This can’t possibly be true:
President Obama has ordered the Pentagon to consider cutting U.S. strategic nuclear forces to as low as 300 deployed warheads—below the number believed to be in China’s arsenal and far fewer than current Russian strategic warhead stocks.
Pentagon and military planners were asked to develop three force levels for the U.S. arsenal of deployed strategic nuclear warheads: a force of 1,100 to 1,000 warheads; a second scenario of between 700 and 800 warheads; and the lowest level of between 300 and 400 warheads.
A congressional official said no president in the past ever told the Pentagon to conduct a review based on specific numbers of warheads.
“In the past, the way it worked was, ‘tell me what the world is like and then tell me what the force should be,’” the official said. “That is not happening in this review.”
Can it?
I mean, it’s one thing to baseline the overall Pentagon budget based on budget-driven numbers whose fiscal rigor begins with “less for defense is always better” rather than on a analytic review of national security requirements – not a good thing, mind – but it’s something else entirely when a community organizer sitting president tells the country’s strategic defense apparatus to build down our nuclear stockpile based on nothing but round numbers even as proliferation grows elsewhere.
I’m hoping that Mr. Gertz is misinformed. Because heretofore I have given the president the benefit of the doubt, operating under the assumption that he is merely in over his head, rather than actively malign.
Update: Blackfive theorizes that the president is trying to earn his Nobel Peace Prize. Or maybe get back to his senior year of college.
Good heavens.
“Fundamental transformation”, I believe that’s what he promised. I never thought I would see anything like this in America.
Should Obama manage to win a second term in office, some of us believe that his greatest transformations are yet to be revealed.
Well, he would have no further requirement to remain popular, other than post-presidential speaking fees, and as he has stated there’s probably a time when people have made enough money. He would then be free to pursue whatever agenda he wished.
The bigger question is if he’ll do this with a House and Senate controlled by the opposition or not. Remember, the first two years Obama was in office the Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate. We were given bailouts, Obamacare, bills that had to pass so we could see what was in them, the government as perhaps the worst venture capitalist known to man, banks that were too big to fail now looming larger in the financial districts…
Ask the typical voter and I doubt they know who controls either the House or Senate now, or did three years ago.
The other question is how much power rests in the Executive office with the various departments in the Federal government. If the President tells the IRS to audit all those claiming over $100K on their taxes and Congress then refuses to allocate funds for the additional employees, the Executive can tell the IRS to re-arrange their budget and concentrate on his order. It would be up to Congress to zero-fund the whole agency, at which point I do believe we would have a SCOTUS case brought up with great urgency.
– Max
Max -”Ask the typical voter and I doubt they know who controls either the House or Senate now, or did three years ago.” Though would probably know in great, boring detail how their favorite sports team/person is doing.
Let them eat cake.
Regaining the Senate and improving our control of the House is probably more important than BHO’s status.
Shouldn’t be a Surprise to anyone. Anyone else remember this speech made back in 2008? Funny how ideology becomes directive… http://youtu.be/dl32Y7wDVDs
This is all going as planned. Commie plan that is.
well, it’s not like he actually likes this country or anything.
pretty much every single thing he’s done has been designed to weaken us, one way or another.
what is really frightening is that there are large numbers of people who support the SCOAMF and will vote to re-elect him.
if he does get re-elected, we will likely wind up in another war, but that one would have very short LOCs.
Key Line: :pretty much every single thing he’s done / or tried to do / has been designed to weaken us, one way or another.”
There a lot of Samual Jacksons out there folks, facts be damned -anyone other than BHO is my mantra, and I will not even need a nose clip.
Ron, I have to agree….Gingrich won’t get the nomination and Santorum will piss off too many women voters….Romney will get through a little beaten up but able to make a case for him as the alternative to OBOT & his Blame the USA first ilk.
We really don’t have many other choices sad to say but anyone is better than the half-wit and his lecturing wife.
OMG – Obama Must Go !!!!
