Clueless 2004: Kerry and his Supporters on Nuclear Bunker Busters
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: Kerry=Chimp with an M-16?

Radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt is hosting a "virtual symposium" on the question:

"Did Kerry blunder in denouncing nuclear bunker busters? (BLOGGER NOTE: during the debate) If so, why? If so, how great the damage to his candidacy?"

I tried to take part in the symposium, but was either too late with my entries or not quite in line enough with Hewitt's standards to make the cut.

My answers (as appended to the symposium in comments):

"A) Of course he erred in the denunciation. You don't get a ZERO fallout plume downwind of a bunker buster nuke detonation, but it's a lot kinder to the people in the country where you do it than using, say, a B-83 (nuke dropped from an aircraft) or W-80 (cruise missile or artillery nuke) to try to dig someone or something out from under a lot of rock.

IMHO, Kerry's far too dense to get that point.

But even were he capable of comprehending it, he STILL wouldn't care, even were the detonation held upwind of Boston.

He just doesn't care. He's a cold-blooded reptile, and judging from his recorded past, has always been a reptile.

All that political posturing in favor of Ho Chi Minh and Daniel Ortega while Vietnamese and Nicaraguans were cold-bloodedly slaughtered proves all we need to know about Senator John Forbes Kerry.

B) It won't hurt him much - may even help him.

The word "nuke" resonates ominously with most Americans - "bad magic," if you will.

I'd say that with swing voters, the impact of Kerry's little dramatic turn favors him slightly, because some swing voters probably think bunker-busting nukes should have been used, say, in Tora Bora and similar places.

(Blogger Note: Oops. I meant to say "favors him ONLY slightly, because some swing voters probably think bunker-busting nukes should have been used, say, in Tora Bora and similar places.")

The people who wouldn't mind us having a few more nukes are already set-in-stone Bush voters, while Kerry may have pulled some granola types back from the Nader column back to his own "useful idiots" corral.

And THAT is why Kerry even brought the issue up at the debate - to use all that wonderful free air time to firm up the far left margin of his own voter base."

And THEN, after reading the posts of people who DID make the cut as "participants," I said:

"The developing theme in the symposium that Kerry is "going back to his hippie/radical roots" seems to miss the central point about Kerry - he's an amoral, cold-blooded political reptile.

Kerry may have issues of taste or personal preference which justify the hippie/radical label, but if he could (for example) get an immediate, guaranteed twenty-point edge over Bush by signing his name in blood (or Heinz ketchup) to a notarized document ENDORSING bunker-buster nukes, he'd do it. What he'd do after the (shudder) inauguration is anyone's guess, of course."

Finally, one particular participant, "Legenda," said:

"Legenda looks at high tech versus low tech

Do we have the technological capability to penetrate deep enough into the earth to make a nuclear explosion fallout-free, and is it cost effective? That is the real question. My guess is no.
If we had, that would be an extremely valuable weapon, if it were only cost effective. It would have to be more cost effective than occupying a small amount of territory, drilling a deep hole, inserting an atom bomb, and detonating it."

My response:

"Legenda:

Your comments regarding nuclear bunker busters are in some spots misleading and other spots totally wrong.

First, no, a nuclear bunker buster is NOT a zero fallout weapon. However, if a conventional bunker buster even reached a very deeply buried nuclear arsenal, guess what - we also get a fallout plume.

Depending on whether or not the weapons targeted were one point-safe (and the US failed rather badly in its first two attempts to achieve that capability) - my guess is that North Korea, Iran, or terrorist groups wouldn't bother to one point-safe their weapons - a conventional bunker buster would trigger precisely the sort of high-intensity, lethal fallout plume Legenda expresses concern about.

A nuclear bunker-buster, on the other hand, might stand a good chance of asymmetrically disrupting targeted enemy nuclear weapons, preventing a significant nuclear yield and allowing the fission products from both the bunker buster and target weapons to be contained largely within the hole.

That's the rationale the Nuclear Emergency Search Teams (NEST) follow when they use a (dismounted) aircraft cannon to destroy suspected nuclear weapons - intense, instantaneous asymmetrical force to disrupt the symmetry and simultaneous timing needed for an implosion nuclear device to work.

The explosive force of a directional nuclear weapon such as a nuclear bunker buster is many times more intense and directional than conventional explosives - thus much, much less likely to trigger a full-scale nuclear detonation in the targeted devices.

You'd get a "fizzle" yield that wouldn't escape the bunker, ditto a large amount of fission products, but those would be contained largely within the bunker.

Legenda's post is typical of the flawed and often absent logic used by critics of nuclear weapons programs.

These people - including Kerry - often do not have the first idea of what they are talking about."