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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Just To The East: Serious Craziness |
Current rating: 0 |
by Jeff Parrott, Lafayette Journal and Courier
(No verified email address) |
20 Oct 2001
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Indiana Congresscritter Steve Buyer: Ground troops too risky; small, nuclear device an option |
If it becomes clear that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network is behind the recent wave of anthrax cases, and it is hiding chemical or biological weapons in Afghanistan caves, U.S. Rep. Steve Buyer said they've "upped the ante" and he would support the use of nuclear weapons to destroy them.
Buyer said he isn't advocating nuclear tactics. But if the Bush administration decides to go that route, it would have his backing. He planned to outline his thoughts in a letter to the administration.
A Gulf War veteran who returned home from that conflict with an illness caused by exposure to mustard and sarin gas, Buyer said Thursday that it's too risky to send large numbers of ground troops into mountain hideouts. Instead, small special operation forces could fight their way into caves and bunkers and plant timer-detonated tactical nuclear devices powerful enough to bring down entire mountains.
"These caves have catacombs that go deep into the mountains of Afghanistan," the Monticello Republican told the Journal and Courier. "Before we send special forces into these caves and try to flush people out, before we subject them to the chemical or biological toxins that might be contained inside, I would support collapsing these caves to seal them forever."
Buyer, who serves on the House Veterans Affairs Committee and is a major in the Army Reserves, said he doesn't think conventional weapons would be powerful enough to do the job. He said a small, tactical nuclear device could be "limited in scope," without creating a mushroom cloud and spreading radioactive fallout to civilians.
That notion drew laughter from John Pike, who heads Globalsecurity.org, a defense and intelligence think tank in Arlington, Va.
"Just a little teeny Chihuahua-size atomic bomb?" Pike said. "There's no such thing as a small atomic bomb. That sounds kind of silly.
"I don't think there is any evidence that they have any structures that are too deep or too strong to resist a conventional attack. If you look at these tunnels, they're shallow. They only go a couple dozen feet into the mountain. It's not like they're Journey to the Center of the Earth or something.
"Frankly, if the United States knew they had such munitions in an area, they'd send in special forces to capture such people and ask where they got them."
Buyer first raised the nuclear option Wednesday on an Indianapolis radio talk show, and Indianapolis television news stations picked it up for their 11 p.m. broadcasts. On Thursday, Buyer's press secretary, Laura Zuckerman, said she had fielded numerous calls from reporters seeking clarification of his views.
"The last thing we want is for people to think Steve is advocating nuclear war," Zuckerman said. "That's the last thing he would ever do."
Still, deploying nuclear weapons isn't under serious consideration because it would be too risky politically at a time when civilian death tolls in Afghanistan already are mounting, said Christopher Hellman, senior analyst for the Center for Defense Information, another military think tank in Washington.
Hellman acknowledged that the idea of using small, tactical nuclear weapons to destroy underground stores of chemical and biological weapons in hostile countries has floated around U.S. military circles in recent years. But it remains to be seen whether there are large supplies of chemical and biological weapons in Afghanistan, he said.
And Hellman said the U.S. could not guarantee that civilians wouldn't suffer. It would risk violating an international norm against the use of weapons of mass destruction.
"This is very much a political war. We could win the war on the battlefield and lose the war at home, and using nuclear weapons would be one way of doing it.
"Do you think our new friends in the region would remain our friends if we used nuclear weapons?" said Hellman, referring to Pakistan. "And then there's the issue of fallout. We don't want to irradiate the people we're trying to feed."
"More importantly," Pike said, "with India and Pakistan having nuclear weapons, and having been at war over Kashmir, I think it would be astonishingly unwise for the United States to be setting off nuclear weapons in that part of the world because it might give neighbors the wrong idea."
In 1998, Pakistan successfully detonated a nuclear bomb in a test. Many view the country as increasingly unstable in light of the U.S. bombing campaign. But Buyer said he wouldn't worry about its nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands in the event of a coup -- and possibly being used against the United States.
"They tested one, but they don't have the know-how to deliver it and they don't have the guidance systems to do that," he said. "We shouldn't fear this discussion. There's such a stigma attached to the word 'nuclear' that people don't even think rationally."
Copyright © 2001, Federated Publications, Inc. A Gannett Site.
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