Go to Bing or Google and search for “Santorum” and look at the first or second return. The GLT community, and therefor the left, and therefor the media will not allow him to become POTUS because of his remarks about gay marriage. Not a chance. If he were to somehow get elected he would last. there is no way they would let him. None.
That being said, I’m starting to like the guy despite being more socially liberal than him and maybe a lot of folks here.
That being said, I’m starting to like the guy despite being more socially liberal than him and maybe a lot of folks here.
Daryle: I agree with you on this. Santorum is starting to make me pay attention to the GOP battle for the nomination. And I’m finding that I don’t disagree with him on as much as I thought, given my slightly socially liberal tendencies.
Still – I’ll vote for whoever gets the nomination. Because anyone will be better that Obama.
If the Obamunist is re-elected, I think we may see the country break apart. I expect that this time it will be permanent. I plan to stay in the south, just in case. If you live in loony ball leftist territory, you’d better make arrangements to get out or be ready to suffer teh consequences.
Frankly, I expect the Obummer to win re-election because the electorate is far too degraded to much of anything else. It may be close, but the insane left will rally because to them anything to the right of Karl Marx is to be feared and loathed.
I’m afraid our current present’dent is a SCoaMF.
So it goes…
The left’s central dogma is that our Nukes make the world hate us. If we’d just disarm we’d have peace and love.
Not true of course but the expense makes our whole military an easy target. I wonder how this’ll get past Congress with bomber and missile squadrons in their districts.
There isn’t a cluebat big enough for the man.
“You know, in certain older civilized cultures, when men failed as entirely as you have, they would throw themselves on their swords.”
Shiney!
I got one he can borrow, If he forgot his…
I’m at most a phone call away from an 1863 heavy cavalry sabre, a gladius, a katana, or a claymore.
That part’s covered.
Now everybody wave at the nice Secret Service people stopping by.
I have a plow. I’m willing to beat it into a sword using only a hammer and a coal-fired forge if that would provide the proper imagery for Obama to admit his failures in the manner suggested.
I obviously have absolutely no expectation of ever being called upon to make good on this most generous offer.
– Max
I have a bayonet on the business end of an M1 Garand
and a looonng bayonet on the business end of a Mosin Nagant.
He can pick the political leanings upon that which he throws himself.
It’s an election year. Anything is possible.
Damn straight Lex. Damn straight.
Well, I do not think it will go that far. When not if the
Iranian/Syrian thing lights off, we are going to be scrambling…
Captain,
You way outrank any grade I possessed, and I intend no disrespect. BUT
You have extended a benefit that I cannot fathom. I have always understood the BoD to go to the normative pattern exhibited, not to the exception.
Are you saying that you believe that the majority of his acts and omissions are just incidental and blowback? I hope not, because that would be a dificult level of naivete to reconcile with your exhibited normative discourse.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. Also, in groups, intelligence grows arithmetically while stupidity grows exponentially.
Like all liberals, Obama’s mental map of the world has little congruence with reality. He also has sufficient ego to prevent him adjusting his map when confronted with contradicting evidence. That is enough to account for all of the errors he has made.
if they were errors, which I contest. IMO he’s far smarter than you grant him and did all he did deliberately in order to weaken the USA and strengthen her enemies.
If they were deliberate malicious acts then everyone who supports and defends Obama and his policies (none of which are unique to him) to either be equally malicious or mistaken. The former requires a conspiracy whose scale dwarfs anything proposed in the wildest fever swamps of the internet. If Obama’s supporters are mistaken why can’t the source be in error as well?
He is a Chicago Machine Democrat. malign is his base state.
“…heretofore I have given the president the benefit of the doubt,”
Yeah well, “By their fruits ye shall know them.”
Or in the vernacular if it walks like a duck…
Scarier and scarier..
Why don’t we hear this on the news? Oh, I forgot, the lamestream media has been too busy covering the real serious stuff like a pop artist’s drug death.
Chinese historians will study these events in the coming centuries.
