Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Senate backs Bush on more Nuclear weapons
Why do we need more Nukes????
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The United States Senate on Tuesday backed the Bush administration's plan to study a new generation of low-yield and earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, rejecting concerns that the research could spur an arms race.
Voting 55-42, the Senate defeated an amendment pushed by Democrats to slash US$36.6 million ($59.4 million) to study so-called bunker-busting nuclear weapons that would be used to destroy underground facilities as well as smaller nuclear arms with half the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The administration has said it has no plans to build such weapons, but wants to keep the door open to their development to deal with emerging threats. It successfully pushed Congress last year to repeal a 10-year-old ban on researching low-yield weapons of less than 5 kilotons.
Democrats said just considering the new weapons takes nuclear warfare out of the realm of the unthinkable and encourages adversaries of the United States to develop such weapons.
"The spectre of nuclear war looms even larger with the ominous statements of senior officials in the Bush administration that they in fact consider these new weapons more 'useable',' said Senator Edward Kennedy.
The Massachusetts Democrat said the smaller weapons still would kill or injure hundreds of thousands of people and leave vast areas uninhabitable for years to come.
But Republican Senator Wayne Allard of Colorado said it would be irresponsible "for us to bury our head in the sand" and not consider these weapons to confront terrorism and threats from rogue nations.
The vote came as the Senate debated a bill to authorise US$422 billion in defence programmes for next year and an additional US$25 billion to fund operations in Iraq.
The version of the bill the House of Representatives passed last month contained the weapons research money. But lawmakers will continue to tangle over the issue in bills they will consider later this summer to fund nuclear weapons programmes.
Why do we need more Nukes????
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