[Mb-civic] Bush and the Bomb

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

I reckon it's up to the citizens of this world to demand genuine nuclear 
disarmament cause our leaders are dragging on us on a suicide path....

Bush and the Bomb
    By Marjorie Cohn
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective
    Wednesday 10 August 2005
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/081005Y.shtml

    The 1945 nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in the
deaths of more than 200,000 people, mostly civilians. Many tens of
thousands more have been afflicted with radiation-induced cancers,
immunologic disorders, birth defects, and lasting psychological trauma.

    For years, the United States government engaged in a massive cover-up
    of
the devastation wreaked by its use of the atom bomb in Japan. (See
Hiroshima Cover-Up Exposed.) The claim has persisted that the use of the
bomb ended the war and saved lives. Yet, historians have now put the lie
to the assertion that the Japanese would not have surrendered but for the
nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (See Hiroshima after Sixty
Years: The Debate Continues.)

    The United States dropped the A-bomb to test it on live targets, and
    to
demonstrate the overwhelming superiority of America. Thus, under the
definition set by the World Court, these weapons are incapable of
distinguishing between civilian and military targets, and are therefore
prohibited.

    General Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "It wasn't necessary to hit them
    with
that awful thing." General Curtis LeMay declared that the atomic bomb had
nothing to do with Japan's surrender. And Admiral William D. Leahy stated
angrily that the "use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki
was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were
already defeated and ready to surrender ... in being the first to use it,
we ... adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark
Ages."

    The Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal defines ill-treatment of a
civilian population as a war crime, and inhumane acts committed against a
civilian population as crimes against humanity.

    The US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes and
crimes against humanity. Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara 
admitted
in the film Fog of War that if we had lost the war, he and LeMay would
have been war criminals. Since only the vanquished Nazis and Japanese were
tried and punished, the US officials who ordered these crimes were never
brought to justice.

    After World War II, the new enemy of the United States became the
    Soviet
Union, and there ensued a nuclear arms race unprecedented in human
history.

    Concern about the possibility of another, more devastating Hiroshima
    led
to the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. When the United States
ratified this treaty, it became part of the supreme law of the land under
the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. The treaty commits the countries
that possess nuclear weapons (Britain, China, France, Russia and the US)
to negotiate their elimination. By ratifying this treaty, the US pledged
it would not use nuclear weapons against countries that did not possess
nuclear weapons.

    The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty was concluded between the
    United
States and the Soviet Union in 1972. This treaty was supposed to maintain
the credibility of retaliatory deterrence based on the threat of a
successful second strike, known as the policy of Mutually Assured
Destruction (MAD). It also put limits on future technological development
in order to preserve the "strategic balance" between the US and the USSR.

    In 1995, a commitment was made to complete negotiations on the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by 1996. It bans all nuclear explosions, for
any purpose, warlike or peaceful.

    In 1996, in response to a request by the United Nations General
Assembly, the International Court of Justice (the World Court) issued an
advisory opinion on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons.

    The World Court said that under humanitarian law, countries must
    "never
use weapons that are incapable of distinguishing between civilian and
military targets." It held that the threat or use of nuclear weapons was
"generally" contrary to international law. Although the divided Court was
unable to reach a definitive conclusion regarding threat or use in extreme
circumstances of self-defense where the survival of a nation was at stake,
the overall thrust of the decision was toward categorical illegality. It
strongly implied that the doctrine of deterrence is illegal. The Court
said that the radioactive effects of nuclear explosions cannot be
contained in space and time. Thus, the use of nuclear weapons can never
conform to the requirements of the law.

    The World Court also held, unanimously, that Article VI of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty obligates all countries to "bring to a conclusion
negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects."

    So what has the United States done to fulfill its obligations under
    this
treaty?

    In 1999, the US Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

    The United States has tried to negotiate a more flexible nuclear
doctrine that would include missile defenses far beyond the very limited
defenses allowed by the ABM Treaty. But Bush didn't like the treaty at
all.

    Thus, in December 2001, the United States notified Russia of its
    intent
to withdraw from the ABM Treaty in 6 months, based on a treaty provision
that permitted withdrawal if there existed extraordinary events
jeopardizing the withdrawing country's supreme interests.

    The US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty is the first formal unilateral
withdrawal of a major power from a nuclear arms control treaty once it has
taken effect. It also spurred Russia to announce its withdrawal from its
commitments under the START II arms reduction treaty.

    And the US withdrawal jeopardizes the most important treaty that aims
    to
prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials, the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    In 2002, the Department of Defense presented the Nuclear Posture
    Review
to Congress, which actually expands the range of circumstances in which
the US could use nuclear weapons. This document explicitly allows the
option of using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear nations. It permits
pre-emptive attacks against biological and chemical weapons capabilities,
and in response to "surprising military developments." It provides for the
development of nuclear warheads, including earth penetrators.

    Alarmingly, classified portions of the document obtained by the Los
Angeles Times and the New York Times call for contingency planning for the
use of nuclear weapons against Russia, China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran,
Syria and Libya.

    The Nuclear Posture Review sets forth policies that explicitly violate
the legal obligations the US undertook when it ratified the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty - the prohibition on the use of nuclear weapons
against non-nuclear countries, and the obligation to negotiate the
cessation of the arms race at an early date.

    When the Nuclear Posture Review was presented in 2002, the New York
Times said: "Where the Pentagon review goes very wrong is in lowering the
threshold for using nuclear weapons and in undermining the effectiveness
of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ... Nuclear weapons are not just
another part of the military arsenal. They are different, and lowering the
threshold for their use is reckless folly."

    Yet today the United States stands ready to rapidly launch 2,000
strategic warheads with land- and submarine-based missiles. Each warhead
would inflict vast heat, blast and radiation 7 to 30 times that of the
Hiroshima bomb.

    Although less spectacular and obvious than a mushroom cloud, the Bush
administration has used nuclear weapons - depleted uranium warheads - in
Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Reporters from the Christian Science
Monitor have measured radiation levels in downtown Baghdad that are 1,000
to 1,900 times higher than normal background radiation levels.

    The US Nuclear Defense Agency condemned depleted uranium weapons as 
a
"serious health threat." Whipped up by sandstorms and carried by trade
winds, they can cause cancer, leukemia, brain damage, kidney failure and
extreme birth defects for 4,500,000,000 years (See Horror of USA's
Depleted Uranium in Iraq Threatens World.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/051105K.shtml)
    The United States is committing ongoing crimes against humanity by its
use of depleted uranium.

    The effects of the strategic warheads and depleted uranium "cannot be
contained in space or time ... would affect health, agriculture, natural
resources and demography over a very wide area ... and would be a serious
danger to future generations." Thus, under the definition set by the World
Court, these weapons are incapable of distinguishing between civilian and
military targets.

    By using nuclear weapons against Japan, the United States became a
dangerous role model. The Bush administration persists in the use of
depleted uranium, and it has announced its intention to enlarge the use of
the extraordinary strategic warheads.

    Bush targets countries like North Korea and Iran that may seek to
develop their nuclear capabilities. Yet all the while, Bush and his
administration continue to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity
in Iraq and threaten to commit even greater crimes in the future with
their horrific new weapons.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
    Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is a
    professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of 
the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive
committee of the American Association of Jurists.


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