Again: We're rallying to urge Congress to deny funding for new nukes  Several peace and security groups work together to keep track of our enormous nuclear arsenal; and to organize members and friends to take action to, at the very least, prevent new ones.

We welcome the statement this month from the Union of Concerned Scientists. And we urge you to take action today.

Scientists Call On Next President to Take Unilateral Steps to Reduce Nuclear Weapons Threat, Set World on Path toward Prohibition
Twenty-Three Nobel Laureates among Signatories
...By giving nuclear weapons so large and visible a role in U.S. policy, and by planning to maintain and even upgrade its nuclear arsenal indefinitely, the United States has increased the incentive for other nations to acquire nuclear weapons, and reduced the political costs to them of doing so. The United States has further bolstered this incentive by threatening to use nuclear weapons against states that do not possess them...

FEDERAL BUDGET WATCH

Notes from the WAND News Bulletin editor You'd think most of our military and defense and security dollars would be oriented toward programs that deal with real threats to our country, right? Not so much.

Today in my conspiracy theory world, it looks to me like those things don't make certain people very very rich. Diplomacy doesn't pay that well, and certainly doesn't require fancy night vision goggles. Nonproliferation efforts don't rely on fancy new helicopters. Foreign language training may use an MP3 player at best...

Whereas, well, to keep up the good fight against the Soviet Union, you gotta pay some defense contractors a whole lotta moolah. And they like that. And they spend money to convince people (e.g., Members of Congress) that it's what we have to do.

Today, I give you this. As if Missile Defense weren't expensive and faulty and foolish enough... (I have boldfaced the company names for your reading pleasure.)

Flight Global (4/8, Trimble) reported, "The U.S. military has begun talks with contractors to potentially acquire, after 2010, the first air-launched weapon for shooting down ballistic missiles." Both Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are competing for the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) project, "proposing variations of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 and AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, respectively." The finalized weapon "may offer military planners the first air-launched missile capable of reaching the edge of space since a US Air Force Boeing F-15 successfully shot down a satellite in 1985 using the short-lived ASM-135 anti-satellite missile." Flight Global notes that Raytheon "has demonstrated two critical technologies" for the proposed weapon, including the ability of an "infrared seeker" to "distinguish between the exhaust plume and the body of a ballistic missile," as well as the use of the "missile's novel monopropellant, hydroxylammonium nitrate," as "fuel for a second-stage rocket motor developed by Aerojet."

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand
By DAVID BARSTOW | New York Times | April 20, 2008

...Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

More Leeway Sought on Foreign Aid Spending
By Ann Scott Tyson | Washington Post | April 16, 2008

Presenting an unusual combined front against skeptical lawmakers, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed Congress yesterday to extend and make permanent a set of initiatives to train and equip foreign security forces and deploy civilian experts alongside the U.S. military...

Also from the article:

Rice pointed out that the Foreign Service is about 6,500 strong, about the same as the number of musicians in military bands. Gates castigated Congress for not giving State "the resources or the power to be able to play the role as the lead agency in American foreign policy."

WAND would castigate the Administration for submitting a budget that gives 90% of its security dollars to the Pentagon and only 4% to international engagement.

A Taxing Economy
Center for American Progress Action Fund | April 15, 2008
by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Ali Frick, and Benjamin Armbruster
This past year has been tough on U.S. taxpayers, with their hard-earned money going toward the Bush administration's misplaced priorities: a personal chef for an ineffective Housing and Urban Development Secretary and new contracts for an exploding defense contracting industry. Even the Internal Revenue Service is wasting $37 million in taxpayers' money by hiring expensive, ineffective private debt collectors to "pursue tax scofflaws," a task that could arguably be done more effectively by the agency itself. Read more

NUCLEAR NOTES

No new nuclear weapons complex
The Bush administration is trying to reignite the U.S. nuclear weapons program. They want to build new nuclear weapons at eight sites across the U.S. (The plan is called Complex Transformation.) The plan would set up the infrastructure to allow the U.S. to build new nuclear weapons in the future. This would violate our moral and legal obligations to reduce the weapons arsenal.

The Energy Department is currently accepting public comments. Send a Message to the DOE by April 30

Nuclear Weapons Plan Costly, Analysis Says
By John Fleck | Albuquerque Journal | March 26, 2008

Federal officials say they want to save money by consolidating nuclear weapons manufacturing work in Los Alamos and Oak Ridge, Tenn.
But doing that will add more than $1 billion per year in short-term construction spending to the federal budget by 2012, according to an analysis by a federal contractor.

The need for extra money to build major new nuclear buildings comes at a time when federal officials acknowledge they face flat budgets for the foreseeable future.

National Nuclear Security Administration officials say they believe they can find savings elsewhere to make up the difference. Critics say that is unlikely and that the weapons manufacturing proposal is unrealistic.
"It's like trying to get someone who has a size 12 foot into a size 8 shoe," said David Culp, a Washington, D.C., lobbyist for the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a peace group.
"The prospects are zero," Culp said.

