Under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi, the House has been hotly debating the supplemental, and all that it implies. We welcome this debate; and we encourage you to find out how your Members of Congress participated.

This week, Congress will be voting on the supplemental budget that funds the war. Tell your Representative to vote No. Take action now! Email or call: 202 225 3121 (Capitol Switchboard) Read the WAND action alert here.

Preventive war? Preventive action. The time to stop the next war is now. While Congress wrangles over funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many believe that the administration is considering undertaking yet another military action on foreign shores -- this time, in Iran. This, despite the fact that the situation in Iraq has clearly shown that using force before we have exhausted every other alternative is foolish, deadly, and counterproductive.

FEDERAL BUDGET WATCH

WiLL organizes hundreds of women state legislators, from all 50 states, to sign onto letter to Congress about the proposed FY08 federal budget
Many of them WiLL members, they joined the effort to urge Congress to redirect money away from the Pentagon and toward real security programs. We delivered the letter March 12, 2007 to all Members of Congress. Yay for us.

NUCLEAR NOTES

So-called "Divine Strake" test cancelled!

WAND is delighted to report that the Pentagon has cancelled plans to detonate a massive blast at the Nevada Test Site.

In sortof related news, a mock nuclear blast in California has been cancelled as well... The news, dear reader...

Breaking under a flood of public opposition to Divine Strake, the Pentagon announced Thursday that it would scrap plans to conduct the massive blast at the Nevada Test Site.

Some 10,000 Utahns and Nevadans expressed fears that the detonation of 700 tons of explosives could spew debris into the air, carrying radiation left over from Cold War nuclear weapons tests at the test site.
"I have become convinced that it's time to look at alternative methods that obviate the need for this type of large-scale test," Defense Threat Reduction Agency Director Dr. James A. Tegnelia said in a statement announcing the cancellation of the test.

The San Joaquin Air Pollution Control District landed a blow to the federal government's efforts to test its nuclear weapons arsenal by rescinding its decision to allow the lab to blow up radioactive 350-pound bombs in an open field near Tracy.

The tests, planned for an open field off Interstate 580 in the Altamont Hills, were to be part of a multibillion-dollar U.S. effort to simulate full-scale nuclear weapons blasts to determine the reliability of the nation's nuclear arsenal.

Three tests were to be conducted over the next 18 months on Site 300, a 7,000-acre site owned by the lab, but lab officials didn't fully disclose everything that was to be involved -- that the explosions would contain a radioactive material called depleted uranium.

Sen. Feinstein on "Reliable Replacement Warhead"
Full statement here.

There is a long history of this Administration seeking to reopen the nuclear door, and I am 100 percent opposed to this. While I appreciate the fact that Lawrence Livermore was selected, this in no way answers my questions about the Reliable Replacement Warhead program.

I question why the National Nuclear Security Administration is seeking a significant increase in funding for the program at a time when:

• The Secretary of Energy and Secretary of Defense have certified that the nuclear stockpile is safe and reliable for 11 straight years.
• There is no new military requirement to replace existing, well-tested warheads and;
• a December 2006 report by the National Laboratories showed that plutonium pits have a life-span of at least 85 years,

What worries me is that the minute you begin to put more sophisticated warheads on the existing fleet, you are essentially creating a new nuclear weapon. And it’s just a matter of time before other nations do the same thing.

Published on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
The Words None Dare Say: Nuclear War
by George Lakoff

Thanks to George Lakoff for addressing this issue in the strongest possible terms. If the U.S. keeps saying "all options on the table" in dealing with Iran, it is saying: first strike nuclear war.

And nuclear war is nuclear war: radioactive fallout, instant incineration of innocent people, years of aftermath, an invitation to total and mutual destruction.

To use words like "low yield" or "small" or "mini-" nuclear weapon is like speaking of being a little bit pregnant. Nuclear war is nuclear war! It crosses the moral line.

It crosses the moral line. Exactly. It is wrong. For Iran, for Iraq, and for the U.S. and our allies.

Nuclear war is wrong. Ugly. Irreversible.

How have we come to the point where we've forgotten what it looked like in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? This is a pivotal and terrible moment in our history.

Many analysts say the Bush administration's plan would undermine international efforts to control the spread of nuclear arms and would provide justification to those countries currently suspected of trying to build such weapons.

Bush Tests His Nuclear Agenda
CQ WEEKLY | March 12, 2007 – Page 726

Nearly two decades after the end of the Cold War, the issue of nuclear weapons once again is at the center of the debate over national security.

The Bush administration’s efforts to control the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran are just the latest manifestation of a problem that was thought by many to be receding in urgency with the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is now surging in importance again, as a new set of countries, including India and Pakistan, forms a second nuclear tier. And the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran and North Korea threatens to create a third tier of nuclear states that could encompass Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

But as President Bush tries to contain the spread of nuclear weapons, another debate on the issue is brewing at home. Bush, like all his predecessors since the end of World War II, has included the nation’s nuclear arsenal as a critical part of his national defense strategy. For decades, that part had been effectively neutralized by the threat of mutually assured destruction from the world’s other great nuclear power in the Soviet Union. In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, however, Bush has expanded the official doctrine governing the use of nuclear weapons to include retaliatory strikes for conventional terrorists attacks and even pre-emptive nuclear strikes to stop an attack before it occurs.

