Right, so this week, I'm going to tie together space travel and nuclear first strike, and it's going to be a lot easier than you think. First, space travel.

I have no idea whatsoever what the general reaction in the States has been to the Columbia disaster. However, there's definitely been a perception here that Americans are overreacting in some ways to what happened. I don't agree with that.

My suspicion is that things like people being arrested for taking bits of the shuttle has translated here to overreaction. My opinion is, if someone's stealing government property like the shuttle, which obviously we need to study and determine why it blew up if we've any plans of ever having a shuttle again, is that the thieves should be hanging from the nearest tree. If you're going to fuck with the recovery process simply to have a piece of what, admittedly, is history, you're pretty much scum in my book.

Because we need to know what happened. Normally I don't agree with that. I don't care why a plane crashed, I could give two shits why what happened happened normally. Under normal circumstances, the urge to explain and understand what happened seems to me to be some sort of emotional masturbation for most people - a sort of ghoulish desire to know why something, that may have happened for no reason, occurred.

However, in this case, it's pretty clear to me that the government's policy towards NASA will be determined by knowing what happened here. It's going to be too easy for the Bush Administration to to say that the space program is too dangerous and not cost effective if several billion dollars worth of shuttle are going to blow up. Consequently, in this case I'd argue that we need to know, and the wreckage needs to be studied. There is, for me, little that could be considered overreaction in a case where the future of space flight may hang in the balance.

On the other hand, this does seem to be - since the theory I've seen lately is that the wing edges were brittle from repeated re-entry and may have just shed the heat-resistant tiling, causing the heat of reentry to make the shuttle blow - something that could be blown out of proportion. Let's not lose sight of the fact that this accident seems to be exactly that, an accident. It's the equivalent of wrapping your car around a telephone pole. There's a cause, sure, but it's just an accident.

Which brings me to the possibility of nuclear first strike, by two means. The first is that this would not, and that's "not" in big-assed capital letters, be an accident. The second is that in times of national tragedy - and we all saw this one right after 9/11 - we tend to ignore what the government is doing as we try to assuage our grief. Whether the country as a whole should be feeling grief is one that I don't want to get into. Certainly as a healthy thing yes, but let's not let it run our lives, okay?

I have here an article, reprinted in The Guardian, written by Teddy Kennedy, arguing against nuclear first strike. Unfortunately, I'm not yet allowed in the Senate during closed session, so I've got to take his word for it, but what the hell. His point, once you strip away the dross of being against terrorism, yadda-yadda-yadda, is that Bush, in considering a nuclear strike against a non-nuclear nation will alienate the international community and send a dangerous message to other nuclear powers. Also, in direct contravention of the speech where Bush stated that the "gravest danger our nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology," the use of nuclear weapons would put the US firmly into the category of radical technological response.

I agree whole-heartedly. The thought that we might need to use nuclear weapons against Iraq is one of the most absolutely, insanely preposterous propositions I've ever heard. There has been no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and there is absolutely no reason to assume that, even if we were stupid enough to go to war against Iraq, that we would face any sort of threat that would even come close to justifying the use of nukes.

Given the response to Rumsfeld by the German foreign minister the other day, we're already dangerously close to alienating allies with this stupid war. We've pretty clearly told Turkey to call on the NATO convention, to justify the war, and as a result of that, we're endangering the existence of NATO, simply because Bush wants a war.

In other words, do we need to permanently alienate our allies by using nukes? We're dancing - pardon the pun - on the brink of such an alienation, and if we did use nukes, guess what India and Pakistan would do? Taking the nuclear genie out of the bottle now would be a licence for all the states that are following our lead on the War On Terrorism to do the same in their disagreements. Fortunately, there aren't that many nuclear states, and whatever anyone else says, I don't believe that North Korea will ever launch a nuclear first strike, but of the nuclear states, India and Pakistan are firmly a) pissed off at us over Afghanistan (pretty much Pakistan only, actually) and b) pretty clearly using the cover of the War On Terrorism to justify fighting each other over Kashmir. So now, if we nuke Iraq, we tell them to nuke each other. Go ahead, it's okay, this is the New World Order! All such actions are justified! Particularly if you've got no evidence that they're necessary!

But going back to the alienation of allies. It's pretty clear that that's the goal. The US is feeling threatened by the European Union. After all, once that gets going (which will be never, frankly) we're going to have to pay a lot more attention to what Europe thinks. Right now, we're able to pretty much act unilaterally, simply because Europe is divided on the issue of foreign policy and, essentially, has none. It's like the Polish parliament where every member had veto right and all decisions had to be unanimous.

In part with Rumsfeld's division of Europe and the letter of solidarity, and in part with the potential for nuclear first strike, we're not dealing with Iraq anymore. We're dealing with the fact that Bush wants to be the biggest kid on the block, the one everyone looks up to because he's so powerful, but the one everyone's afraid of too, for the same reason. And quite frankly, his toybox is a lot bigger than Europe's at this point.

But do you see what's happening? In the guise of a war on Iraq, which is disguised as a War On Terror, Bush is going to, over our backs and in our names, make the US into the only superpower in the world again. He doesn't want Europe to be a superpower, because then we'd have to ask for permission to bomb the fuck out of the third world. He doesn't want to have to be responsible to anyone other than himself, and his Cabinet. If he was at all interested in responding to anyone else, like the American voters, he'd have backed off on the war with Iraq by now. If he wanted to have to consult the EU for advice, he wouldn't be standing around with letters of solidarity that effectively and thoroughly divide Europe and tell part of it to fuck off, we're talking to the other part.

This man only understands face. He doesn't understand diplomacy - his attempts at manipulating the situation have been laughable and transparent. He's gone too far to back down without losing face, so he's going to go to war, because - even though he'll lose face there - he at least won't have to go home and admit what he did, when he tried to create a war out of nothingness. The void of the war is without form, but God ain't movin' over the face of the void.

I remember the slogan that my mother had on a bumper sticker for absolutely years: Nuclear war means never having to say you're sorry.

Bush ain't big on apologizing. He won't back down until we, as Americans, who've elected this fuckwit, step up and do it for him. We can either go to war against Iraq, and alienate the rest of the world in the various ways we've figured out, or we can realize that we're going to have to solve the economy and our domestic problems domestically (which Bush isn't interested in doing, thanks).

My opinion is to impeach the fucker. There's got to be some way that we can say that he's committed an impeachment-worthy offence. And I know that Congress is Republican dominated and they'll never vote to impeach. But we're Americans, for fuck's sake. We're supposedly the most powerful people in the world, with the most freedoms, and with the proudest heritage of fighting for that freedom (I'm thinking of the Revolutionary War, not this current shit).

Let's fight for those freedoms again. If we can't impeach the son of a bitch, let's force him out some other way. If I was at home right now, I'd be leading the first charge against the White House. If I ever find that bastard who's turning the Presidency into a dictatorship, I will kill him.

It's like putting down a rabid dog. You kill it before it can infect other animals and people.

And Bush is frothing at the mouth.

Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose,

Channon