Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, Nato told. Target Afghanistan, NOT Iran.

what the fuck is wrong with these people?

Do not be fooled with all this BS talk, no one will nuke anyone. It’s just a scare tactic. Russia is doing the same thing, and China, and North Korea. Bullies barking at each other at school. But not a real fight!

Dvorak sez – “What is not discussed is the fact that dropping one of these devices anywhere will result in the collapse of the world’s financial markets.”

I’m pretty sure facts are testable things, what you have here is your belief which is not testable. You believe that nukes in Afghanistan will collapse the world market’s – Markets would probably not give a whiff. Really. Folks are cold that way. But it’s nice to see that the Church of No Nukes still has it’s faithful cheerleaders. You go Dvorak.

Lovely! Fireworks! On a desert! I hope they put it live on TV! Otherwise nobody will notice…

Seriously, what *exactly* would you target in Afghanistan? Or do you target the entire country? How many nukes for that? 10? 20? 100?

To use one against a Middle East country would only serve to unite every Middle Eastern country hostile to the West, and maybe start WWIII… Which may kill several million, and thus reduce the number of unemployed people in the West…

Since 9/11 I feel like I ended up in some parallel universe akin to a bad sci-fi movie. A really bad one…

Yeah, well, it might come down to a nuke going off somewhere, and NIMBY for sure. I hope it does not come to it.

The economy would probably have a small blip, but there would not be any long term effects unless the economy was too close to the edge to start with, and it might be.

Clinton’s “Top Soldier” is what I think of as a “brittle” leader. He did not have the flexibility to handle stuff happenning that he did not like, and he nearly set off a shooting war with Russia back in the Balkans when they landed a plane at an airport against his orders. Clinton should have canned his ass.

that seems to be a general thought for US leaders: we’re in deep shit, let’s use nukes.

Deep shit can be anthing from Afghanistan to a planetoid on collision course. No matter, if things get bad, nukes are gonna help us out, right?

I say there’s a lot of potential suicide bombers in Washington.

pj

Pre-emptive means unprovoked, based on intelligence gathered by the same patriots who planned the war in Iraq. A nuke’s only value is as a deterrent, when used they are indiscriminate and offer no strategic advantage.

I don’t see the problem here. Smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.

Just send a copy of “The Day After” to these planners. Word was when Regan saw it, he was so disturbed by it, that he started increased nuclear talks with the Soviet Union. I know when I first saw it, it scared the hell out of me.

1. god. Most of the “manifesto’s” writers served under liberal or socialist administrations including:

“US’s top soldier under Bill Clinton”

Social-Democrat/Liberal Dutch government’s Chief of Staff

Socialist François Mitterrand’s Military Chief of Staff

RBG

Expect the price of opium to skyrocket

18, only Democrats can get credit for reducing the chances of a nuclear war–Reagan only made the world more dangerous.

I hope your kidding. Here is a quote from Wikipedia on the matter

Reagan wrote in his diary that the film “left me greatly depressed.” and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a “nuclear war” [1] In 1987 during the era of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika reforms, the film was shown on Soviet television. Upon signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty at Reykjavik with Gorbachev, Meyer received a telegram from the Reagan Administration that said, ‘Don’t think your movie didn’t have any part of this, because it did.

During the cold war, NATO had a well-known policy that it would NOT rule out the use of nuclear weapons in response to a purely conventional war – the idea was that since the Soviets had significantly more conventional weapons (i.e. tanks) than western Europe was capable of defending against, then using nuclear weapons must remain an option.

The West also had a policy known as mutually assured destruction (MAD) – which was that the response to an attack on the west with nuclear weapons would result in a massive, overwhelming counter-attack, inevitably leading to the total destruction of all sides.

The purpose of both policies was to deter the idea of any attack.

It seemed to work – in the sense that the proxy wars between the West and the Soviets remained limited to low-level conflicts using conventional weapons.

Against the “new” threat of religious extremists potentially armed with nuclear weapons, we need a similar policy. But the idea of destroying the world in a nuclear war seems to be attractive to the religious extremists. So, instead, the policy needs to be aimed at the “governments” which are supposed to limit the violent aims of their citizens.

This means the Saudis, Afganistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, etc need to realize that if they cannot prevent the extremists within their population from attacking the West, they will face total destruction.

awesome logic, lets prevent someone else from starting a nuclear war by starting it before them.

#26, Chuck, the people in the “Arabic” countries in the Middle East and the Holy Land have a culture based on bargaining in the market square. There is no “truth in advertising” They lie, brag, slander, bluster, etc as part of the bargaining process, and this permeates the entire culture.

It carries over into politics, and international politics, everywhere.

Consider how they refused to believe the Taliban actually was going to try to enforce strict Sharia law, until the Taliban moved in and started beating up people for smoking cigarettes, wearing the wrong kind of pants, trimming their beards, etc. The locals are so used to everyone lying that they just cannot believe the plain truth unless they see it with their own eyes. They are not going to believe that they are going to get blown up until the blast wave knocks them on their butts.

Actually, those “Arabs” remind me of the lefties. They believe what they feel like believing, until reality smacks them, and then they start screaming about insensitivity, Bushitler, etc.

I’m with #6. How would dropping a nuke on Afghanistan cause a collapse of the financial markets?

#18, Just send a copy of “The Day After” to these planners. Word was when Regan saw it, he was so disturbed by it, that he started increased nuclear talks with the Soviet Union. I know when I first saw it, it scared the hell out of me.

It’s NATO we’re dealing with, they’re like the UN but without the whimsy. I’d just have them watch Dr. Strangelove, at least it might make them laugh.

#33
The financial markets fluctuated after the Iraq invasion because Iraq has oil. Thus, there was fear that the supply to the world markets would drop, Afghanistan does not have oil or any appreciable energy supply and thus there is no fear of a drop in energy supplies should they meet their demise. At best, Afghanistan is important to energy supplies because of location. There are plans for a Caspian Sea pipeline which would run through Afghanistan.

RE: NATO
The US has considered pulling all of its bases out of NATO on occasion. It would reduce our cost considerably. I believe that one reason it has not happened is due to resistance from the hosting countries. The bases generate quite a bit of local revenue.

The problem with any nuclear attack is that the radioactive fallout does not respect borders, so you will end up pissing off nearby allies in the process when their country is blanketed with your radioactive love.

BTW that nuke photo is the Castle Romeo shot, 3.8 Megatons if I remember right. The good old days when the USA was doing atmospheric tests in the marshall islands. The Marshall islanders weren’t too happy about the forced evictions though.