The New York Times Urges Senate to Ratify New START Now

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today: Monday, August 2, 2010:

Ratify the Treaty - The New York Times [link]

• The New Start treaty, the first arms control agreement signed with the Russians in nearly a decade, calls for modest nuclear reductions.
• It will make the world safer, guaranteeing each country continued insight into the other’s strategic arsenals, with data exchanges and regular inspections.
• The treaty has been endorsed by nearly every luminary in the Democratic and Republican foreign policy establishments.  That should make Senate ratification certain. But some Republican members — including Jon Kyl, James Inhofe and Jim DeMint — are still balking. Cold war habits and specious arguments die hard.
• Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States and Russia still have more than 20,000 nuclear weapons. That is absurd. The Senate needs to pass New Start now.

Nuclear Threat: Listen to Nunn - Savannah Morning News [link]

• Sen. Johnny Isakson is expected to be a key player as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee takes up the new START nuclear arms treaty.
• We encourage the Georgia senator to listen to a homegrown expert on nukes and nuclear proliferation - Sam Nunn.
• Mr. Isakson is one of eight Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee. Some top Democrats who are behind the new START treaty want bipartisan support. That's as it should be. And if the GOP controlled the Senate, the Democrats should be looking at this issue in the same fashion.
• Mr. Nunn is no bleeding heart or peacenik. When he says he's assured that the new START isn't a threat or barrier to America's missile defenses, and that it wouldn't inhibit this nation's ability to make needed investments in our nuclear weapons programs, he speaks with credibility. We encourage Mr. Isakson to hear him out.

GOP Senators Join Bingaman at Los Alamos Lab Briefing - Santa Fe New Mexican [link]

• U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman and a delegation of Republican senators visited Los Alamos National Laboratory on Friday.
• They were gathering information related to ongoing deliberations about the New START arms control treaty with Russia.
• Along with Sen. Jon Kyl, the Republican whip, the delegation included Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, both of whom are considered influential as a vote approaches.
• Also attending the briefings was Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, both of which are involved in issues related to START and nuclear weapons.
• Bingaman said he had no way of judging what influence the briefings might have on his colleagues, but that he would be supporting ratification of the treaty.

The Power of Zero - Valerie Plame Wilson for Newsweek [link]

• The smoke was still drifting off the World Trade Center when the CIA discovered that Osama bin Laden had secretly met just a few days before the attack with a top Pakistani nuclear scientist, seeking help in building a nuclear bomb. Immediately, nuclear terrorism jumped to the top of the list of urgent threats to the civilized world.
• I would like to believe the bad guys are losing, but, in fact, time favors them as long as nuclear-bomb-grade materials and weapons exist in the world. The only way to end this danger is to lock down all nuclear materials and eliminate nuclear weapons in all countries.
• As the new movie Countdown to Zero shows, even the well-disciplined and professional U.S. military has made very serious mistakes with nuclear weapons.
• Getting to global zero will be arduous, but it can be done. Many who supported nuclear weapons as a deterrent during the Cold War now recognize that the threat today is not nuclear war with Russia or China, but proliferation and the risk of nuclear terrorism.

Nuclear Flash Mob Dares Hollywood to Countdown to Zerø - TakePart blog [link]

• In a small, forgotten park in Los Angeles, Denise Duffield, an associate director of Physicians for Social Responsibility, primed a group of 10 volunteers to storm the famed shopping and entertainment complex at Hollywood and Highland with nuclear weapons.
• In less than an hour, her 10-member team of young and old-ish would perform in their first flash mob, one featuring a choreographed dance designed to take a stand against the world's most dangerous weapon.
• With its first foray into flash mobbing, PSR has taken a dynamic opposition to the weapon of most destruction, the eradication of which has seen a resurgence of interest following presidents Obama and Medvedev’s START treaty and Participant Media’s new film, Countdown to Zerø.
• If anyone watching the spectacle wondered "why?," a primary care physician and member of PSR, Dr. Robert Dodge, had the answer. He picked up a microphone and described the reality of a nuclear detonation.