Yes indeed. And they might even celebrate their investment in plutonium rather than terracotta this go round.
Tearing down this nation has been his plan all along.
I would rather have a small nuclear force designed for nuclear retaliation plus asteroid annihilation than grow the debt, cut veteran’s care or lose any more fighter squadrons.
After all, no two nuclear powers have ever gone to war with each other. Nor has a B-2 ever been shot down.
After all, no two nuclear powers have ever gone to war with each other.
Wanna guess how many times we came damn close but for sheer luck and blind stupidity?
Nor has a B-2 ever been shot down.
Nor had an F-117, until one WAS.
I hope you really don’t believe in that jung chi duh go-se dway you just wrote.
I do. Good point on the F-117 but my point still stands.
I wonder how many times did we get close to two nuclear powers going to war…
The sad part is Boner is a pussy.
Nuttin’ about the e=orders, Holder, Janet, all of it!
“. Because heretofore I have given the president the benefit of the doubt, operating under the assumption that he is merely in over his head, rather than actively malign.”
I have never held that delusion.
He stated even before the elections his goal was to destroy the USA, most people thought he wasn’t serious I guess and forgot about it.
If the result is equivalent, the exact cause is irrelevant. The remedial action is the same; give the keys to someone who can actually drive.
Look who his mentors are, Bill Ayers, and Bernadette Dohrn, key members of the Weather Underground, who advocated the overthrow of the US Government, and set off real bombs,and who intended to bomb a Police facility in New York with nail bombs to kill as many as possible. The FBI had an informant who reported that the plan was to bring in the Russians and Chinese to “re-educate” the US populace after the revolution. The question came up about what to do about 25 million or so who could not be re-educated. The answer was that they would have to be “liquidated”, as in murdered.
http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/276377.php
Obama is the real thing, a capital c Communist and capital s Socialist.
On the plus side, with the expansion of the Federal Government under his watch ol’ Presbo could order a pack of Marlboro’s and a case of Budweiser and it would take 9 months to clear all the departments who think they need have a hand in the process. It’s going to take a while to decommission real nukes.
There’s probably a novel in this, come to think of it. A dictator in all but name, let’s say, like a Stalin or Mussolini or Hitler or Hugo Chavez (I’m trying not to pick on one here) controls the reigns of State. But in making the State so large, so involved in everyday life, the State has expanded and the one thing beaurocracies do is generate policies that must be followed and paperwork that must be filled. In the final scene, the last desperate fight against the common threat to the nation, we see the dictator issuing order after order only to receive an e-mail on his Blackberry that a help desk ticket has been filled out and a response will be sent within 24 hours.
– Max
When we read stories of our reluctance to utilize conventional arms, such as infantry calling for artillery or CAS and being denied by higher command. Or an F-18 in afterburner buzzing enemy combatants for fear of causing collateral damage if the aircraft were to drop conventional munitions, it makes me wonder if there is any will at all in civilian gov’t to utilize a nuclear weapon. People pleasing or establishing a legacy seems to be of greater importance.
I have been saying since mid-2008 that he is an anti-American communist. Nothing this administration has done has given me cause to change my mind.
Paul
Maybe the POTUS could get a good price from Iran, North Korea and Somalia for those “useless” nukes so as to cut the 16-trillion dollar deficit he’s created by shelling out big bucks to special interest groups like the UNIONS and GREEN ENERGY companies that go broke and declare bankrupcy?
The fact that he wants to cut the number to 300 is scary enough but what is keeping me awake tonight is another aspect….he’s a community organizing communist who knows nothing about things military. Who told him 300? I mean, he didn’t just pull it out of his ass, right?
The scientist in me says “Put up your hypothesis and list your predictions.” We have a theory on the table that the head of the Executive Branch is actively malign, rather than in over his head.
