Thoughts on Current Nuclear arms issues

Here are some thoughts that have come to me while listening to different aspects of the recent debates on nuclear proliferation and the reduction of nuclear weapons, possibly to zero.

My bet is that Iran is trying to [at least] reach the point that they could quickly construct an A bomb. Just because people whose foreign policy I despise say that that is the case does not make it false, but I also believe that an attack on Iran to destroy their enrichment facilities is a very bad and very wrong idea.

Iran claims they want processed uranium as fuel and that is very likely true but unlikely the whole truth.

If I ruled Iran and the geopolitical situation was as it is, I would also want the bomb. I bet you would too.

One of the threats to Iran is the cut-off of refined petroleum products. Why are they not building refineries? Maybe they are but I haven't heard anything about it. Would they be too easy a target because they could not be built in underground hardened bunkers? Do the Iranians feel that a defensive bomb is a higher first priority when they are being threatened with a cut off of the vital energy source they now depend on.

If treaties were reached that promised the destruction of all A bombs:

Russia would secretly keep some, China would secretly keep some, Israel would secretly keep some, and so would every other country that has them. The United States would definitely keep some.

As for reductions, most of the countries in the A club have so many weapons that they can deactivate 95% of them and have enough left over to likely destroy life as we know it on the entire planet and so the offer to give up ten thousand and keep only a hundred or so is a bargaining chip that would have no value if offered to me as an inducement to not get my own.

Getting the Senate to agree to a treaty giving up all A-bombs would be much harder than passing meaningful health care reform. Very much harder. A higher percentage of people would be against it to start with and by the time the fear mongers and war mongers and corporate interests held stage for a while a much higher percentage would be against it. Some people who are reasonable and wish for a safer, saner world would also think that a total ban would be un-verifiable, quickly reversible, and isn't a reality based and realistically possible way to achieve one.

If America's armed forces were actually of a completely defensive nature and not designed, and intended, to be able to bend any other country to our will, the retention of a few nukes might actually make sense by making such a defensive position possible.

If all nukes were destroyed, all fissionable material accounted for and somehow made unavailable to all entities for the quick assembly of weapons, if that is even remotely possible, and if the powers that be in the world believed it had happened, full scale conventional war between major countries might become more likely. Also,regional domination by major countries of weaker or smaller countries just by the threat of war would be more likely and more common.

The money saved by scaling back our military and using that money to invest in an honest full blown effort to reach energy independence would greatly increase our national security beyond anything we can expect by continuing on our present course of having a military capable of "protecting our vital national interests". That phrase is almost totally a reference to maintaining access to foreign oil.

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