Washington Post Exposes Conservatives' Double Standard on Arms Treaties

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

Stories we're following today: Tuesday, August 10, 2010:

New START: A Similar Arms Reduction Pact but a Different Republican Reaction - The Washington Post [link]

• "This treaty is a masterstroke. . . It is shorn of the tortured bench marks, sub-limits, arcane definitions and monitoring provisions that weighed down past arms control treaties," said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) in a floor speech on March 6, 2003, in support of ratification of the Moscow Treaty.
• The resolution for ratification passed that day without opposition, 95 to 0 with five senators absent.
• Twenty-four Republicans who voted for that treaty seven years ago are in the Senate today, but not one, save possibly Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), has indicated he or she will vote for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), negotiated by President Obama's team.
• Kyl and many of the 23 other senators are critical of elements of New START that they readily accepted or ignored in the agreement they embraced seven years ago.
• How times have changed.

Safety of U.S. Ought to be Bipartisan Goal - The Newnan Times Herald [link]

• If there is one thing that Democrats and Republicans ought to agree upon, it is the fulfillment of President Ronald Reagan's efforts to negotiate binding and effective control of nuclear arms.
• That is the conclusion of one of the historians of the Cold War arms race, David E. Hoffman. Writing in Foreign Policy magazine, he chastised Republican opponents of the new strategic arms treaty.
• Hoffman called the Romney position "crude exaggeration of the Russian threat (that) makes no sense in today's world, which is far more transparent than in earlier decades."
• Increasing the safety of the U.S. ought to be a bipartisan goal. The Obama-signed treaty, as Hoffman says, is the culmination of decades of work by both parties. We urge U.S. senators to back the treaty.

New START Support: The Graph - Ben Loehrke for The Prague Project [link]

• The bipartisan support for the New START treaty has been so overwhelming that die-hard treaty opponents are having a hard time finding credible experts to back up their claims. That doesn’t keep them from trying.
• The Heritage Foundation recently posted a blog saying: "One of the most egregious arguments peddled by New START proponents is that no reasonable arms control expert is opposed to New START. That is blatantly false. Americans deserve honesty in this debate…The list of experts is large…"
• Heritage wants to tally expert opinions on the treaty. Challenge accepted. Treaty supporters: 70; Heritage's treaty opponents: 6
• The scoreboard overwhelmingly favors New START. The policy debate has been settled. It’s time for the Senate to ratify this treaty so that the United States can reap the national security benefits that the treaty provides.

Hiroshima's Scars Confer Obligation: Editorial - The Cleveland Plain Dealer [link]

• For many around the world, nuclear weapons are more a shrug than a nightmare.
• Such complacency is misguided. The powerful devices of today dwarf Little Boy and Fat Man.
• The U.S. Senate must lose no more time in ratifying the updated START I strategic arms treaty between Washington and Moscow; the delays this year have been unconscionable.
• Ohio Sen. George Voinovich, long an advocate of arms control, needs to lead the way for his fellow Republicans.

Cherry Hill Producer's 'Countdown' is More than Conversation Starter - The Courier Post [link]

• With his latest movie, Cherry Hill's Lawrence Bender wants to make your blood run cold.
• But it's not what you think. He is not interested in traditional horror movie gimmicks. Bender's latest production, "Countdown to Zero,'' cuts a lot deeper than any slasher movie could.
• "We could have made the film even more scary,'' says Bender during a recent telephone interview. He continued, "We had quotes from (experts) saying that (a nuclear disaster) is not a question of if, but of when. But more than anything, we wanted the movie to be a wake-up call.''
• Bender insists "Countdown to Zero'' is non-partisan. "I like to say that one of my favorite segments of the movie is about our great liberal President Reagan, who (along with Gorbachev) had a dream of eliminating nuclear weapons.''