A Not so Evil Empire?

Russian Bear Bomber (carrying atomic bombs)


Russian atomic bombs in a museum.


I am so sorry, but I have a very hard time getting my brain around the following:

U.S. and Russia to Enter Civilian Nuclear Pact
Bush Reverses Long-Standing Policy, Allows Agreement That May Provide Leverage on Iran

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 8, 2006; Page A01

President Bush has decided to permit extensive U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation with Russia for the first time, administration officials said yesterday..... (emphasis added)

I don't need to do any research on this one. I clearly remember getting under my desk in third grade when the sirens went off in the air raid drills, my dog tag clattering around my neck. (I never figured out who was going to identify me. Eisenhower in his bunker? He would have had a lot of kiddies to identify. Maybe not. We would be nuclear debris. As it is, I still have some Strontium 90 in my bones.) I clearly remember seeing a B-36 circling our airport but unable to land..it was too big. I recall the traveling road show by the U.S. Government that depicted an atomic attack with a city being destroyed (and looking like Baghdad today). And I have had an old time nightmare friend visit me on a regular basis obliterating my family in a bright and final flash.

It wasn't the Soviet Union that was the threat, it was the RUSSIANS. (My grandmother called them, correctly, "the Bolsheviks.")

Question (maybe rhetorical): Does not this same Russia still have nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them targeted to American cities? And this is the same State that we are going to cooperate with on nuclear matters? Am I missing something here? Why do we even need nuclear weapons any longer? The whole purpose of nuclear weapons was Mutually Assured Destruction with the "mutual" in MAD being Russia.

Oops. Maybe its the North Koreans. And, I guess, the Chinese. And the Indians, and the Pakistanis and the Israelis. Our Boy King probably thinks its the French!

Mr. Wizard, Mr. Wizard, please help me. I swear I am going nuts.

Oh, there is a little footnote to the above article:

A nuclear cooperation agreement would clear the way for Russia to import and store thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel from U.S.-supplied reactors around the world, a lucrative business so far blocked by Washington.

So, it is just a garbage deal. Sort of a "not in my backyard, buddy" situation. And it involves money. Lots of money. Oh, I understand now.

Footnote #2: And if you don't think that the Russians had it in for us, just take a gander at this bomb, the "Tsar Bomba":



This little baby weighed in at 50 Megatons! That's 2500 times the power of the bomb that obliterated Hiroshima. One was exploded with a "Parachute retarded airburst". And:

The fabrication of the massive parachute disrupted the Soviet nylon hosiery industry. It weighed 27 metric tons. Some were actually stockpiled.

Gosh, isn't history interesting.

Oh, by the way, Russia was still producing nuclear weapons and delivery systems as of 1997:

RT-2PM Topal

This single warhead missile is currently (late 1997) the only strategic nuclear delivery system in production in Russia.