Moreover, for the first time in nearly two decades, Bush is pushing for the development of new nuclear weapons to meet the unpredictable threats of the 21st century. These have included a nuclear “bunker buster” to destroy al Qaeda command posts that may be buried deep underground or located inside caves, or to hit the nuclear facilities of Iran and North Korea, which are believed to be producing bomb-grade plutonium behind thick walls of reinforced concrete. So far, Congress has rejected his appeals.

But Bush is not giving up. He also is urging Congress to approve a new nuclear warhead that his administration wants to replace the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal left over from the Cold War. Administration officials say the biggest argument for this new warhead is that it will not require new underground testing and would therefore allow the United States to continue adhering to its voluntary 1992 ban on nuclear tests. Many scientists and anti-proliferation advocates are skeptical of such claims, while non-proliferation advocates say Bush’s policies are undermining U.S. credibility in its quest to contain the nuclear ambitions of other countries.

Busywork for Nuclear Scientists
New York Times | January 15, 2007

The Bush administration is eager to start work on a new nuclear warhead with all sorts of admirable qualities: sturdy, reliable and secure from terrorists. To sweeten the deal, officials say that if they can replace the current arsenal with Reliable Replacement Warheads (what could sound more comforting?), they probably won’t have to keep so many extra warheads to hedge against technical failure. If you’re still not sold, the warhead comes with something of a guarantee - that scientists can build the new bombs without ever testing them.

Let the buyer beware. While the program has gotten very little attention here, it is a public-relations disaster in the making overseas. Suspicions that the United States is actually trying to build up its nuclear capabilities are undercutting Washington’s arguments for restraining the nuclear appetites of Iran and North Korea.

IRAQ UPDATES

The Women's War
By Sara Corbett | New York Times | Sunday, March 18, 2007

...I was immersed in a series of interviews with women who'd gone to Iraq and come home with PTSD. I was trying to understand how being a woman fit into both the war and the psychological consequences of war. The story I heard over and over, the dominant narrative really, followed similar lines to Swift's: allegations of sexual trauma, often denied or dismissed by superiors; ensuing demotions or court-martials; and lingering questions about what actually occurred....

...No matter how you look at it, Iraq is a chaotic war in which an unprecedented number of women have been exposed to high levels of stress. So far, more than 160,000 female soldiers have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, as compared with the 7,500 who served in Vietnam and the 41,000 who were dispatched to the gulf war in the early '90s. Today one of every 10 U.S. soldiers in Iraq is female.

Despite the fact that women are generally limited to combat-support roles in the war, they are arguably witnessing a historic amount of violence.

WAND is part of a coalition of groups working every day to move Congress to do something already about the war. Please explore the site.

The prospects that either the House or the Senate measure would will win final passage were always considered slim, given that the Senate legislation needed a so-called supermajority of 60 to advance. Even so, the White House issued forceful veto threats, sending a clear signal to Republicans where the president stood. The White House also worked behind the scenes this week to keep Republicans on board.

Both parties consider these measures an important political statement, a measure of how far the debate over Iraq has moved in recent months, and a sign of Americans’ discontent with the war.

'Surge' doomed to final failure
By H.D.S. Greenway | March 13, 2007 | Boston Globe

When the president and surge proponents talk about restoring law and order to Baghdad, they underestimate the fact that it is the very presence of American soldiers themselves who are sparking the resistance, and thus the chaotic conditions in which criminals can operate, and militias appear to be the population's only salvation. Americans may try to do their jobs humanely, but the nature of their business is coercive, brutal, and ultimately counterproductive.

But aren't the American soldiers there to stop sectarian violence -- to stop Iraqis from killing each other? Colonial powers, when they take over a foreign land, can keep the remaining power structure, as the British did in Iraq by ruling though the Sunnis, or they can upset the existing order and empower the previously down trodden, as the Americans did with the Shia. In America's case, the United States now doesn't like what it wished for, and has decided to fight both the Sunni insurgents and the Shia militias, inserting itself into a civil war.

In the end, however, both the Shia and Sunnis will oppose us because they don't want foreign soldiers in their land. As the occupation enters its fifth year, the Iraqis on America's side, or working for Americans, are seen increasingly as collaborators.

The longer American troops stay the longer they will be seen as oppressors, and because they have to do their job, the more pictures we will see of cowering, frightened, and humiliated Iraqis.

House Panel Approves Bill To Fund War, Set Timeline
Democrats Still Lack Votes to Pass Measure Left and Right Assail

By Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray
Washington Post | March 16, 2007

...White House officials are increasingly convinced that Democrats have the votes and the fortitude to provoke a dramatic clash with the president. Senate Democratic leaders said that the fight over their Iraq resolution was a prelude to their own efforts to shape Iraq policy through the war-spending bill. That language is expected to be finalized as early as Monday,