Nuclear Weapons

NO ONE should be surprised that the Bush administration may use military force to stop Iran's nuclear capability. Bush, a born-again Christian, informed these anti-Christian nations of the world that they would feel his wrath if they produce any weapons of mass destruction. President Truman, also a Christian, responsible for dropping the bomb that claimed more than 100,000 lives in Nagasaki alone, "thanked God for giving the United States the atomic bomb . . . " Truman was also ready to use the A-bomb on communist North Korea.

If the protests, disturbances, negative polls, critical political commentary and immense press coverage of the French nuclear tests at Mururoa atoll in the South Pacific have proved anything, they've demonstrated that a nerve has been touched - people of many beliefs, from a wide variety of cultures and politics, have concluded that nuclear bombs are no longer the weapon of choice. Nuclear patriotism, French style, seems to be the last refuge of the scoundrel. Nuclear possession by anyone, even the superpowers, is now up for serious question.

Fifty-five years ago this week, America dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So began the nuclear age. It hasn't gone as the experts predicted. There have been no "limited" nuclear wars, and although nine nations did eventually acquire nuclear weapons, an additional 20 countries started down the nuclear path only to stop and reverse course. Today, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the cornerstone of international efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, has more members than the United Nations.

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze surprised the United States and its allies yesterday by announcing that the Soviet Union was planning to withdraw 1,500 nuclear warheads and other short-range weapons from Central Europe by the end of the year. Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d welcomed the Soviet announcement, but asked whether it was really new. "We don't know whether the weapons to be removed were going to be removed in any event as a consequence of troop reductions that have already been announced," Baker said.

The risk that nuclear weapons will spread to more countries is acute, especially in Pakistan and the Middle East, and a superpower arms race is increasing the danger of nuclear proliferation, a report by U.S. and European arms control experts released yesterday concluded. The report, published by the private Council on Foreign Relations, said punitive sanctions against countries thought to be seeking nuclear arms were largely ineffective. It said intense U.S. and Soviet arms control efforts and international attempts to defuse regional crises would be more effective at containing the spread of nuclear weapons.

There's lots to wonder about in the Key Judgments of the latest National Intelligence Estimate, which informs us with "high confidence" that Iran halted its nuclear bomb program four years ago. This contradicts its 2005 warning that Iran was "determined to develop nuclear weapons. " That followed the 2003-2004 zig-zag from our intelligence community on Iraq and Saddam Hussein's interest in weapons of mass destruction; which followed the intelligence failure to zero in on the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers before they slammed airplanes into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.

Now the hands reaching for [nuclear] weapons are those of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.. . . What can we do to reduce the threat? First, we should help Russia strengthen its protection of nuclear materials and enable its weapons scientists to convert to civilian work. We can help Pakistan develop technology needed to guard against the theft or unauthorized use of its nuclear weapons. Second, the U.S. administration should recommit itself to multinational efforts to control and limit the spread of nuclear weapons.

A federal jury starts deliberating today in the trial of a retired Pakistani general accused of conspiring to violate U.S. export laws to obtain nuclear-weapons-grade metal from a Reading company. The jurors hearing the case against Inam Ul-Haq were sent home yesterday afternoon after closing arguments from lawyers for the government and defense and instructions in the law from U.S. District Judge James T. Giles. Ul-Haq, 63, who did not testify and presented no evidence during the trial, which began June 29, is charged with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and one count of making false statements to a government agency.

NATO's defense ministers agreed yesterday that there was less need now for short-range nuclear systems in Western Europe, but they did not reach a consensus on which weapons should be withdrawn and which should remain. The NATO ministers noted in a joint communique that "profound changes" have occurred in Eastern Europe, justifying the comprehensive review of Western defense strategy that President Bush requested last week. They also agreed to hold a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders in London on July 5-6 to determine the precise aim of new arms negotiations with the Soviet Union on tactical nuclear forces.

India is now engaged in an all-out catch-up game with China for who will end up as the dominant power in Asia. Economic competition is the weapon of choice for day-to-day affairs - and India now looks as if it has a good chance of overtaking China in the early decades of the next century. But nuclear weapons are what the game could be about, if they continue to be the currency of power, despite the end of the Cold War. That is all the more so if post-Deng Xiaoping China becomes more assertive and militaristic - and all the indications are that it will be. (If China continues to build up its nuclear armory at its present rate, it will reach parity with the United States in 30 years.

