Ragnarok a la carte

Since Dear Leader is shaking his Nukular MoJo at Iran, Syria, and North Korea this week, and to a lesser extent at China, Russia, and the European Union (well, France, anyway), and since RDF got me going over at Corrente with a post about Survivable Nuclear War, it's probably a good time to look at this issue.

Who in their right mind would count on surviving a nuclear exchange?

First: a list of nuclear weapons websites for your intellectual stimulation. Note that's a pro-Wrepublican paranoia site: with links to get you scared about Saddam and the Bomb.

That ought to put your fears about Iran in context right away.

A bit more rational source and compilation of policy informations may be found here at the Natural Resources Defense Council site.

But what about the other guys? And what about Dear Leader's puffy chest in Europe this week, alternately smirking and browbeating a lot of Foreigners who all speak English better than he does?

The root of Bu$hCo's love of packin' nukes comes from Rumsfeld's long standing conviction that really, for all you folks out there, nuclear war isn't so bad. He's been convinced it's quite survivable since the Days of the Gipper.

Rumsfeld and Cheney were principal actors in one of the most highly classified programs of the Reagan Administration. Under it U.S. officials furtively carried out detailed planning exercises for keeping the federal government running during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The program called for setting aside the legal rules for presidential succession in some circumstances, in favor of a secret procedure for putting in place a new "President" and his staff. The idea was to concentrate on speed, to preserve "continuity of government," and to avoid cumbersome procedures; the speaker of the House, the president pro tempore of the Senate, and the rest of Congress would play a greatly diminished role.

In 2002 Rumsfeld submitted a (mostly) Classified Nuclear Posture Review to Congress. Bits and pieces of it have been declassfied- mostly embers to stoke the fires of the American Enterprise Institute and other bastions of Imperial Philosophy. But an outsider can pick out the interesting tidbits that serve as rationale to those who daily dream of the unthinkable:

Early on, we recognized that the new security environment demanded that the Department go beyond the Congressional mandate in developing a strategic posture for the 21st century. President Bush had already directed the Defense Department to transform America's military and prepare it for the new, unpredictable world in which we will be living. ...

Nuclear weapons … provide credible military options to deter a wide range of threats. … Greater flexibility is needed with respect to nuclear forces and planning than was the case during the Cold War. … Nuclear-attack options that vary in scale, scope and purpose will complement other military capabilities.

You know. Suitcase nukes. Burrowing nukes. Neutron bombs. Nice low yield weapons that the boys at General Dynamics and Raytheon and General Electric can mass produce. Nuclear hand grenades, no doubt. Or depleted uranium ones, anyway- but that's a subject for another post.

All these things become thinkable if you're convinced God is on your side, and the Apocalypse has to follow the Game Plan.