The Xsociate Files

I heard about this story on NPR this morning as I was driving home from work. Sometimes you have to question whether the current administration really wants to start a nuclear war.

From Reuters:

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Sunday warned North Korea may pose a threat as a weapons seller to terrorists and that America would consider taking the nuclear warheads off intercontinental ballistic missiles so they could be used against terrorists....

The defense secretary also met with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Sunday to discuss missile defense and cooperation on defense technologies, among other things.

Rumsfeld, after that closed-door meeting, said the Pentagon was considering a plan to replace the nuclear warheads on some intercontinental ballistic missiles with conventional weapons, a move that would make the missiles less lethal and therefore more conceivable for politicians to use in preemptive strikes against terrorist groups.

The re-tipped missiles would offer the ability to accurately and quickly target such groups as the threat they pose grows due to their acquisition of weapons of mass destruction and other lethal weapons from proliferators, Rumsfeld said.

"We think that it's conceivable that five, 10 years from now there could be a target because of proliferation ... that would be able to be hit or deterred as the case may be by a conventional ICBM," Rumsfeld said.

Obviously the Russians aren't too keen on the idea. I think this might have something to do with the fact that unless they get advance notice, it's kinda hard to tell whether the missile that was just launched was of the conventional or nuclear variety. And if the trajectory happens to have it coming awfully close to Russian soil, well the potential for MAD to become a reality is greatly increased.

(h/t Kvatch)

Posted by The Xsociate on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 | Permalink