If the President was over his head, then by simple chance some of his decisions will turn out to be good ones. Based on his track record in office, I can think of no binary decision that has helped the entire country he leads. Every decision has had clear winners, usually a small subset of labor leaders, well-connected leftists and radicals (Soros I’m looking at you) or countries with long established track records of enmity to the US. He would also support our long-standing allies some of the time, if PBHO was in over his head.
If this theory is wrong, a listing of his wise actions, made by mistake of course, would not be so hard to find.
We have a hypothesis that the current President’s actions are actively malign to the US. The past data is clear that he has been. One example is the crippling debt piled on for no net good result. The US spent the equivalent funding of the entire 8 years of Gulf War II money on a “stimulus package” in one year, with no net return on investment .
My predictions if PBHO is reelected are:
1) Confiscation of all TSPs, IRAs, and 401ks. For fairness, and because that’s the last pot of money standing.
Similar to Argentina in 2001.
2) Cancel all waivers of Obamacare to any entity other than unions and Blue State governments.
Trend line continues of waivers granted, and grudging “cancelation” of anti-Catholic requirements
3) Use the power of the Federal Government to punish any red state entity.
This is a continuation of treatment of South Carolina, Arizona, Texas, Kansas, and Louisiana.
4) Find that opposition to the government is sedition, with those individuals being place on the Do Not Fly List with TSA.
Lots of funny memos on vets from Homeland Security that seem detached from reality.
5) Canceling recent approval of new nuclear power plant in GA. Also close coal producing power plants, and send power to blue states.
See 3 above.
6) Treat any real push-back in the form of marches for redress of grievances as treason. PBHO will request the imposition of Martial Law and the cancellation of the 2016 elections.
Like Castro and Chavez. He has been groomed since his teenage years by Communist mentors like Frank Marshall Davis or domestic terrorists like Bill Ayers (who wrote his autobiography Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance and in whose living room PBHO launched his 2008 Presidential bid.
Alternate hypothesis and predictions welcome. And I would like data that I am absolutely incorrect here.
My predictions if PBHO is reelected are:
1) Confiscation of all TSPs, IRAs, and 401ks. For fairness, and because that’s the last pot of money standing.
Similar to Argentina in 2001.
2) Cancel all waivers of Obamacare to any entity other than unions and Blue State governments.
Trend line continues of waivers granted, and grudging “cancelation” of anti-Catholic requirements
3) Use the power of the Federal Government to punish any red state entity.
This is a continuation of treatment of South Carolina, Arizona, Texas, Kansas, and Louisiana.
4) Find that opposition to the government is sedition, with those individuals being place on the Do Not Fly List with TSA.
Lots of funny memos on vets from Homeland Security that seem detached from reality.
5) Canceling recent approval of new nuclear power plant in GA. Also close coal producing power plants, and send power to blue states.
See 3 above.
6) Treat any real push-back in the form of marches for redress of grievances as treason. PBHO will request the imposition of Martial Law and the cancellation of the 2016 elections.
Like Castro and Chavez. He has been groomed since his teenage years by Communist mentors like Frank Marshall Davis or domestic terrorists like Bill Ayers (who wrote his autobiography Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance and in whose living room PBHO launched his 2008 Presidential bid.
Alternate hypothesis and predictions welcome. And I would like data that I am absolutely incorrect here.
It would be impossible to provide data to disprove a speculation. I do recall, when W Bush won re-election in 2004, many people on the other side of the political spectrum making similar predictions about the 2012 elections being suspended and martial law imposed. Um, yeah, that happened. Not.
Dog,
You actually give the base facts for one potential scenario: Dear Leader’s minions float via their Legacy Media lapdogs the proposal to “Federalize” all private retirement plans, ala Argentina. People panic, call all their various brokerages to cash out of them immediately, penalties be damned. Market catastrophically crashes, with hysteria mounting and Lapdogs all screaming that Dear Leader “do something, now!”. Dear Leader, utterly unafraid of his fellow members of the Ruling Class in the Legislative Branch, issues an Executive Order nationalizing all banks, savings and loans and “similar institutions”, in order to “save the economy”. First Five-year Plan is proclaimed within 90 days. Takeover complete.
