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During the recent presidential campaign, there were serious charges that American credit and technology might have gone to a nuclear-weapons program in Iraq.
All the important people agreed that this was an outrage, but they obviously didn't think matter through.
If whatever hurts Iraq helps the United States, then this was no scandal. It was a sensible and prudent policy, and America should provide more nuclear technology to Iraq.
This may sound foolish, but consider what happened to a former enemy, the U.S.S.R.
During the Cold War, the Soviets built thousands of nuclear bombs, all designed to kill Americans. Even so, not a single American ever died from a Soviet bomb.
However, recent news from Russia reveals that there were thousands of Soviet casualties from the bomb program -- not only the direct deaths that occur with any heavy industry, but the shortened lives from radiation overexposure and associated cancers.
Further, vast areas of Soviet territory are permanently uninhabitable on account of radiation. The effect, so far as the Russians are concerned, is precisely the same as if these lands were occupied by American troops (perhaps worse, since soldiers spend money, while contaminated land just sits there). And certainly vast herds of sheep and cattle were destroyed by nuclear tests.
So our then-enemy lost personnel, livestock, territory, and productive capacity -- not from any direct action of the American military did, but from the activities of its own military-industrial complex.
The same holds true in this hemisphere. No American soldier or citizen ever died from a Soviet bomb. But America suffered in the same ways from its own nuclear program: cancer deaths, crop and livestock destruction, effective loss of territory.
In short, most of the harm that an enemy tries to inflict in wartime is precisely the harm that you'll do to yourself with a nuclear-weapons program. If you're building nuclear bombs, you don't really need an enemy to lay waste to your personnel, territory and economy. Nor do you need enemy propaganda to make people question the wisdom and veracity of their leaders.
Given that, the United States should immediately cut some deals with Iraq.
We're broke, and they want to build the Bomb. We want to eradicate Rocky Flats, Hanford, Pantex, and similar toxic facilities. They'd certainly be willing to remove these plutonic factories and clean the sites. The Iraqis might even be stupid enough to pay good money for that privilege, which would improve our balance of payments while reducing the deficit.
Once they had all this set up over there, then they, too, could enjoy soaring taxes, herd exterminations, soothing lies from the Defense Ministry, death and disease among skilled and productive workers, permanent loss of territory, national bankruptcy, and the other blessings of a nuclear-bomb program.
It would do more permanent damage to Iraq than Desert Storm ever did, and the assault would continue day in and day out for decades, at no cost whatsoever to American taxpayers -- in fact, there might even be a net profit.
So why are they looking for a scandal in the alleged diversion of technology to Iraq? They ought to be looking for some chests to pin medals on.
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