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In reply to the discussion: Plutonium from Fukushima is a global catastrophe. [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)84. Better Dead than Red.
Many, if not most, people believed that they'd prefer to die and all their family die in a nuclear war, rather than living under communist ideology.
The Real Eisenhower: Planning to Win Nuclear War
by Ira Chernus
Common Dreams
March 18, 2008
Peace activists love to quote Dwight Eisenhower. The iconic Republican war hero spoke so eloquently about the dangers of war and the need for disarmament. He makes a terrific poster-boy for peace. But after years of research and writing three books on Ike, I think it's time to see the real Eisenhower stand up. The president who planned to fight and win a nuclear war, saying "he would rather be atomized than communized," reminds us how dangerous the cold war era really was, how much our leaders will put us all at risk in the name of "national security," and how easily they can mask their intentions behind benign images.
From first to last, Eisenhower was a confirmed cold warrior. Years before he became president, while he was publicly promoting cooperation with the Soviet Union, he wrote in his diary: "Russia is definitely out to communize the world....Now we face a battle to extinction." On the home front, he warned that liberal Democrats were leading the U.S. "toward total socialism."
SNIP
For Eisenhower, the point of amassing a huge nuclear arsenal was not to deter war but to win it. This was enshrined as official policy in NSC 5810/1: "The United States must make clear its determination to prevail if general war occurs." The only meaningful war aim, he told the NSC, was "to achieve a victory." He described his war plan as "Hit the guy fast with all you've got if he jumps on you"; "hit 'em ... with everything in the bucket."
SNIP
Eisenhower assumed that a post-holocaust America would be a totalitarian state, ruled by martial law. But he worried about (among other things) what would happen to the credit structure of the country and how to print and sell war bonds to finance the next war if Washington were destroyed. At one NSC meeting he complained that if the President and the Vice President were "knocked off," the "damnable" law of succession would result in the Democrats (he called them "the other team" taking the White House. "To assure against that happening, the President thought the Vice President should be put in cotton batting."
SNIP
And we ignore it at our peril, because it was a policy that put anticommunist ideology above human life, made by a man who would "push whole stack of chips into the pot" and "hit 'em ... with everything in the bucket"; who would "shoot your enemy before he shoots you"; who believed that the U.S. could "pick itself up from the floor" and win a nuclear war, even though "everybody is going crazy," as long as "only" 25 or 30 American cities got "shellacked" and nobody got too "hysterical."
CONTINUED
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/18/7742
No matter how one feels on the question, many of these Cold Warriors actually believed that nuclear war was winnable. Cough. Allen Dulles.
Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?
Recently declassified information shows that the military presented President Kennedy with a plan for a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in the early 1960s.
James K. Galbraith and Heather A. Purcell
The American Prospect | September 21, 1994
During the early 1960s the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) introduced the world to the possibility of instant total war. Thirty years later, no nation has yet fired any nuclear missile at a real target. Orthodox history holds that a succession of defensive nuclear doctrines and strategies -- from "massive retaliation" to "mutual assured destruction" -- worked, almost seamlessly, to deter Soviet aggression against the United States and to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.
The possibility of U.S. aggression in nuclear conflict is seldom considered. And why should it be? Virtually nothing in the public record suggests that high U.S. authorities ever contemplated a first strike against the Soviet Union, except in response to a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, or that they doubted the deterrent power of Soviet nuclear forces. The main documented exception was the Air Force Chief of Staff in the early 1960s, Curtis LeMay, a seemingly idiosyncratic case.
But beginning in 1957 the U.S. military did prepare plans for a preemptive nuclear strike against the U.S.S.R., based on our growing lead in land-based missiles. And top military and intelligence leaders presented an assessment of those plans to President John F. Kennedy in July of 1961. At that time, some high Air Force and CIA leaders apparently believed that a window of outright ballistic missile superiority, perhaps sufficient for a successful first strike, would be open in late 1963.
The document reproduced opposite is published here for the first time. It describes a meeting of the National Security Council on July 20, 1961. At that meeting, the document shows, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, and others presented plans for a surprise attack. They answered some questions from Kennedy about timing and effects, and promised further information. The meeting recessed under a presidential injunction of secrecy that has not been broken until now.
CONTINUED...
http://prospect.org/article/did-us-military-plan-nuclear-first-strike-1963
Thanks for remembering, LongTomH. Thanks also for caring about all of this, what could have been, and what might yet be. That's the real imagineering Einstein talked about:
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
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Thanks, Cleita. That's why I posted. Few who know are talking about Fukushima in public.