The Office of Disarmament Affairs is offering a print verision of of The United Nations Disarmament Yearbook Volume 32 (Part I): 2007 "Disarmament Resolutions and Decisions of the Sixty-Second Session of the United Nations General Assembly." To download the PDF or view it online, click here.

Kyl Excerpts from Missile Defense Conference
Senator Jon Kyl Press Office | March 10, 2008
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) today delivered remarks on missile defense priorities at the American Foreign Policy Council’s “Missile Defense and American Security” conference. For excerpts, visit the press office.

"Business of the Bomb: The Modern Nuclear Marketplace"
A new American RadioWorks documentary has been posted on the American Public Media website. Produced in partnership with the Center for Investigative Reporting, with support from Ploughshares Fund, the program tracks two ominous trends: the increase in the number of nations seeking to enrich uranium for energy, and the emergence of international networks for smuggling nuclear weapons technology.

Listen online, or hear it when it is broadcast on your local radio station; it will also be available as a podcast on iTunes next month.

WAND public policy director Marie Rietmann lives smack in the heart of Capitol Hill, and found this story more than a little disturbing...

"This is about a very sobering hearing this week. Sobering for me especially because I LIVE in the city described, in the blast zone. And it should also be sobering for the many people who have visited here. Note: your favorite places to visit are in the blast zone, too. It focuses the mind to read about all these specific locations and what will happen where if/when a nuclear device is detonated. The Washington Post chose to put this in the Metro section; apparently it is not actually of interest to the nation that we should be concerned about a nuclear device detonating here. This inspires me to work even harder to a) increase support for nonproliferation and b) do what we can to cause others in the world to not hate us so much."

Risk of Nuclear Attack on Rise
More Emergency Prep Could Be Done, Experts Tell Senate
By Mary Beth Sheridan | Washington Post | April 16, 2008

"The scenarios we discuss today are so hard for us to contemplate and so emotionally traumatic that it is tempting to push them aside," said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), the panel's chairman. "However, now is the time to have this difficult conversation, to ask the tough questions, then to get answers."

IRAQ UPDATES

What's really interesting about this article: where does it belong? Under Women's Voices (it's about the first female Speaker of the House wielding power!)? Under the Iraq war? Under Federal Budget? It's the perfect storm of WAND issues in one article...

War Funding Bill Will Put Pelosi's Strength to the Test
By Jonathan Weisman | Washington Post | Sunday, April 20, 2008

After years of seeing the House pushed around by President Bush, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has learned to say no...

"I think that the president has finally realized that the leverage has changed," Pelosi said. "That is the question: Who has the leverage? I think the president realizes now that we do."

In large part, Pelosi's new resolve comes from a changing political environment, according to Democratic aides. With the economy slowing, the war dragging on and Bush's popularity ratings as low as ever, swing-state Democrats are finding their reelection prospects improving steadily. That has given Pelosi more latitude in her confrontations with Republicans.

The economic downturn also has put the war funding fight in a new light, with domestic concerns now weighed against foreign policy ventures. Record gasoline prices have made assistance to oil-rich Iraq more difficult for lawmakers of both parties to accept.

"The Iraqi government has been grotesquely irresponsible with the money we have given them," grumbled Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.).

The Two Wars in Iraq: Ours and Theirs
By Lisa Schirch | Washington Post Global

Americans and Iraqis tell two different stories about the war in Iraq... General Petraeus cautioned more than a year ago that in Iraq "there is no military solution, the solution is economic and political." If the U.S. presence is indeed fueling rather than curbing violence in Iraq, it is time to go a step further, by withdrawing U.S. troops, supporting international peacekeeping forces, initiating robust regional diplomacy, and investing in reconstruction and humanitarian aid for the nearly five million displaced Iraqis. This plan would more accurately respond to the true democratic wishes of the Iraqi people.

The Surge Turns Into the Stall
By Eugene Robinson | Washinton Post | Friday, April 11, 2008

Even the most basic question of any war is undefined: Who is the enemy? It was almost painful listening to Petraeus as he faced reporters yesterday and was asked whether Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army were friend or foe. His tortured answer, translated into English, was yes.

New Roadmap for U.S. Engagement with the World
April 2008 | Full information here.

Women’s Action for New Directions has been working with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and numerous colleague organizations to seize the opportunity for significant change in U.S. foreign policy presented by the 2009 transition to new U.S. leadership.

The initiative we have developed will advance a slate of concrete, coordinated recommendations for significant reforms in both the structures and goals of U.S. engagement with the world – from the broadest possible spectrum of supporting organizations and institutions – to help the incoming Administration and congressional leaders act effectively and efficiently in response to the broad support that exists for a change of direction in U.S. foreign policy.

An Iraqi View of the War
Washington Post | April 14, 2008

Answering his own rhetorical question about the future between the United States and Iraq, Sumaidaie said, "There is not going to be a magic transformation. . . . The Americans got themselves into this and they bear a lot of responsibility for what has happened."

In the end, however, the ambassador acknowledged, "We want them [U.S. forces] to leave. Let's be very clear. Ultimately, Iraq has to be independent -- totally independent, stand on its own feet, and have a long-term relationship with the United States built on mutual interest."

IRAN HAPPENINGS