Calling all DUers who were children in the 50's and 60's..your expertise is needed

[struggle4progress]

33. The best thing would be to get rid of the nuclear weapons world wide, but

this is not an entirely simple matter

The first thing you need to do is to understand some pieces of a very large puzzle

One goal should be Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty -- but this will depend on sufficiently transparent international inspection arrangements: thus (for example) the noise about supposed Iranian efforts to produce bomb-grade material must be regarded as part of the picture, or at least as part of the politics; and if the Iranian story ceases to excite interest, you should expect some other similar story to replace it in the news

Eliminating nuclear weapons will probably involve some covert action and espionage into the foreseeable future

IMO the Valerie Plame case was, in part, about Bush administration sabotage of counter-proliferation efforts, with an ultimate aim of jump-starting the nuclear weapons industry. At one point, Bush administration signals about nuclear weapons had Brazil threatening to back out of the non-proliferaton treaty

It didn't help any when Edward Snowden ran off to China and gave the Chinese press some information on Chinese nuclear policy sites the NSA had hacked or tried to hack

Because of the dangers of nuclear weapons, the very existence of nuclear weapons has helped build and justify the modern national security state

And aother piece of the puzzle is the nuclear power industry, governed in part under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which makes clear that "national security" is an overarching reason for promoting nuclear power