WASHINGTON - Ignoring a White House veto threat, the Republican-controlled House approved a $642 billion defense budget Friday that breaks a deficit-cutting deal with President Obama and restricts his authority in an election-year challenge to the Democratic commander in chief. The House voted 299-120 for the fiscal 2013 spending blueprint that authorizes money for weapons, aircraft, ships and the war in Afghanistan - $8 billion more than Obama and congressional Republicans agreed to last summer in the clamor for fiscal austerity.

AS BOTH feet landed on the plate, his face contorted under the conflict of disparate emotions, like a man who found $100 on the street after hitting a dog with his car. Hunter Pence looked apologetic and happy all at once, held his arms out as he touched home Tuesday as if simultaneously pleading for forgiveness and accepting it. "I think," he said after his 10th-inning home run won a game that his ninth-inning error endangered, "it was just...

In May 1967, in brazen violation of previous truce agreements, Egypt ordered U.N. peacekeepers out of the Sinai, marched 120,000 troops to the Israeli border, blockaded Eilat (Israel's southern outlet to the world's oceans), abruptly signed a military pact with Jordan, and, together with Syria, pledged a war for the final destruction of Israel. May '67 was Israel's most fearful, desperate month. The country was surrounded and alone. Previous great-power guarantees proved worthless.

VIENNA, Austria - Hopes dimmed Tuesday for staging major nuclear talks later this year between Israel and its Muslim rivals, as Iran and Arab countries at a 189-nation conference accused Israel of being the greatest threat to peace in the region and Egypt warned that Arab states might rethink their opposition to atomic arms. Because Israel has not signed the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, it was not present at Tuesday's gathering of treaty members. But the United States defended its ally, warning that singling out Israel for criticism diminished chances of a planned meeting between it and its Muslim neighbors to explore the prospect of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction.

Egypt Islamists name candidate CAIRO - An ultraconservative Islamist group on Saturday put forward a fundamentalist cleric as its candidate in Egypt's forthcoming presidential elections after reports surfaced that a leading Islamist candidate currently in the race could be disqualified. The Gamaa Islamiya, or Islamic Group, said it had selected Safwat Hegazy, a prominent imam who preaches on television and who took part in last year's protests that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

JERUSALEM - Israel's prime minister lambasted German poet and Nobel Prize laureate Guenter Grass on Thursday for saying Israel is a threat to world peace and for calling for international oversight of both Israeli and Iranian nuclear facilities. Grass, 84, published a poem in a German newspaper on Wednesday in which he questioned how Israel could call for ending Iran's nuclear program while holding what is widely believed to be its own atomic arsenal. Grass said he wrote the poem, titled "What Must Be Said," after Berlin sold Israel submarines that could launch nuclear warheads and that could potentially be used in an attack on Iran.

ISTANBUL - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday urged Iran to back up its declaration that Islam bars weapons of mass destruction by agreeing to a plan that would prove it does not intend to develop nuclear arms. Ahead of international talks April 13 in Istanbul on Iran's uranium-enrichment program, Clinton talked strategy with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who visited Tehran last week with other government officials. "They were told that the supreme leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei]

Schools spared The spared Philadelphia schools deserve a round of applause ("8 schools closed, 2 spared," Friday). Reading about E.M. Stanton and Isaac A. Sheppard Schools, it was so obvious that parental involvement is what it is all about. As a former teacher, I am well aware that if parents show their interest and lend support, it is a clear signal to their children that school is important and that they are expected to do well. Sheppard is a jewel that, like the little engine that could, keeps chugging along.

SEOUL, South Korea - President Obama, closing a nuclear security summit Tuesday, sought a thaw in the diplomatic chill with Pakistan, a critical but difficult U.S. partner whose nuclear weapons and historical links to terrorism make its arsenal among the world's most vulnerable. "There have been times - I think we should be frank - in the last several months where those relations have experienced strains," Obama told Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. Their meeting broke a four-month moratorium on direct top-level contacts between the United States and Pakistan.

Why has it taken so long for the world to decide to get rid of our most ghastly invention, one that could obliterate most of the life on the planet with the push of a button? To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, why can't the world agree to abolish these weapons of mass destruction before they abolish us? The scientists who developed the atomic bomb in the 1940s immediately understood the awful consequences of their brain child. When J. Robert Oppenheimer watched the first bomb explode in the desert near Alomogordo, N.M., he has said he thought of a line from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.