The Senate on Thursday moved to reverse decades of U.S. anti-proliferation policy, voting overwhelmingly to endorse a plan that would allow the U.S. to ship civilian nuclear fuel and technology to India.
S3709, 'An original bill to exempt from certain requirements of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 United States exports of nuclear materials, equipment, and technology to India, and to implement the United States Additional Protocol'
Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware said the endorsement pushes America "a giant step closer" to a "major shift" in U.S.-Indian relations.
"If we are right, this shift will increase the prospect for stability and progress in South Asia and in the world at large," he said.
The Senate passed this bill 85-12. It signals a new nuclear arms race in Southeast Asia, and we are encouraging this.
Byron Dorgan understands tis , and he says so eloquently on the Sneate floor.
It's too bad few otehrs listened to him.
But Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota argued that the agreement would enable India -- which never signed the landmark nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty -- to accelerate production of nuclear weapons, increasing tensions with nuclear rival, Pakistan.
More broadly, Dorgan said, the deal repudiated decades of U.S. policy of "telling the world it's our responsibility and our major goal to stop the spread of nuclear weapons."
"It's a horrible mistake," he said.
Here is the link to what Byron Dorgan had to say on this topic on The Senate Floor:
Something that every citizen should read:
http://thomas.loc.gov/...
Here are some excerpts of what is at stake here :
Have we been enormously successful? I have described some successes, but we
[Page: S10988] GPO's PDFhave, oh, probably 25,000 to 30,000 nuclear weapons remaining on this Earth. Far too many--25,000 to 30,000 nuclear weapons. We have much to do to step away from the abyss of having a terrorist organization or rogue nation acquire nuclear weapons and threaten our country or threaten the world.
We have all experienced 9/11/2001 where several thousand innocent Americans were murdered. That was an unbelievable terrorist attack on our country. It could happen again with a nuclear weapon. We are going to spend $9 billion or $10 billion this year building an antiballistic missile defense
system to create some sort of an electronic catcher's mitt to catch an intercontinental ballistic missile someone might aim at our country armed with a nuclear warhead.
That is one of the least likely threats our country faces. We are going to spend close to $10 billion for a threat that is one of the least likely threats we face.
The most likely threat, perhaps, instead of an intercontinental ballistic missile coming in at 18,000 miles an hour aimed at an American city, is a container ship pulling up to a dock in a major American city at 3 miles an hour with a container that contains a weapon of mass destruction onboard, to be detonated in the middle of an American city.
Let me read for the RECORD, as I start--and I want to then talk about this specific agreement--I want to read an excerpt from Graham Allison's book. He is at Harvard. He wrote a book called ``Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe.''
I talk about 9/11/2001, several thousand Americans murdered by terrorists. The detonation of a nuclear weapon in an American city by a terrorist group will not mean several thousand Americans being murdered; it could likely mean several hundred thousand Americans being murdered, or more.
Let me read to you from Graham Allison's book. I am quoting:
On October 11, 2001, a month to the day after the terrorist assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President George W. Bush faced an even more terrifying prospect. At that morning's Presidential Daily Intelligence Briefing, George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, informed the president that a CIA agent code-named Dragonfire had reported that Al Qaeda terrorists possessed a ten-kiloton nuclear bomb, evidently stolen from the Russian arsenal. According to Dragonfire, this nuclear weapon was now on American soil, in New York City.
The CIA had no independent confirmation of this report, but neither did it have any basis on which to dismiss it. Did Russia's arsenal include a large number of ten-kiloton weapons? Yes. Could the Russian government account for all the nuclear weapons the Soviet Union had built during the Cold War? No. Could Al Qaeda have acquired one or more of these weapons? Yes. Could it have smuggled a nuclear weapon through American border controls in New York City without anyone's knowledge? Yes. .....
In the hours that followed, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice analyzed what strategists call the ``problem from hell.'' Unlike the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union knew that an attack against the other would illicit a retaliatory strike of greater measure, Al Qaeda--with no return address--had no such fear of reprisal. Even if the president were prepared to negotiate, Al Qaeda had no phone number to call.
Clearly, no decision could be taken without much more information about the threat and those behind it. But how could Rice engage a wider circle of experts and analysts without the White House's suspicions leaking to the press? A CNN flash that the White House had information about an Al Qaeda nuclear weapon in Manhattan would create chaos. New Yorkers would flee the city in terror, and residents of other metropolitan areas would panic.
I continue to quote:
Concerned that Al Qaeda could have smuggled a nuclear weapon into Washington as well, the president ordered Vice President Dick Cheney to leave the capital for an ``undisclosed location,'' where he would remain for many weeks to follow. That was standard procedure to ensure ``continuity of government''. ..... Several hundred federal employees from more than a dozen government agencies joined the vice president at this secret site. ..... The president also immediately dispatched NEST specialists (Nuclear Emergency Support Teams of scientists and engineers) to New York City to search for the weapon. But no one in the city was informed of the threat, not even Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
As the CIA's analysts examined Dragonfire's report and compared it with other bits of information, they noted that the attack on the World Trade Center in September had set the bar higher for future terrorist spectaculars.
I won't read to the end. I ask unanimous consent that this document be printed in the RECORD at the end of my statement.
Any nuclear deal--any relationship we have with another country that deals with nuclear power and nuclear issues should be judged, in my opinion, on whether it reduces the number of nuclear weapons. Does it reduce the nuclear weapons that exist or increase them? It is quite clear that what we are debating will result in an increase in nuclear weapons in India. I don't think there is much doubt about that. This bill fails that test, in my judgment.
Experts have warned that there is enough weapons-usable fissile material in the world to make about 130,000 nuclear weapons. A working nuclear bomb, we are told, can be made with as little as 35 pounds of uranium-235 or 9 pounds of plutonium-239. And the acquisition of a nuclear weapon by a terrorist is, in my judgment, the greatest threat that exists in our country.
Retired GEN Eugene Habiger, who commanded America's nuclear forces, said that nuclear terrorism ``is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when.''
...
This is worth reading to the end.