The Daily Sandwich

"We have to learn the lesson that intellectual honesty is fundamental for everything we cherish." -Sir Karl Popper

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Location: Boston, Massachusetts, United States

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Friday, April 21, 2006

Nobel laureates speak out against Bush's nuclear ambitions

It's happened before, as the article points out, and this won't make any difference to the administration either. But it's good to see even more people with clout take a stand against their disastrous policies.

Thirteen of the nation's most prominent physicists have written a letter to President Bush, calling U.S. plans to reportedly use nuclear weapons against Iran "gravely irresponsible" and warning that such action would have "disastrous consequences for the security of the United States and the world."

The physicists include five Nobel laureates, a recipient of the National Medal of Science and three past presidents of the American Physical Society, the nation's preeminent professional society for physicists.

Their letter was prompted by recent articles in the Washington Post, New Yorker and other publications that one of the options being considered by Pentagon planners and the White House in a military confrontation with Iran includes the use of nuclear bunker busters against underground facilities. These reports were neither confirmed nor denied by White House and Pentagon officials.

The letter was initiated by Jorge Hirsch, a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, who last fall put together a petition signed by more than 1,800 physicists that repudiated new U.S. nuclear weapons policies that include preemptive use of nuclearweapons against non-nuclear adversaries. Hirsch has also published 15 articles in recent months documenting the dangers associated with a potential U.S. nuclear strike on Iran.

Wouldn't it just be super-neato to have a president who thought that military leaders and top scientists might be worth listening to? At least he still has that charming sense of humor.