use them so that it might be hard to trace it to them. I have already mentioned the scenario of smuggling a weapon into the target country in pieces. As I stated in a previous letter, they could also give the weapons to a pre-existing terrorst group which might not have a fixed location for us to direct retaliation to, even if we knew that they were the perpetrators.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
I explicitly stated as an element of my hypothetical that, "Pretty much everyone agrees that this dictator is evil and willing to hurt a lot of people to advance his agenda, based on his past acts."

This describes North Korea's leaders, and pretty much anyone who has been willing to use military means to one's ends.

Thing is, what these leaders are not is suicidal, and despite their willingness to use violence to forward their goals using nuclear weapons would not do so.

That would probably be true if they thought they would be held responsible, but there are certainly ways they could attack anonymously, as described above. The idea that we would always know who our attackers were is a very old fashioned holdover from the cold war when the likelihood was that the weapons would be launched as missiles. It doesn't apply to anonymous delivery into the target country.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
Blithely assuming that no dictator of the type I have described will ever use such a weapon once he has developed it seems unrealistic to me.

I am not dong as much any more than you are "blithely assuming" that a dictator will use it in order to justify killing people preemptively. We merely have vastly different reads on the probability of a suicidal dictator.

I am only assuming that if petty dictators and terrorist groups continue to acquire nuclear or biological weapons, sooner or later, somewhere, somehow one of them will use one of these weapons on somebody (probably anonymously to avoid the sort or retaliation which you have described).

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
First of all, he might use the weapons against small countries which wouldn't be in much of a position to fight back, especially after absorbing such an attack.

The US has spent decades to project its power and say that they reserve the right to respond, nearly any nation that uses nukes on another nation is going to be responded to by the community of nations.

Quote:
As for attacking larger countries, e.g. France, the US, England, etc., I stated that he might detonate such a weapon (nuke or plague) from within the target country and then deny responsibility.

The US reserves the right to retaliate, including with nuclear weapons, if we are attacked by non-state actors who gained their nuclear technology from a state.

Any such act would be suicidal to the regime that took it.

I think I said, "and deny responsibility." How are we going to retaliate if we don't know who did it, or if we have a suspicion, but cannot prove it, or if the perpetrator is a terrorist group with no fixed location?

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
He might be willing to take the chance that no one could really prove who had committed the act.

This is not a court of law, the US did not have a court case to invade Afghanistan, as soon as the evidence pointed at Osama the troops were moving that way. In Afghanistan's case they didn't even participate in the attack and the attack was not close to nuclear scale and the whole regime was targeted.

If the US is attacked by nuclear weapons it would be similarly suicidal for any regime behind it.

Quote:
Furthermore, if he gave/sold the weapons to terrorists, they often do not even have much of a return address to direct retribution to and also often to do not exhibit risk averse behavior. They may view the attack as a holy war and have religious/mythical beliefs connected with it which aren't very realistic.

It is relatively easy to trace where the nuclear fuel came from and the regime would be committing suicide. There are plenty of small suicidal entities but state-level regimes have not traditionally been and the bottom line is that the odds of a regime gaining statehood and then being suicidal are slim, the much greater risk is that they miscalculate the risks and overstep their boundaries, but it's clear to everyone that a nuclear attack would be, that is why nobody uses them even when they are already at war. The boundary is well understood, anyone who is involved in a nuclear attack would be retaliated against severely.

Answered above. First of all, they can detonate a nuke from within the target country and then swear up and down that not only didn’t they do it, but that they never would do such a thing. The same goes for bioweapons. Secondly, they can give the weapon to terrorists - what you have called small, suicidal entities. Also, terrorists, besides sometimes being suicidal, often have no specific location to which to direct retaliation. The idea that nothing like this would happen, as more and more petty dictatorships gain the ability to make these weapons, is naïve.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
Actually, responsible governments do consider what might happen and seek to avert realistically possible catastrophes.

Sure, but for the most part they are not going to misread the probabilities to the point that they invade nations over slim possibilities either. Even Iraq wasn't really about WMDs, despite that being used as its legal justification. The architects of that war laid out their reasoning many times, and they wanted to project American military power and gain a "footprint" in the region.