I’ve stopped laughing quite so much at “Doomsday Preppers”.
“If the President was over his head, then by simple chance some of his decisions will turn out to be good ones.”
I think this premise is slightly flawed. In a complex system the number of harmful actions vastly exceeds the number of good actions. If I were to climb into Lex’s Kfir and start flipping switches odds are nothing would happen. Until I got to the wrong switch, then bad things would happen. There wouldn’t be much good from my actions and a strong probability of harm. That doesn’t mean there was malicious intent (though I consider fiddling around with things you don’t understand malicious in itself).
As for Obama’s successes, I can think of two. Giving the order to kill bin Laden in a raid, and keeping GITMO open. Yes, they’re trivial, but that’s my point.
Thanks, Jeff. I feel safer now. It took him six months and 17 hours to make the OBL decision, if the narrative is to believed. I want to add a third success. He has applied American technology to killing plenty of Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives and managers. Some of the ‘ol American grit evident here.
Yes, this man has got to go next election but, my gut tells me he’s going to get another term/shot at us !
Anyone who had a modicum of common sense knew what he was. And that’s not most of the electorate.
I’m convinced he’s here to destroy our nation, to remake it in the Marxist image that was indoctrinated in his head over 40-plus years of existence. His mother was a typical 60s treasonous radical leftist. His male mentors, taking the place of his lecherous father (feel sorry for him there) were all communists who hated this country. Like Frank Marshall Davis. Like Bill Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist. Like Jeremiah Wright, whose version of Christianity is such a perversion that he will face judgement on a scale I can’t even imagine after he dies.
It’s little wonder that everything in his agenda is either rewarding his contributors (unions, Solyndra, etc.), punishing his enemies through regulations, executive orders or destroying the bedrock foundations of this country. His environmental regulations are sending energy costs soaring, as his rejection of the new pipeline and drilling moratorium. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that the real unemployment rate is probably around 50 percent and that more people are on government assistance than ever before. Ever heard of Cloward-Piven? That’s a goal, friends. Implode the system and restart it in a Marxist direction. He doesn’t care that he’s disarming us. We deserve to be attacked and humbled.
To him, we’re the source of the world’s evils. And with him in office, we’re getting our just desserts.
The sad thing is that the GOP is the party of stupid. I’ve always hated Republicans for their weakness and stupidity. With the economy in ruins, our defenses on the verge of being gutted, you’d think they could make an easy case to send this traitor packing. But you’d thought wrong. If they lose the White House, the coattails of defeat will likely keep control of the Senate in the favor of the Communist Boot-licking Whore Party and possibly flip the House. But I don’t think it matters, because much of Obama’s damage (the contraception mandate) have been via executive orders.
In a second term, I can’t imagine what he’d do, running free with no re-election to worry about. Shoot, I don’t think he’d ever leave office. He’d declare some national emergency, get his fellow travelers to vote him some unconstitutional emergency powers and voila, we’ve got president for life, King Barack. When he remakes the Supreme Court in his sick, godless, leftist image, it’s all over.
At that point, I and my family are headed to New Zealand. Everything that we’ve sacrificed for, everything our families and ancestors built will be torn asunder by a 40-something narcissist with a head full of bad wiring. How did it come to this? The greatest nation in Earth’s history, taking down in 40 years by a bunch of dope-smoking, brain-dead Marxists.
God help us all.
In a second term, I can’t imagine what he’d do, running free with no re-election to worry about. Shoot, I don’t think he’d ever leave office. He’d declare some national emergency, get his fellow travelers to vote him some unconstitutional emergency powers and voila, we’ve got president for life, King Barack. When he remakes the Supreme Court in his sick, godless, leftist image, it’s all over.
GC – I’m sure you are a very nice person, work hard, provide for your family and care for your fellow-man.
That said – I truly and deeply hope that you are profoundly wrong.
