America's Weapons of Mass Destruction
Steven Rosenfeld,  September 24, 2002 

GNN's favorite crusading doctor, Helen Caldicott, is a pediatrician and founder
of Physicians for Social Responsibility, co-winner of the 1995 Nobel Peace
Prize. She is currently creating a new organization, the Nuclear Policy Research
Institute, to provide a media counterpoint to pro-nuclear representatives from
military and right-wing think tanks:

Steven Rosenfeld : Your book, The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush�s
Military-Industrial Complex, catalogs the U.S. government�s nuclear weapons
programs, including the space-based missile defense program. First, could you
compare this administration�s level of defense spending to prior
administrations? That is, are we in the midst of the largest military build-up
since Ronald Reagan�s presidency in the 1980s? 

Dr. Helen Caldicott: The straight answer is yes. I need almost say no more, yes,
absolutely. And Reagan spent more money than all past presidents combined and he
spent most of it on the military. And this new administration -- of course most
of the players come from the Reagan administration -- is doing exactly the same
thing. 

Rosenfeld: Kevin Phillips in his book, Wealth and Democracy, points out that
some of the greatest fortunes in American history have been made from
war-related businesses. Who are today�s wartime profiteers? 

Caldicott: Well, 32 members of the Bush administration come from the
military-industrial complex. Twenty-eight of them come from Lockheed-Martin.
Many of the rest come from the Heritage Foundation, which is funded by
Lockheed-Martin. So this is a military-industrial administration. 

Rosenfeld: Who are you talking about? Cabinet-level officials? Let�s be more
specific. 

Caldicott: Yeah, [Deputy National Security Council Director] Stephen Hadley is
in the cabinet. And I can�t give you all of their names, but it�s on record, and
I apologize because I can�t give you their names. But many of them are at
cabinet-level. 

Rosenfeld: So who are the companies then that are going to be benefiting from
this military build-up? 

Caldicott: Right. Halliburton. Halliburton is Cheney�s company. Halliburton was
built up by Cheney to become the seventh-largest Pentagon contractor in the last
few years. But Halliburton did [oil-related] contracts with Saddam Hussein, too,
during Cheney�s watch. 

Lockheed-Martin is the biggest military contractor in the whole world. It sells
weapons to friends and foe alike, indiscriminately. It is the major contractor
for the five layers of Star Wars, including the militarization of space.
[Republican Senate Minority Leader] Trent Lott [of Mississippi] represents
Lockheed-Martin in his district, where the C-130s are made, and Lockheed-Martin
has factories in almost all states of the country. So, that�s why it does so
well, because, of course, the Congresspeople need jobs in their districts. So
they vote for everything Lockheed-Martin wants and desires. 

Rosenfeld: In addition to companies like Lockheed-Martin, there are many other
well-known companies like Boeing, Northrop Grumman, TRW� What is this class of
American companies? What are these industries? 

Caldicott: Well, they�re industries making weapons to kill people. I�ve got a
friend who�s an admiral and he said, "Helen, our mission is to destroy property
and kill people." These weapons are to kill people and destroy property. It�s
legalized murder. And what they�re doing also is they�re stealing the Americans'
tax dollars. They�re the new robber barons. They�re spending nearly
half-a-trillion dollars a year on weapons. If you spent $1,000 a minute since
Jesus was born, you would have just got to a trillion dollars. Half-a-trillion
dollars on death -- when America is one of the only countries in the West that
has no free medical care system? 

Rosenfeld: We�re hearing a lot about the nuclear threat from Iraq these days.
Please review for us, the changes in U.S. nuclear policy that the Bush
administration has made. For instance, there have been articles in the New York
Times and Washington Post about the use of small nuclear weapons in a
first-strike scenario. I�ve heard you talk about how this is something that
might occur if we were to go into Iraq. Let�s talk about the bigger picture
change that this administration is trying to create. 

