US Nuclear Hypocrisy and Iran

FRIDA BERRIGAN

The Bush administration is very focused these days on Iran's nuclear program.


The new round of hand-wringing and saber-rattling about Iran's nascent but worrisome nuclear program comes just a few weeks after the Bush administration announced its new budget, which included billions for nuclear weapons development. The Department of Energy's "weapons activities" budget request totals $6.4 billion, a drop in the bucket compared to the Pentagon's $481.4 billion proposed budget. But the budget for new nukes is large and growing -- even in comparison to Cold War figures.

Key to revitalizing nuclear weapons is Complex 2030, the NNSA'a "infrastructure planning scenario for a nuclear weapons complex able to meet the threats of the 21st century." It is a costly, illegal, and dangerous program aimed at rebuilding the 50-year-old nuclear facilities where the weapons are both assembled and disassembled...
See full article @ Counterpunch

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib

ICH
"Ghosts of Abu Ghraib," a new HBO documentary produced and directed by Rory Kennedy, daringly approaches a scandal that hardly anyone wants to see reexamined -- least of all, one can safely assume, the Bush administration and the Pentagon.

The reason is not just that what happened at Abu Ghraib is, to understate in the extreme, unpleasant. The documentary says it's also because this breakdown was not so much nervous as inevitable -- and not so spontaneous, having been sanctioned by the top brass, including former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
too see videos go @ ICH

Military strikes against Iran will simply not work

Military strikes could speed Iran's development of nuclear weapons, warns new report.

Military strikes, instead of setting back Iran's nuclear program, could actually speed up their production of a nuclear weapon, according to a new report written by one of the UK's leading nuclear scientists published today (Monday).

The report shows that following an armed attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, Iran could change the nature of its program to assemble a small number of devices relatively quickly.

The report is written by Dr. Frank Barnaby, who worked as a weapons scientist at the headquarters of the UK's Atomic Weapons Establishment (Aldermaston) during the development of Britain's own nuclear weapons, and is published by Oxford Research Group, one of the UK's leading global security think tanks.

"If Iran is moving towards a nuclear weapons capacity it is doing so relatively slowly, most estimates put it at least five years away. However attacking Iran - far from setting back their progress towards a bomb - would almost certainly lead to a fast-track program to develop a small number of nuclear devices as quickly as possible. It would be a bit like deciding to build a car from spare parts instead of building the entire car factory. Put simply, military attacks could speed Iran's progress to a nuclear bomb," said the report's author Dr Barnaby.

Commenting on the launch of the report, Dr. John Sloboda, Executive Director of Oxford Research Group, said: "This report doesn't get into the rights and wrongs of military strikes on Iran - it asks whether they will achieve their objectives of destroying or setting back Iran's nuclear program. The conclusions should be food for thought for even the most hawkish: military strikes against Iran will simply not work. Indeed they could even bring a nuclear-armed Iran closer."

See the full report@ Oxford Research Group