TruthNews Commentary, Jan. 30, 2003

Ted Kennedy seems upset at reports that the U.S. might nuke Iraq.

In an opinion published in the Los Angeles Times, the Massachusetts senator wrote,

Notion of a first-strike use in Iraq carries the seed of world disaster. A dangerous world just grew more dangerous. Reports that the administration is contemplating the preemptive use of nuclear weapons in Iraq should set off alarm bells that this could not only be the wrong war at the wrong time, but it could quickly spin out of control.

Despite the senator's claims, there's no credible evidence that the administration is considering a first-strike use of nuclear weapons. Last week, the Los Angeles Times published an unreliable report that the United States was considering using nuclear weapons against Iraq to destroy underground command posts and stop Iraqi forces from using weapons of mass destruction. The story cited a private military writer, William M. Arkin, who said that plans for using nuclear weapons against Iraq were being fleshed out at the U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska, at the Pentagon, and at an "undisclosed location" in Pennsylvania where Vice President Richard B. Cheney spent time during terrorism alerts (so that's where Cheney's been hanging out).

We have two comments about this report. First, the military is continually making plans for every possible option for every possible contingency. Most of these plans sit on dusty shelves and are never implemented. There's probably still a plan on the books for nuking Moscow, but Kennedy doesn't seem too worried about that.

Second, such plans would be classified if they exist. We wonder how Arkin was able to blab the details to the LA Times. Arkin is a critic of the military who in March of last year published details about how the President had supposedly revised the nation's Nuclear Posture Review to allow first strikes on such countries as Iraq and Iran. Since the Nuclear Posture Review (if there is such a thing) is classified (according to Arkin), this would also mean that Arkin had leaked classified information. Now we're supposed to believe that some military officer working in the Pentagon called Arkin up and said, "Hey, Bill, I know you don't have a security clearance and that you previously leaked top-secret information on our nuclear war plans. But I just wanted to tell you that we're planning on nuking Iraq. Please don't tell anyone." Get real.

Responding to the Arkin report, White House chief of staff Andrew Card, in an interview on the Sunday morning TV show "Meet the Press," said that the U.S. will use "whatever means necessary" to protect its citizens and the world from a "holocaust." "I'm not going to put anything on the table or off the table," Card said. "But we have a responsibility to make sure Saddam Hussein and his generals do not use weapons of mass destruction." Dan Bartlett, White House communications director, echoed Card's sentiments. "What is clear - and the message that President Bush has sent unequivocally - is that if the Iraqi regime, if Saddam Hussein and his generals decide for one second to use weapons of mass destruction against allied forces of the United States of America and our allies, we will make sure it doesn't happen," Mr. Bartlett said on CNN's "Late Edition."

These comments are more credible than Arkin's claims, but on the other hand, they don't say very much. OK, so Card and Bartlett refused to rule out a nuclear strike. What do you expect them to say: "Oh, Saddam doesn't have to worry about getting nuked. We would never use a nuclear weapon on him, even if he had killed half a million people with nerve gas and were about to kill a million more." Again, get real. We want to terrorize Hussein into fleeing for his life, not reassure him.

Besides, refusing to rule out use of nuclear weapons has been consistent U.S. policy for the last fifty years. Even at the height of the Cold War, we refused to rule out the first use of nuclear weapons if a conventional war in Europe were going badly. And Kennedy's brother John F. certainly never ruled out the first use of nuclear weapons during the Cuban missile crisis.

What's clear is that the administration has not threatened the use of nuclear weapons against Hussein. They have just refused to rule out the use of nukes in some dire circumstances. This is far from the "first-strike" or "preemptive" use of nuclear weapons that Kennedy has described.

Furthermore, no one (not even Arkin) has said anything about nuking the Iraqi population. Iraqis are the victims of Hussein despotic rule. Part of the reason for going to war is to free the Iraqi people from Hussein's brutality. We're not about to "kill them so that we can save them" (as an American soldier said about South Vietnamese war casualties). Bunker-busting nukes might make sense in some circumstances, but the idea that the administration would nuke Baghdad is absurd.

Kennedy opposes a war against Iraq. He says as much in the opening paragraph of his article ("wrong war at the wrong time"). Apparently he has seen the contradiction in the Democratic position that "Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction and if we attack he may use them." So now Kennedy is trying spread hysteria about that cowboy in the White House throwing nukes around. But the military action in Afghanistan proved that the administration is both capable and compassionate when it comes to waging war.