Rumsfeld Desires Penetration
Friday, April 29, 2005
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday that it makes “all the sense in the world” to study building a nuclear weapon that could penetrate deeply into buried targets.
We can't go in there and get at things in solid rock underground.
Rumsfeld believes that it is a national security risk not to be able to blow up things that are underground. "We can't go in there and get at things in solid rock underground," Rumsfeld said. "The only thing we have is very large, very dirty nuclear weapons. So the choice is: do we want to have nothing and only a large, dirty nuclear weapon, or would we rather have something in between.”
Some people fear that safe, clean nuclear weapons are dangerous.
Arms control advocates have attacked the plans as a step towards developing a weapon that would lower the threshold for the nuclear weapon use. Some people fear that safe, clean nuclear weapons are dangerous. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman has admitted that no missile could penetrate the earth deeply enough to trap all the fallout from a nuclear explosion.
Rumsfeld claimed that these new weapons are necessary as 70 countries now have programs capable of clearing underground chambers big enough for a basketball court from the rock in a single day. It is not yet known why these countries wish to play basketball underground.