I hope I’m not either, but I just see a lot of unsettling signs in his actions and demeanor that lead me to that horrible conclusion. The sad thing is I think our compliant, worshipful media would let him get away with it until it was too late.
And I meant 20 percent unemployment. It’s bad, but not 50 percent bad.
“Benefit of the doubt?” Surely you jest, Lex! A blind man could EASILY see all of this coming–which is why I am on record as frothing at the mouth about my ABSOLUTE loathing for this man even before he was elected. All one had to do is read his writings and listen to his public pronouncements. And you wonder why I have lengthy conversations with Monsieur Barbancourt and think about relocating the Duck-Blind… The man is a committed ideologue of the first order and NO fear is too great or unjustified regards this man. Ed Meese, former Attn Gen under Reagan, has commented that Obama has acquired the functional equivalent of the absolute dictatorial powers of King George III.
God help us all is an understatement..
Go ya one better, Kris, ALL anyone had to do is watch this vid FOUR (4) YEARS AGO @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl32Y7wDVDs
Sorry, meant YOU, Fbl!
I thought of that one, too. I couldn’t remember enough to even begin to search for it. Thanks for finding it!
I remember seeing that in 2008. I just couldn’t believe it and kept waiting for it to get broader coverage. Just another case of the absolute disgrace that is America’s major media…
This can’t possibly be true:
I’m too sleepy/lazy at this hour to find the appropriate links, but this is completely in line with a college article Obama wrote on the anti-nuke movement in the early 80s, so I guessing it’s true.
Okay, that was easier than I thought: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/world/05nuclear.html?pagewanted=all
From the article:
In the depths of the cold war, in 1983, a senior at Columbia University wrote in a campus newsmagazine, Sundial, about the vision of “a nuclear free world.” He railed against discussions of “first- versus second-strike capabilities” that “suit the military-industrial interests” with their “billion-dollar erector sets,” and agitated for the elimination of global arsenals holding tens of thousands of deadly warheads.
Speak loudly and carry a limp stick! It’s the best way to identify yourself as prey.
How does it feel to be so incredibly, monumentally, and naively wrong?
Now what do we do about it?
Subsunk
Maybe, just maybe, this is just a bargaining chip to be given up in exchange for a tax increase on “millionaires and billionaires” so they pay their fair share. Dear god I hope that’s it.
Heh. “Actively malign.” The Good Captain is being polite, and keeping it on a high level.
I woulda said, instead, “Utterly evil!”
Reduce the nuclear stockpile? Easy – - start launching.
Hey, it’s the same level of logic as is trying to spend your way out of a shortfall.
Anyone thinking this is not intentional, and that it has not been his driving philosophy to disarm and weaken America, isn’t paying attention.
He has written so, he has said so, he has acted accordingly.
He could not to any more damage to this nation if he were a paid Soviet agent. Which, if the Soviet Union still existed, he would probably be.
Before everyone goes apoplectic about only 300 warheads, lets look at what it really is – merely a proposal, not a fact. It is only the extreme, one of three different options to be studied.
We now have approximately 1,790 deployed strategic nuclear warheads, projected to be down to 1,566 by 2013.
Compare that to the incredibly expensive and excessive overkill of our 12,000 nuclear warheads of the 1980s – an 87% reduction in warheads without any outcry! Of course the President was different back then. Today it is more about the dissatisfaction if not hatred of our current President, rather than an honest discussion and analysis of our real and balanced needs.
The options now being merely discussed range anywhere from 1,100 to 300 warheads. They will figure out a correct and reasonable number I believe.
Flit, I wish I could take comfort in that thought but given the increase in number of hostile nations with or pursuing nuclear weapons and the suspicion that Obama’s ideal number would be zero, I don’t. Yes, 300 is a lot when you consider how powerful each is but each is susceptible to deterioration and vulnerable to attack. Maybe I’m paranoid but I’d like more just in case. When it comes to my own or the nations safety I am a belts and suspenders kind of guy.
