Excerpt:
The New York Times reported on friday that the Obama administration is considering arming intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with conventional warheads to provide a “Prompt Global Strike” option, enabling targets anywhere on the globe to be hit in as little as an hour.
There is, however, one “small” problem with that idea. The launch of any ICBM could trigger a nuclear war. There is no way for nuclear-armed nations such as Russia and China to distinguish the launch of a conventionally-armed ICBM from that of a nuclear-armed one.
This half-baked idea is not new. The Bush administration and the Rumsfeld-era pentagon proposed it several times, and each time congress shot it down because of the inherent risks involved.
Donald Rumsfeld’s comment in a 2006 press conference inadvertantly accentuated the risks involved in the launch of an ICBM when he said, “some countries might not know whether it was a conventional weapon or a nuclear weapon….And everyone in the world would know that it was conventional after it hit within 30 minutes, or 10 minutes.” In other words, “trust us – that ICBM we just launched in your direction is not nuclear-armed.”
It is a very risky assumption…
Read more here: http://www.examiner.com/x-38220-Orlando-Independent-Examiner~y2010m4d25-Obama-administration-may-be-risking-nuclear-war