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Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Gaffney: Obama Nuclear Plan Takes 'Dangerous' Risks With U.S. Security

Leading national security expert Frank Gaffney has a few choice words for President Barack Obama’s policies on the production and use of nuclear weapons — “reckless,” “dangerous,” “irresponsible,” “ill-advised,” “very risky” and “catastrophic.”

Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, also tells Newsmax that Obama is taking “considerable risks” with Americans’ security, and his policies could ultimately lead to the “disarmament” of the U.S.

And he says the policies raise questions about the president’s judgment “and his faithful execution of his constitutional responsibilities for the common defense.”

Gaffney was nominated by President Ronald Reagan in April 1987 to become assistant secretary of defense for International Security Policy, the senior position in the Defense Department with responsibility for policies involving nuclear forces, arms control and U.S.-European defense relations.
He also served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy.

The Obama administration is altering the country’s decades-old nuclear weapons policy to reduce the role and number of such weapons, with the target of a nuclear-free world, according to a newly released document called a nuclear posture review.

Obama would renounce the development of any new nuclear weapons, and commit the U.S. not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty — even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons.

He is also about to sign a "New START" [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] with Russia reducing long-range nuclear weapons.

In his exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, Gaffney says: “Both the new nuclear posture review and the START treaty reflect the president’s overarching ambition, something that’s been a fixation of his going back to 1983 when he was a young radical at Columbia University, and that is with the idea of disarming the world.

“But as a practical matter the only country he can disarm is the United States, and I think both of these are steps in that direction.

“He is foreclosing any modernization of our nuclear deterrent. He is saying we’re not going to modernize our forces. The practical effect of the president’s decision not to modernize our nuclear deterrent is to condemn it to obsolescence, and [to lead] ultimately to the disarmament of the United States.”

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