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The Sunday Telegraph
08-23-1998
PRESIDENT Clinton has rewritten Pentagon rules of engagement to allow nuclear strikes on terrorist organisations such as that run by Osama bin Laden.
The latest version of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations" has been changed to include non-state parties as "likely targets for nuclear strikes" in the event of hostilities.
The terrorist groups join a list of more conventional military targets including "ground combat units, air defence facilities, naval installations and combat vessels".
The change in the doctrine was confirmed last night by a Pentagon spokesman. It took effect earlier this year, before the latest terrorist bombings in Africa and last week's counter-attacks. Tomahawk cruise missiles, the type used in Sudan and Afghanistan last week, could be fitted with small nuclear warheads and used to cause devastation over a limited area.
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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; 5/1/1995; Arkin, William M.
Joint Chief of Staffs Chmn Colin Powell approved in 1993 a US nuclear policy that calls for use of the weapons against weapons of destruction when in fact policy since 1978 was that nuclear weapons were to be used in the event of a nuclear attack. The policy is questioned and its origin explained.
The Pentagon seems bewitched, bothered, and bewildered, not to mention befuddled, regarding the circumstances under which it might be appropriate to use nuclear weapons in battle.
On April 29, 1993, Gen. Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, approved a new "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations" (Joint Publication 3-12). Alas, the doctrine not only failed to accurately represent official U.S. policy, it flatly contradicted it. The doctrine declared that "the fundamental purpose of U.S. nuclear forces is to deter the use of weapons of mass destruction...." Further, it defined weapons of mass destruction as "nuclear, biological, or chemical."
The new doctrine is at odds with a 16-year-old pledge by the United States--first articulated at the United Nations in 1978--not to threaten to use nuclear weapons against any nation unless that nation is a nuclear power itself, or unless it attacks the United States or its allies in an alliance with a nuclear-weapon state.
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http://zfacts.com/p/112.html | 01/18/12 07:24 GMT
Modified: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 04:48:51 GMT
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