Nuclear proliferation and the Cheney-Bush administration

The graphic above appeared in The American Age (1989) by historian Walter LaFeber. The caption on it there says:

The dot in the center square represents all of the fire power used in World War II, including the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The 6,000 dots in the rest of the squares represent the comparative destructive power of the nuclear weapons that exist in the 1980s. Just two squares on the chart represent enough fire power to destroy all of the large- and medium-sized cities of the world.

I wonder what a half-reasonable estimate of the danger of firepower use by The Terrorists would be if it could be charted on a graph like this. One tenth of one dot maybe?

As important as combating terrorism is - maybe we could work on getting airport inspections to detect things that look like bombs, for example - it doesn't remotely compare to the dangers of nuclear proliferation.

Joe Conason takes a look at how the Cheney-Bush administration's love affair with power in general and nuclear weapons in particular is making hash out of existing world arrangement to reduce the danger of nuclear war in Nuclear hypocrisy Salon 10/19/07.

Tags: bush doctrine, nuclear nonproliferation

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