Octafish
Jan 2014
#3
Maybe when people start discovering they have polluted a whole food supply chain, they will
Cleita
Jan 2014
#6
Stephanie Miller isn't all that smart. She means well, but she's not one to go to for info.
cui bono
Jan 2014
#97
1 Millionth of One Gram of Inhaled Plutonium Will Give You Cancer -- Helen Caldicott, MD
Octafish
Jan 2014
#9
our granddaughter wanted to spend this summer in Japan... that was nixed in a heartbeat
secondwind
Jan 2014
#11
You first, (in the hug your plutonium for real department with no shielding)
nadinbrzezinski
Jan 2014
#35
Something like 80% of the mass of the core of the reactor at Chernobyl
AtheistCrusader
Jan 2014
#131
They must not like the smell of plutonium and stapelia gigantea. Sucks the breath right out of them
lonestarnot
Jan 2014
#147
EDIT: Original line here contained statistics I pulled out of my ass. It was wrong, and I apologize.
NuclearDem
Jan 2014
#33
That is the stupidest thing I've read all day! Just how the fuck can you say that? You have
ChisolmTrailDem
Jan 2014
#44
"Octafish, is there anyone who disagrees with you that isn't a COINTELPRO operative? "...
SidDithers
Jan 2014
#61
If you want honest discussion, don't attribute to me what I didn't write then.
Octafish
Jan 2014
#62
For the record, I enjoyed the DU Mail back and forth just a few minutes ago.
NuclearDem
Jan 2014
#76
Again, at levels far, far below levels that would cause even minor health risks.
NuclearDem
Jan 2014
#91
Except that study indicated the plutonium, americium, and uranium levels corroborated with pre-2000
NuclearDem
Jan 2014
#144
As a child in the 1950s, I got lots of propaganda about the "promise of the peaceful atom."
LongTomH
Jan 2014
#78
It's a disaster on a planetary scale and yet Corporate Media pretend it isn't.
Octafish
Jan 2014
#94
I try not to dwell on this because, frankly, there's Jack Shit that I can do about it.
Electric Monk
Jan 2014
#99
I feel that way too, Electric Monk. Problem is, TEPCO also feels that way, too.
Octafish
Jan 2014
#107
Here's a report on plutonium from Fukushima: only detectable very close to the reactor
muriel_volestrangler
Jan 2014
#103
How Dangerous Is 400-6000 Pounds Of Plutonium Nano Particle Dust Liberated By Fukushima?
Octafish
Jan 2014
#148
What does Helen Caldicott's position on transparency have to do with the validity of her claims?
NuclearDem
Jan 2014
#151
No. Caldicott made a mistake, based on what was then known. A lot different than what you call her.
Octafish
Jan 2014
#159
No, she took a study that fit her preconceptions despite its numerous known flaws
NuclearDem
Jan 2014
#161
Release of plutonium isotopes from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident
SidDithers
Jan 2014
#163
It may have to do with clouding the central issue: Fukushima is a global catastrophe.
Octafish
Jan 2014
#171
You continually claim the plutonium from Fukushima is a 'global catastrophe' without any evidence
muriel_volestrangler
Jan 2014
#173
I gave you science from sources independent of TEPCO, or governments, in #103
muriel_volestrangler
Jan 2014
#176
Great. And I gave you sources in #105 that showed where it was found 25 miles away from FNPP.
Octafish
Jan 2014
#177
Right. But it's plutonium and found 25 times further from the plant than you reported in #103.
Octafish
Jan 2014
#181
I'd rather people get the facts and use them to set policy. The phrase is democracy.
Octafish
Jan 2014
#184
For the cost of Iraq War, we could've built National 100% Renewable Clean Energy Grid.
Octafish
Jan 2014
#224
Don't worry. The situation may even be worse than what's posted on this thread.
Octafish
Jan 2014
#188
Unfortunately, the facts say otherwise: Plutonium from Fukushima is a global catastrophe.
Octafish
Jan 2014
#185
I read the article where the scientist from NMSU said they detected plutonium on March 14, 2011.
Octafish
Jan 2014
#207
There's a big difference between depleted uranium and the nearly-undetectable cesium in tuna.
NuclearDem
Jan 2014
#216
An Admirable Ability. Here's what Physicians for Social Responsibility said back in March, 2011...
Octafish
Jan 2014
#223
Did they ask: 'What if the Fukushima nuclear fallout crisis had happened here?'
Octafish
Jan 2014
#221