How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Li'l George's New Suitcase Nukes And Stuff

Whatever happened to the good guys? You know, the Americans in white hats who were going to eliminate war, starvation, poverty and disease from the world and make America a beacon of freedom?

The Bush administration's stubborn determination to prevail, whatever the costs, is evident not only in its reckless military venture in Iraq, but in its single-minded pursuit of new nuclear weapons.

The U.S. government, of course, is supposed to be divesting itself of its nuclear weapons under the provisions of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which it signed in 1968. As recently as the NPT review conference of 2000, the U.S. government joined other signers of the NPT in promising an "unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals."

Furthermore, when the Bush administration ignored these commitments and pressed Congress hard for funding to build new nuclear weapons—nuclear "bunker busters" and "mini-nukes"—Congress dug in and rejected them as totally unnecessary. With some 10,000 nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal, members of Congress, both Democrats and some Republicans, seemed to feel that enough was enough.

The History News Network has the complete story.

A footnote. According to travelers coming through the Bonneville Salt Flats, Nevada area, residents there say they've started noticing frequent, strong earth tremors coming from the highly restricted military reservation to the south. Most assume the tremors are caused by underground tests of extremely high explosives, which may or may not be nuclear tests.