First off, imagine the reaction if Bush had ordered the military to study the feasibility and effects of deporting illegal immigrants. Proposals are important in that they signal the mindset of the proposer.
Secondly, there’s nothing wrong with disarmament. It’s the unilateral part that bug-funking stupid. We are drawing down our stockpiles at the same rate as Russia, which means we maintain parity, a credible second-strike capability, and stability. Also, if we give up our warhead what will we have to offer the Russians and Chinese to get them to give up their warheads?
Given that the entire weapons system effectiveness statistics show that only 70-80% of the weapons will hit their targets and go Boom!, let us suppose we do have ONLY 300 weapons in the inventory? A number of questions remain.
Which weapons system will we use to deliver those warheads in the event of war? Because if only 240 of them are going to go off after delivery, then why do we need more than two Trident submarines and no land based missiles and no air delivered assets? The B-52s go away, leaving the Air Force with 19 B-2s alone. The vast majority of strategic submarines goes away, leaving us with a loss of our entire response capability if we have to tie up ONE of two ships for urgent repairs. And if we use land based missiles, which are currently based in two areas, we go down to one launch area, and you’ve significantly lowered the number of Russian or Chinese nukes required to completely obliterate our nuclear force in a single strike.
Just because some Chair Force Airhead says we only need 300 warheads doesn’t mean there aren’t already far more than 300 targets in Russia alone. How about we plan to strike and completely disable our adversary instead of just hurt him enough to really p*ss him off.
Great plans there, flit. You should run for JCS Chairman with that brainpower.
For the Record: We need 1500 warheads just to allow normal rotation of submarines, missiles and aircraft to cover the minimum number of targets to effectively cripple our adversaries today. 300 warheads means some major targets escape destruction to hurt us again after we’ve shot our entire magazine worth. Failure to keep the minimum means the United States is more and more vulnerable to total nuclear destruction than at any time in our history….
The Stupid shall be punished. And the United States is definitely seeking to wear the dunce cap right now…..
Subsunk
Flit, your assertion of “correct and reasonable” to anything this administration does or says about Defense shows you are waaaaaaaayyyy out of touch. Willfully blind.
Um, Flit? Your argument boils down to, “Nobody complained when we cut down from excessive force levels to reasonable ones, yet you’re complaining when we cut from reasonable force levels to inadequate ones! You must hate the President/Freedom!”
Bit of a fallacy there.
+1
And another +1
Manchurian Obama was a secret, except in Dreams of my (absent) Father, but his lifelong friends and associates and marxist CZARS are fully published. As is leftist Free Press running around in the FCC. Soros books and declarations, Center For American Progress/destruction statements and members of the Apollo Alliance, International Crisis Management R2P and such have not been shy. Reduced American economy, military and Sovereignty is the goal. International redistribution of GDP without firing a shot. Public info does nor require a complex process to uncover, except in denial.
Questions of motivation and competence aside, this is singularly dangerous folly.
In order to be deterrent, a nuclear capability must be overwhelming and essentially invulnerable.
Of course, this all may be moot the day after the next election. Or not.
GP – I seriously doubt the number will end up at a only 300. My guess would be closer to 1,000 nuclear warheads.
Remember, unless you want to annihilate hundreds of millions of civilians and poison a large part of the world with a nuclear winter, you don’t really need that many warheads or delivery platforms. WWII was ended with two little ones from only two aircraft.
Regardless, their real utility is deterrence. Even only one 50 megaton Tsar Bomba nearly fills that bill, now doesn’t it?
You scare me.
Can you tell me how to get to that fantasy world you live in? Because it in no way resembles reality.
“unless you want to annihilate hundreds of millions of civilians and poison a large part of the world with a nuclear winter…”
You really don’t know much about the geopolitics of the last 60 years, do you? Annihilating hundreds of millions of civilians is entire point of MAD. That’s why it WORKS. It’s like you’re arguing for eliminating bullets from the arsenal because we don’t want the military to kill anyone.
