An atomic threat made in America

[struggle4progress]

Posted on Thu, Feb. 01, 2007
By Sam Roe
Chicago Tribune (MCT)

The specter of nuclear warfare waged by North Korea or Iran has hung over the world in recent months. But beyond that fear and foreboding looms a more far-reaching threat: the vast amount of nuclear bomb-grade material scattered across the globe.

And it wasn't Kim Jong Il or the ayatollahs of Iran who put it there. America did.

For a time, in a misguided Cold War program called Atoms for Peace, the U.S. actually supplied this material - highly enriched uranium, a key component of nuclear weapons. The Soviets followed suit.

The threat still posed by these stockpiles, particularly in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, is so dire that the keepers of the Doomsday Clock cited the issue as among their chief concerns this month when they moved the iconic measure of global security closer to midnight ... <more>

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/nation/16594547.htm