Reminder for the day...

.. while it's desirable that the foreign ministers talk about Iran, they don't seem to devote any thought to the fact that there are still some 27,000 real nuclear weapons in the world. - Reminder from Hans Blix, head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission from January 2000 to June 2003, when he was succeeded by Demetrius Perricos. Remember that Blix, author of the book, Disarming Iraq, was Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq in 2002, when the commission began searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, and repeatedly said there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD's) in post-1990s Iraq, which has been proven correct leading Blix (and others) to the conclusion that the Iraq war was 'planned well in advance. Sometimes this raises doubts about their attitude to the (weapons) inspections'. Little doubt then that the Pentagon & Bush administration in-turn took to undermine Blix's efforts and even lauched a smear campaign against Blix.

Book on this subject.. Nuclear Terrorism by Graham Allison, in which the author, a founding dean of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, arguing that the only way to eliminate nuclear terrorism's threat is to lock down the weapons at the source, Allison recommends nothing less than a new international order based on no insecure nuclear material, no new facilities for processing uranium or enriching plutonium and no new nuclear states. Those policies, Allison believes, do not stretch beyond the achievable, if pursued by a combination of quid pro quos and intimidation in an international context of negotiation and a U.S. foreign policy he describes as "humble." A humble policy in turn will facilitate building a world alliance against nuclear terrorism and acquiring the intelligence necessary for success against prospective nuclear terrorists. ..... "We do not have the luxury," he declares, "of hoping the beast will simply go away." - Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.

I have ranted against nuclear weapons elsewhere...but just thought I'd add this as a reminder to all of us for the day!