Just stop, you’re embarrassing yourself. Admit that this is a terrible, terrible idea and Obama showed an incredible lapse of judgment by letting this get out of the late-night bull session stage. I knew you’d show up on this thread spinning faster than a new pulsar, but at this point it’s like beating up on a kid with cerebral palsy.
“WWII was ended with two little ones from only two aircraft. ”
That’s because No One else had them.
“Even only one 50 megaton Tsar Bomba nearly fills that bill, now doesn’t it?”
Er, no.
I personally believe the Democrat leadership is actively engaged in the destruction of this country through bankruptcy, military draw downs and demoralization. Absolutely believe it.
I don’t cast obama in a lead position here either, more puppet, but I do believe he is enjoying this.
Yup. This thread is too scary for me. People who need to read it won’t. Don’t fool your self into thinking that there is no undercurrent of control from invisible folks we can find out about, but again, won’t. Their essays are all over the place. To connect the dots, however, is conspiratorial. We should all buy stock in Reynolds Wrap IMHO.
Well, yeah. As I have mentioned here many times, one of the many reasons I drink too much is that I wish to be numb when they come for me, numb enough not to care what happens to me, and numb enough to hold a steady sight picture.
PS – We surely have field tactical nukes also which are deployed. Of the 300, how many of those would be these tactical nukes which all of the usual suspect Mad Men would probably chuckle at like the N Korean on that MASH episode when Frank Burns brought the little 25 cal to a meet to exchange wounded.
Nope. There are ZERO, count them, NONE, tactical nukes in inventory today. They were removed by George H W Bush in 1990 or so……. and I’m pretty sure their pits have been decommissioned too.
Subsunk
Thanks for the clarify!
The fundamental problem with this issue is that for most people the idea of rationally discussing nuclear weapons is madness in their eyes….as a former boomer sub guy I have learned that not everyone has the professional interest in this topic that I have. Most people quickly change the subject once they realize that you are not kidding and that you might have some knowledge in this particular area…
And for the people that are willing to discuss this rationally, such a proposal is lunacy. We have a Quadrennial Defense Review exactly for this purpose – to discuss and amend our strategic nuclear policy/posture. Why was this not brought up at the last one?
Game theory strongly suggests that as the number of nukes goes down the risk of nuclear war actually goes up – people start thinking that with fewer nukes on the board, there is more of a chance to survive a full out nuclear exchange. Simple math – you did not hear such silliness when there were 12,000 nukes in the 80′s but if we only have 300 then someone is going to calculate that they just might survive the nuclear retaliation (assuming we launch at all).
The joker in the deck for everyone is that no one wants to be the first guy to launch a nuclear weapon after 70 odd years of nuke-free existence….but once that damn breaks all bets are off as far as I am concerned.
As someone who suffers from “engineer’s disease”, I wonder how many of those things will actually work if called upon. We haven’t done any testing in a long time.
Also, as somebody mentioned on another blog, nobody has ever tested an ICBM on an actual over-the-Pole trajectory, for obvious reasons.
Just how accurate are those rockets, really?
I mind the Great Torpedo Scandal of 1942-3.
An old nuke guy once suggested that we set off a nuke above ground once every generation or so, and require politicians to stand right close to it, to remind them what those things can do. “Feel the heat”, I believe he wrote.
Also, we can see if the thing still works.
If this downsizing comes to pass, Russia will follow suit. (“We have as many nuclear weapons as America!” is the only thing that matters.) French and British arsenals are already shrinking. The Indian arsenal is small. Pakistan is a joke (I suspect they mostly have fizzers). Ditto DPRK. Given total American conventional superiority, what’s not to like? China is the only wildcard.
“China is the only wildcard.”
Pretty big wildcard there, considering China’s historical views on armed conflict, wouldn’t you say?
And I think you forgot about that irate ex-soccer-player over in East Crazystan.
President Muslimarx is destroying America, to put it simply.
A second term might suffice.
Lex, that’d be freshman year. I remember having these conversations in the dorm.