America’s new, more ’usable’, nuclear bomb in Europe | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/julian-borger-global-security-blog/2015/nov/10/americas-new-more-usable-nuclear-bomb-in-europe?CMP=twt_gu
the former head of US Strategic Command, General James Cartwright, made this striking remark:
If I can drive down the yield, drive down, therefore, the likelihood of fallout, etc, does that make it more usable in the eyes of some — some president or national security decision-making process? And the answer is, it likely could be more usable.
In general, it is not a good thing to see the words ‘nuclear bomb’ and ‘usable’ anywhere near each other. (...)
The new biography of George H W Bush has served as a reminder that in the run-up to the first Gulf War, [Dick] Cheney commissioned a Pentagon study to find out how many tactical nuclear weapons it would take to kill a division of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. The answer was apparently 17.