Caldicott: This administration is violating almost every single nuclear arms
control treaty that has been negotiated by the wisest statesmen in the world
over years of negotiation. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; they�ve violated
the START II Treaty. 

They�ve got a new treaty saying they�ll get rid of nuclear weapons with Russia,
which is a vacuous treaty. It gives you a 10-year limit. There�s no schedule, no
timetable. Bush will be out office. Putin will be out of office in 10 years. And
in the meantime, they can build up a vast new arsenal of nuclear weapons. As one
insider in the White House said, "This new treaty is exactly what we wanted,"
which means it means nothing except they can increase their nuclear arsenal. 

The nuclear weapons labs, Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos, are currently
designing, building and testing new nuclear weapons -- violating the letter and
the law of the Complete Test Ban Treaty. Soon they�ll be blowing up big bombs
under the desert floor in Nevada. They are building up to 80 new hydrogen bombs
a year. They�re working on a pure fusion weapon that will not be verifiable by
national technical means from space, and what they are doing is purely wicked --
because America has no enemies. 

No state enemies; there are a few zealots that hate it. And if America goes into
Iraq, by God, the jihad will be multiplied thousands of times. Then you�ll
really have enemies if you go and bomb Iraq. And there�s a 50-50 chance that
nuclear weapons will be used in Iraq by America. And if they�re not, and Saddam
Hussein sends scuds [missiles] toward Israel, Israel has intimated that she�ll
use nuclear weapons against Iraq. 

So, nuclear war in the Middle East? Great. That could trigger the early warning
system of Russia and/or America, start the whole thing going and we could have a
global nuclear war, and nuclear winter, and that�s the end of life on Earth, and
many people are very frightened at the moment. 

Rosenfeld: What is the basis for this 50-50 estimate that the nuclear weapons
would be used in Iraq? 

Caldicott: That�s my intuitive estimate. But the Pentagon has been mooting the
use of nuclear weapons in Iraq for many months -- over six months. And they�ve
got a great new weapon they want to test called a �robust earth penetrator.� I
love the terminology, don�t you? It�s very male. 

And it�s a dial-a-yield. You can have five kilotons, which is half the size of
the Hiroshima bomb; 10 kilotons, same size; 20 kilotons. It will provoke a huge
amount of fallout, because as it burrows 100 feet into the earth, it will
transform all that earth to radioactive fallout which will land all over the
people in Iraq and induce cancers, leukemias and genetic disease for the rest of
time, virtually. You get much more fall-out if you blow a bomb up at city level,
at ground level, or under the ground than you do when you blow it up in the air
to vaporize people. 

Rosenfeld: You think that if the United States goes into Iraq, it�s likely use
these so-called smaller-scale nuclear weapons? 

Caldicott: It�s not if the United States goes into Iraq. It�s when. The United
States doesn�t give one fig about the rest of the world. It will go it alone.
It�s 4.5 percent of the Earth�s population. It doesn�t work with humility with
the United Nations. And it will do what it wants with impunity. 

This is the most powerful country the world has ever seen, including the Roman
Empire and the Greek Empire. We have never seen a country so militarily armed.
For what reason -- when there are no enemies? And now that the Cold War is over,
America should be rising to its full moral and spiritual height, and abolishing
nuclear weapons with a friendly Russia. And encouraging everyone else to do the
same. Instead, these people in this Bush administration, they�re building up a
huge nuclear arsenal and saying with impunity, 

"We�ll use nuclear weapons on anyone. Even any nation that doesn�t even have
nuclear weapons." I have to tell you, having studied this issue for 30 years,
that I predict if things go unimpeded as things are going now, that there will
be a nuclear war within the next 10 or 20 years, probably within the next 10
years, which could destroy life on Earth and the only life in the universe.
That�s the way we�re going.

Steven Rosenfeld is a commentary editor and audio producer for TomPaine.com,
where this interview originally appeared.