More Nukes

While I am not one to march outside of Davis-Monthan or anything, I have been a member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) for several years now. Most of the time I think some of the members have had a tad too much sugar, or perhaps smoked a leetle too much weed in the 60s. I mean, they would love to have civil disobedience every third day of the week, and nothing pisses them off more than a living, breathing Republican. I attended the meetings for a little while and then discovered that 1. Mentioning that Marti used to be in the Marine Corps brought silence to a room, and 2. I was the youngest person there by 40 years. At least. Also? I tend to be very moderate, at least in comparison, although by some of my family members standards I am a screaming liberal. And I don't like marching around nuclear testing sites, it's very bad for my complexion (and my ovaries)

Nevertheless, I was rather shocked when I stumbled across this article in the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 — The Bush administration is expected to announce next week a major step forward in the building of the country’s first new nuclear warhead in nearly two decades. It will propose combining elements of competing designs from two weapons laboratories in an approach that some experts argue is untested and risky.

The new weapon would not add to but replace the nation’s existing arsenal of aging warheads, with a new generation meant to be sturdier, more reliable, safer from accidental detonation and more secure from theft by terrorists.

The article goes on to say that the government wants two competing labs to make a hybrid which MAY OR MAY NOT be safe, because if not one weapons lab will go out of business. I'm sorry? I thought we all agreed only to pour money into one failing business *cough - Amtrak - cough* ? What is up with this? I like to call it Republican charity, because those poor weapons laboratories, they are starving, and we wouldn't want them on the streets.

*sigh*

I suppose there is something to be said about not pissing off the guys who build the bombs. Nevertheless, am I the only one who thinks its a tiny bit hypocritical to be "renewing" our nuclear warheads at a time when we are fighting two wars and sanctioning or threatening sanctions to several other countries for... developing nuclear warheads? I know some redneck would say, "But we need to be number one, superior, keep our world power status, blah blah blah" but honestly -- developing more nuclear weapons? Will keep us safer? Come on. We already have Paris Hilton. Do we really need another weapon more deadly than that?