Only one use -- to annihilate entire populations

[drafdog]

Remarkable faith?? I’m not sure what you mean. All I know is that at the height of the cold war I was never concerned that the Soviets would use nuclear weapons on the US. They were buying too much wheat from us. That argued a need for US agricultural land which would be destroyed by general use of nuclear weapons. The same argument holds true today. We don’t have to worry about others attacking us as long as they need our agricultural products. The Chinese for example are great consumers of our produce.

Matthew

 

[bengal_fan]

Jesus and the earliest church didn’t need missiles to overcome the most oppressive government of all time. they did it through peace, love, serving, and a willingess to sacrifice themselves as opposed to sacrificing their enemies for the sake of the “greater good”.

 

[bengal_fan]

In an ideal world…but not in the one we live in.

as Christians we are called to be instruments of transformation not subjugation. the only way to truly transform the world is through the methods employed by Jesus and the first 3 centuries of His followers.

 

[system]

Seeing some of the history being laid out here is fascinating. As I kid I remember the protestors, including the Berrigan brothers, at the GE Reentry division throwing lambs blood on GE signs.
(King of Prussia, PA)

This was only a few miles from my house…As I kid, I just assumed they were just making reentry vehicles for my astronaut heroes. I later learned they had other projects and other uses!

But I would like to ask a question. After reading Al’s story about drilling a hole and using a small “backpack nuke” I began to remember claims by our enemies that we were actually using small nukes in Gulf wars 1 & 2. That things like our “bunker busters” or other heavy duty items were in reality, micro-nukes.

I just blew this off as exaggeration and propaganda. But after reading some of what I read here, it seems quite possible. Any thoughts on that?

 

[Al_Masetti]

Seeing some of the history being laid out here is fascinating. As I kid I remember the protestors, including the Berrigan brothers, at the GE Reentry division throwing lambs blood on GE signs.
(King of Prussia, PA)

This was only a few miles from my house…As I kid, I just assumed they were just making reentry vehicles for my astronaut heroes. I later learned they had other projects and other uses!

But I would like to ask a question. After reading Al’s story about drilling a hole and using a small “backpack nuke” I began to remember claims by our enemies that we were actually using small nukes in Gulf wars 1 & 2. That things like our “bunker busters” or other heavy duty items were in reality, micro-nukes.

I just blew this off as exaggeration and propaganda. But after reading some of what I read here, it seems quite possible. Any thoughts on that?

Highly unlikely.

Several reasons:

1. Any use of nukes would make the United States look bad. The MainStream Media is just looking for excuses to attack the United States. So if any nukes were used, the U.S. would be lambasted.
2. It is impossible to keep a secret where anything nuclear is concerned. The MSM makes stuff up all the time, just to make things look worse than they really are. Do you recall the enormous controversy over the use of tank artillery shells that use depleted uranium? DU slugs are denser than lead and are excellent to knocking out other armored vehicles. A friend of mine said he had read in the NY Times that we were actually using … not depleted uranium … but plutonium. I said that plutonium was WAY too expensive, but he insisted. So, folks make stuff up.
3. In the interest of making the U.S. look bad, the media (and some bureaucrats … read Timmerman’s book … “Shadow Warriors” … www.kentimmerman.com ] ) have refused to examine WMD storage locations. They do not want to acknowledge that there were WMD’s in Iraq and will do anything to deny their existence.

There is another fellow making that claim … Dave Gaubatz.
Here is his Web site.

davegaubatz.com/

1. The use of back pack nukes was proposed as a device in case the Soviets launched a tank attack through the Fulda Gap in Germany and did a massive invasion of Europe. We would use them to crater choke points. Absent an all out nuclear war or some similar provocation, it is unlikely the U.S. would use nukes in some smaller conflagration.

So, seriously, check out Timmerman and Gaubatz.

Also, to get some idea of the scale of the kind of Soviet tank battles we were concerned about in the event of a war in Europe requiring nukes, read “No Simple Victory” by Norman Davies. It turns out that the Soviets were used to tank battles involving millions of men. For example, Davies makes the point that the top ten largest tanks battles by the Soviets in the war in Europe were so large, that Normandy (which we think of as huge) would not even make the top ten list.

amazon.com/No-Simple-Victory-Europe-1939-1945/dp/0670018325/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205068459&sr=1-1

So the U.S. was worried about defending against an attack by the Soviets on that scale. And for that we would have needed nukes. That’s why we had built up such a huge military presence in Europe after WWII. And there was precedent to worry … think about the blockade of Berlin by the Soviets that led to the Berlin Airlift. Think of the Berlin Wall and all the chaos that produced. We just had to be ready in case the Soviets tried something massive. Without nukes we could not have stopped them.