A Small Sliver of Sanity

In 2004 I wrote a letter of protest to my Representative in Congress concerning the nuclear bunker-busters.....or as Republicans prefer to call them, "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrators". Which, for some reason, always makes me think of Viagra. I didn't expect a positive reply from him. He's a Republican who votes with Tom DeLay 97% of the time, took DeLay's money and had Dick Cheney come to Ohio to campaign for him in the last election.
His reply to me, dated June 2, 2004, said in part...."we must remain aware that we have enemies who would choose to do us harm." He went on to say, "HR 4200 cleared the committee by a unanimous 60-0 vote. On May 20, 2004, it was approved by the full House by a bipartisan vote of 391-34, and has been forwarded to the Senate for final action." I read his reply as the Republican version of "Nyah, nyah, nyah".
Tuesday I clicked on Yahoo news and a wonderful headline met my eyes: "U.S. Drops Plan for Nuclear Bunker-Buster".
The article began: "The Bush administration is abandoning its push to develop a "bunker-buster" nuclear warhead and instead will pursue a conventional weapon that can penetrate hardened underground targets."
Further in the article Stephen Young, a senior analyist for the Union of Concerned Scientists was quoted: "The proposed weapon, more than 70 times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, would have caused unparalleled collateral damage."
I am not only thrilled because this weapon has been scrapped, but because it indicates to me that Bush's falling approval rating is having an impact on his atrocities. Maybe he's no longer sure he has all that "capital" to spend.
Or maybe he's beginning to imagine that he might have need of his *own* bunker someday, and imagining how very inconvenient it would be to have a "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator" around if that were the case.

Susan Davidson

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