George Bush was very consistent in saying that we were invading Iraq because it was believed that they had taken their WMD development programs underground, rather than destroying them. His critics claim that he had all sorts of other motives, but he was pretty good about giving WMD as the reason. We now know that Iraq no longer had these programs, but we know that only because we invaded. If you buy insurance and then don’t need it, it doesn’t mean that buying it was stupid. Even if, and I do not believe this, Bush was lying about his reasons for invading, it only means that he did the rational thing for the wrong reason, based on the information we possessed at the time, for the reasons I have outlined.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
You seem to be asserting that a less than 100% chance of a hideous fate should be counted as insignificant against the losses likely in a military action.

Nonsense, I am asserting that this is less than a 1% chance and you are deliberately misconstruing my position.

If, over time, the worst dictators are allowed to develop nuclear and biological weapons, how do you reason that there is a less than 1% chance that any of them will use one? Your argument seems to consist of the idea that they won’t use them because they are unwilling to face the consequences, but this is a very old fashioned idea from the Cold War scenario that nuclear weapons would be launched on ICBMs so that everyone would know who was responsible and doesn’t account for anonymous delivery, which is quite possible for both nuclear and biological weapons. To give a chemical weapons analogy, although I am not discussing chemical weapons, please tell me who was responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks. Your analysis also fails to account for the fact that terrorists might believe that they are on a holy mission and might not act in as risk averse a manner as the major powers. Also, as repeatedly mentioned here, they might not even have a central location to which to direct retaliation.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
I don't believe this is very good analysis.

It's easy to make up a position for your interlocutor and then take issue with it.

Quote:
I don't agree with your analysis that in my hypothetical scenario, the realistic probability of fatal consequences would be "incredibly slim."

This is the core of our disagreement and there's not much more to say about this, it's not like you can come up with any kind of evidence to support the danger you see, and that the danger you see has never been realized is also not fundamentally evidence of the absence of danger.

Quote:
Monsters with super-weapons might use them. As for fear mongering, you know there really are things in the world which do merit fear. Not all discussion of danger is fear mongering.

I agree that not all discussion of danger is fear mongering, and this is one of the cases where you think it is not and I think it is. The danger exists but does not rise to the level of your support for the war in Iraq, that is a significant misread of the danger that has caused you to support loss of life on a tremendous scale.

Quote:
Robert Gentel wrote:
Would you accept a 100% chance you will kill x people to prevent a 0.0001% chance that someone else will kill x*10 people.
No, I certainly would not, but we aren't discussing a 0.0001% chance.

The rates for suicide are far closer to this number than the numbers you toss around. This is a suicidal act, and self-preservation is largely what keeps you safe in any case.

It is perfectly easy to kill many people, our police do not prevent crime so much as catch people after the fact and rely on the desire for self-preservation for people to refrain from crime.

Your security already rests with trusting that you live in a world where suicidal madmen are exceedingly rare. It is trivial to commit mass murder, it is getting away with it that is harder.

Thankfully so far the technology for nuclear weapons is such that entities who are able to develop it have only occurred at at scale that makes them incredibly unlikely to be suicidal, even "suicidal" groups take advantage of low-level actors to commit the suicide and are not suicidal as a group either.

So far the technological cost for nuclear weapons is beyond what suicidal or rogue entities are able to achieve, and it is leaps in technology that you should fear more than regimes. If the barrier to entry is dramatically lowered, by a new technological process that allows easier enrichment etc, this would represent a much greater danger than a state entity deciding to commit suicide.

1 Reply

@Brandon9000,

Brandon9000 wrote:

On the other hand, they could smuggle the pieces of a nuclear weapon into New York, reassemble it there, dentonate it and deny responsibility - even express sympathy and offer us aid. Even if we thought we knew who was responsible, and that's a big if, I doubt that we would attack them if we had little or no proof and they were insisting that they had nothing to do with it.

The fallout from the explosion would have unique signatures that would allow us to definitively know it was them. We would retaliate.

1 Reply

@oralloy,

oralloy wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
On the other hand, they could smuggle the pieces of a nuclear weapon into New York, reassemble it there, dentonate it and deny responsibility - even express sympathy and offer us aid. Even if we thought we knew who was responsible, and that's a big if, I doubt that we would attack them if we had little or no proof and they were insisting that they had nothing to do with it.

The fallout from the explosion would have unique signatures that would allow us to definitively know it was them. We would retaliate.

Theory: The case for nukes. War is a greater threat than proliferation is.

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know