Hiroshima Just Another Do As I Say, Not As I Do Obama Moment

RedState - Friday May 27, 2016

by Dan Spencer

In another audacious do as I say, not as I do moment, President Barack Hussein Obama, during his Hiroshima junket, read a fairly good speech in which he called for reducing stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

An international community established institutions and treaties that work to avoid war and aspire to restrict and roll back and ultimately eliminate the existence of nuclear weapons.

[. . .]

But among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.

We may not realize this goal in my lifetime, but persistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe. We can chart a course that leads to the destruction of these stockpiles.

You can read the transcript of Obama’s Hiroshima speech as recorded by The New York Times here.

Obama’s speech came as the Pentagon released a new census of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, according to the New York Times shows that the Obama administration “last year dismantled its smallest number of warheads since taking office.” Worse, under Obama’s reign, the U. S. “has reduced the nuclear stockpile less than any other post-Cold War presidency”:

The new figures show that in 2015 the Obama administration dismantled 109 warheads, the fewest of his presidency and down from a peak of 356 in 2009, his first year in office.

The slowdown came despite Secretary of State John Kerry’s telling global arms controllers in April 2015 that “President Obama has decided that the United States will seek to accelerate the dismantlement of retired nuclear warheads by 20 percent.”

In March, in its annual report to Congress, the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the nation’s nuclear arsenal, laid responsibility for the slowdown to “safety reviews, unusually high lightning events, and a worker strike at Pantex,” a sprawling dismantlement plant in Texas. Lightning strikes at the plant can set off the high explosives used in destroying nuclear arms.

There is more. In addition to his record slow pace of nuclear warhead dismantlement and stockpile reduction, Obama’s plans to “modernize’ the U.S. nuclear weapons and delivery systems are “anything but modest”:

In open and classified reports to Congress, Mr. Obama laid out his atomic refurbishment plans, which the Congressional Budget Office now estimates will cost $355 billion over the next decade. But that is just the start. The price tag will soar after 10 years as missiles, bombers and submarines made in the last century reach the end of their useful lives and replacements are built.

When you include the A new generation of missiles, bombers and submarines the cost for Obama’s new nuclear arsenal is about $1 trillion.

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