Letters

Bulletin of Atomic Sociopaths?

In “Smart Bombs, Dumb Targeting?” (May/June 2000 Bulletin), William M. Arkin criticizes some of the decisions made by NATO during the war against Yugoslavia, but can't contain his enthusiasm for the potential benefits of precision bombing.

With pride, he says, “Out of 10,000 strikes there were 90 incidents in which civilians were killed because of technical failures, or because they were too close to military targets, or because of errors in judgment by pilots or targeters.”

Only 90 World Trade Centers. Only a few Murrah Buildings. Only 500 humans like Polly Klaas, if we believe Mr. Arkin's figures. (The Serbian government list of those killed has four times as many names.)

There is no such thing as humanitarian bombing or humanitarian war. To say it of a one-sided war which was prosecuted and propagandized by the United States, Britain, Turkey, and the others, surpasses Orwell.

The Bulletin should avoid tracts like Arkin's, lest it become known as the “Bulletin of Atomic Sociopaths.”

Lester Schonbrun

Oakland, California

I am an American scientist—a senior Fermilab physicist, emeritus—born in Belgrade. I am ashamed of the article you published [”Smart Bombs, Dumb Ta rgeting?”]. It takes very little research to find that what the United States did in the Balkans was not to minimize the human tragedy but to aggravate it.

Drasko Jovanovic

Chicago, Illinois

I suppose if you were capable of publishing an appalling apology for war and aggression like William M. Arkin's “Smart Bombs, Dumb Targeting?,” you're not likely to be open to arguments against his barely disguised lament that yet more devastation wasn't wrought by NATO in Yugoslavia.

“Wow! Just think of the military applications.”

Contrary to the Human Rights Watch estimate of 500 civilians killed in last spring's terror bombing spree in the Balkans, the names of some 2,000 victims have been gathered by the government of Yugoslavia [Serbia]. Perhaps another 1,000 have perished under the “humanitarian” KFOR regime and its Kosovo Liberation Army allies since then.

How many more will die because of the release of toxins into the water, earth, and air; because of unexploded cluster bombs (one of the many topics not mentioned by Arkin); because of residue from depleted uranium weaponry; because of impaired medical services resulting from the “insufficient” destruction of Yugoslavia's power grids?

I suppose all this wasn't considered worthy of mention. Let's put it all behind us and get on with the next humanitarian war.

Rick Rozoff

Chicago, Illinois

Regardless of the smartness or dumbness of bombs and targeting, even bombing of military and political targets under false pretenses is morally wrong. Nat o has no business in the Balkans, not as a self-appointed world policeman of human rights, nor as a “peacekeeper.” The United States and other nato states ignited and fed the fire in the Balkans. Arsonists don't make good firefighters, as is obvious from KFOR's performance in Kosovo.

Statements like “Our damage assessment once again contradicted the conventional wisdom that bombing is, by its nature, indiscriminate and immoral” make me scratch my head in light of Arkin's obvious bias and deficient scientific scrutiny. What could Arkin see from behind the windshield of his car in the course of two weeks while rushing through 250 of the 900 targets and through only a sample of the “collateral cases” meticulously documented by the government of Yugoslavia? And how does one determine the morality of bombing by looking solely at the results on the ground, while ignoring the history of vile scheming that led to it?

I would say this to Arkin: I don't like your writings at all and I have a very smart bomb for you. I know the satellite coordinates of your home and behind which window is your desk. I am about to send a B-2 with these bombs especially for you. The bomb will strike with two-meter accuracy, and will only destroy the window it enters through, your desk, and you.

Your wife and kids might die, too, from falling chandeliers, but that is just collateral damage. I do not wish them ill since I am not familiar with their writings.

Some children passing by might die on your street, hit by dumb shrapnel from the smart bomb. I can't control that. Their parents should have told them that when NATO is out on a humanitarian mission, they better stay inside damp and cold basements for months.

Piotr Bein

Vancouver, Canada

Spread the word

I heard part of Robert Alvarez's story on NPR yesterday and today visited the Bulletin's website where I read his story (“Energy in Decay,” May/June 2000 Bulletin) with mounting horror and alarm. I commend him on his longstanding commitment to making things better.

we want to hear from you

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Send them to: Letters, The Bulletin, 6042 South Kimbark, Chicago, IL 60637 fax: [phone] e-mail: [e-mail]

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My days are spent as a documentary writer and director, and I hope that you are working with some major media outlet to tell this story to the wider television audience. If we don't act successfully in the near future, it sounds like this will be the ultimate case of winning the Cold Battle and losing the world war. They say lead in the pipes contributed to the downfall of the Roman Empire; radiation may very well lead to ours.

Tod Mesirow

Los Angeles, California

Click here

Thanks for mentioning the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability's website in your roundup of useful Internet sites (“Web Watch,” May/June Bulletin). Unfortunately, the URL was not listed in the article.

For anyone who wants to know more about what is going on in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, clicking on http://www.ananuclear.org will produce fact sheets, action alerts, and links to groups in communities downwind and downstream of bomb plants, research labs, and radioactive waste dumps. We encourage readers' interest, assistance, and activism.

Susan Gordon, Director

Alliance for Nuclear Accountability Seattle, Washington

Where they still are

During the many years that I worked in the environmental and peace movements, the Bulletin was an invaluable source of information.

For almost a year now I have been a member of the Green Party in the Flemish Parliament, the legislative body covering the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium (Flanders). One of my first acts in office was to introduce a resolution calling for the withdrawal of all nuclear weapons from Flemish territory. Although never officially confirmed, it is common knowledge that there are U.S. B-61 nuclear bombs at the NATO air base in Kleine Brogel, in the northwest of Flanders.

