A New Religion

"One of the least noticed and most peculiar campaign promises made by Barak Obama is his pledge, if elected president to 'secure all loose nuclear arsenals in the world within four years.' Without doubt that is a laudable goal, but one is left wondering how exactly he expects to accomplish it in four years, or even, for that matter, in 40. One of many obstacles is that our intelligence agencies seldom know where loose nuclear materials are, especially when they are hidden on the territory of hostile states. An even bigger problem is that when we do locate them, there always will be some expert or another telling us that, despite all the the evidence, they are not really there. Obama, of all people, should know this. ... Interviewed by Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker after the Israeli raid, [Joseph] Cirincione was emphatic: 'Syria does not have the technical, industrial or financial ability to support a nuclear waepons program. I've been following this issue for 15 years, and every once in awhile suspicion arises and we investigate and there's nothing. There was and is no nuclear weapons threat from Syria. Thanks to materials made public by the U.S. on April 24, we now know that the facility at Al Kibar was a nuclear reactor and that it had been built with North Korean assistance. ... Cirincione has admitted he got it wrong, explaining that the evidence 'seems strong' that Syria was building a nuclear reactor and that no one can bat 1,000. ... Experts, like generals, have a tendency to fight the last war. ... Cirincione is now the president of an outfit called the Ploughshares Fund, a foundation dedicated to funding advocates of arms control negotiations around the world. To him and his fellow members of the arms control creed, the admission that North Korea was illicitly shipping nuclear technology abroad--and that a country such as Syria, a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, had been caught in a brazen violation of its commitments--might be taken as an acknowledgement that the arms control regime on which they have staked their reputations and dedicated their lives has failed utterly", Gabriel Schoenfeld (GS) at http://www.latimes,com/, 24 May 2008.

Right on GS. Arms control has been a Western fantasy since at least 1922's naval limitation treaty. It is a fraud and the US should grow up and not engage in arms control negotiations. It seems arms control is in part, a result of the "legalization" of foreign policy by Woodrow Wilson. What's not to know? That say, Adolph Hitler lied about Rhineland militarization? That he built the Luftwaffe clandestinely? What's not to know about North Korea's nuclear reactors or Iran's 9,000 operating centrifuges?