Many, many moons ago, pinned down by a lynch mob of vendor representatives all shouting 'Troublemaker! Troublemaker!,' I squealed out my standard excuse, 'I don't look for trouble. Trouble looks for me!' But what still amazes me is how diligently it finds me.
-Barbara Quint
War & Peace Sometimes You Don't Even Know Where to Start
Deterrence doesn't work any more because even if Saddam and Kim Jong-Il are rational, skilled actors, you can't count on every national leader who might develop nukes being one.
Therefore, Derek argues, militant nonproliferation is the only option for the US (and presumably the rest of the nuclear club).
A common theme running through the critiques is that whatever policy we adopt toward nuclear proliferation must be perfect because if it is not perfect, a nuke might be used, and used against us or those we love. After all, the result of a nuke use would be horrible devastation. As Derek James puts it in a hypothetical:
We'd have tens of thousands of people dead, tens of thousands more burned and poisoned with radioactivity, and a molten, radioactive slagheap for downtown Boston.
All my critics argue that we can not have perfect certainty that deterrence will work, and they're right. But Derek especially leaps from that fact to a wholly unjustified faith that militant nonproliferation will work with perfect certainty. Again, from his item:
We have to follow a course of nonproliferation, the entire international community in concerted cooperation.
Or guess what? We're fucked.
Well, guess what: we're fucked.
· Troublemaking Years Ahead [Highclearing.com]
List of US Companies That Sold Weapons Technology to Iraq
Key: A - nuclear K - chemical B - biological R - rockets (missiles)
1. Honeywell (R,K) 2. Spektra Physics (K) 3. Semetex (R) 4. TI Coating (A,K) 5. UNISYS (A,K) 6. Sperry Corp. (R,K) 7. Tektronix (R,A) 8. Rockwell )(K) 9. Leybold Vacuum Systems (A) 10. Finnigan-MAT-U.S. (A) 11. Hewlett Packard (A.R,K) 12. Dupont (A) 13. Eastman Kodak (R) 14. American Type Culture Collection (B) 15. Alcolac International (C) 16. Consarc (A) 17. Carl Zeis -US (K) 18. Cerberus (LTD) (A) 19. Electronic Associates (R) 20. International Computer Systems 21. Bechtel (K) 22. EZ Logic Data Systems,Inc. (R) 23. Canberra Industries Inc. (A) 24. Axel Electronics Inc. (A)
This list doesn't include governmental and quasi-governmental agencies that gave technology to Iraq, including the Pentagon, Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, Sandia Labs, Los Alamos, and the Centers for Disease Control.
Source: Die Tageszeitung (Berlin daily newspaper), who says it came from the original Iraqi report to the UN Security Council.