The resolution was adopted on February 23, 2000. Most of the political parties that voted in favor of the resolution are also represented in the federal Parliament, where the Green Party is now pushing the issue.

Eloi Glorieux,

MP Hoeilaart, Belgium

Mars flag

Regarding “The Great Martian Flag Wars” in the May/June 2000 Bulletin—shouldn't Mars's “official” flag and anthem be determined by (future) Martians, rather than Earthlings?

Glenn A. Carlson

St. Peters, Missouri

Name that plane

There are conflicting opinions about air force jets flying at low altitudes over children, livestock, and wildlife in the American West. But there can be no differences about the photo of an “Alaska Air National Guard F-16” on page 6 of the May/June issue (“How Low Can You Go?”). The Alaska Air National Guard has never operated F-16s.

The four perpendicular strakes [vanes] in front of the cockpit identify this particular aircraft as an F-16A block 15 ADF (Air Defense Fighter), an interceptor intended to stop cruise missiles and bombers approaching the United States. It's the last aircraft that anyone would fly at treetop altitude over your house.

The words “Alaska A.N.G.” appear on the steering vane for the refueling boom being lowered to the F-16 by a KC-135 tanker of the Alaska Air National Guard.

On page 11, there is an item about an “F16/A” (you mean, F-16A) of the Thai air force unleashing “machine gun fire.” Although they routinely carry 20-millimeter cannons, none of the 4,000 F-16s manufactured has ever been armed with a machine gun.

Robert F. Dorr

Oakton, Virginia

EC-135s no longer used

Nrdc's Nuclear Notebook (“U.S Nuclear Forces, 2000,” May/June 2000 Bulletin) states that a nuclear missile launch, “if directed, must be commanded by at least two different LCCs [launch control centers] in the squadron or by the airborne launch control center aboard an EC-135.”

For your information, the EC-135 no longer performs this mission. Approximately a year ago, the navy's E-6B took this mission over.

Tim Shelton

Bellevue, Nebraska

Blame Clinton

In “The Bomb That Never Is” (May/June 2000), Avner Cohen is right on when he strongly criticizes the Israeli parliament's refusal to finally allow debate about Israel's possession of nuclear weapons. But the Clinton White House must share the blame for the Knesset's lack of openness and vision.

In February, an Arab member of the Knesset, who had been standing on his parliamentary rights and threatening to sue, was finally allowed a motion to discuss the Israeli bomb. But, as Cohen noted, the upshot was a 61 to 16 vote that effectively closed the subject once again, with none of the mainstream political parties willing to break with Israel's traditional policy of nuclear ambiguity and “opacity.”

For years everyone has known that Israel has nuclear weapons and the aircraft and missiles to deliver them. It's been widely recognized, too, that in the early years when Israel's very survival was in doubt, no country ever had greater reason to acquire nuclear weapons.

But what's been missing in the Knesset is an appreciation that with the end of the Cold War and the emergence of Israel as the greatest power in the Middle East, it's time to begin actively considering the possibility of the Israeli bomb's becoming a potent bargaining chip to eventually bring about a strong Middle East security regime backed by the United States. The Knesset's blocking of all debate on nuclear weapons policy amounts to a self-imposed blindness and a trashing of democratic principles and common sense.

But, quite arguably, the Knesset might by now have opened the debate if the United States, under President Bill Clinton, had not set so poor an example with respect to overcoming its own nuclear taboos and searching for new ways to reduce the world's nuclear danger.

The Clinton White House has rather conspicuously avoided taking on the question of whether nuclear weapons might eventually be stripped of their legitimacy and everywhere prohibited, a possibility cautiously suggested three years ago by the National Academy of Sciences's Committee on International Security and Arms Control. It has failed even to seriously engage the perilous situation presented by thousands of U.S. and Russian missiles remaining on alert and poised for launch.

With this example by the world's surviving nuclear superpower—and Israel's great friend and protector—it's not surprising that the Knesset won't let go its policy of nuclear denial.

Luther J. Carter

Washington, D.C.

Who came up with it first?

In his books The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, Richard Rhodes attributes the idea of using a uranium 235 fission bomb to trigger fusion in a hydrogen bomb to Tokutaro Hagiwara (1897-1971), a chemist at Kyoto Imperial University.

Shortly after Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann announced the fission of uranium 235 early in 1939 (co-discoverer Lise Meitner had been forced into exile), many investigations of fission were stimulated. An example was the research Hagiwara published in 1939 and 1940 describing the number of neutrons released per atom for each fission event; he also studied delayed neutrons.

During this research, Hagiwara cooperated with several others in Bun-saku Arakatsu's laboratory. In 1940 he devised an ingenious chemical method for counting neutrons. Hagiwara used hydrogen (as a constituent of paraffin and water) to slow down fast neutrons. Various scientists worldwide realized that nuclear bombs based on chain-reacting fission of uranium 235 were possible.

Hagiwara gave a lecture to the Imperial Navy's Second Arsenal on May 23, 1941; its title was “On the SuperExplosive Atom, U 235.” This unclassified lecture was printed in the July 24, 1941, issue of the Arsenal's internal journal. An official of the army's Toni-zo laboratory read the account and prepared a summary in hand-written kanji characters. This unofficial report, with the title “On Uranium (U),” became known as the Tonizo document; it was dated April 1943. It was the source available to Rhodes, whose copy and English translation came from a private collection.

The key sentence quoted in Rhodes's works is: “If by any chance U 235 could be manufactured in a large quantity and of proper concentration, U 235 has a great possibility of becoming useful as the initiating matter for a quantity of hydrogen.”

Studying the Tonizo document in its entirety induced us to doubt whether the statement quoted is entirely correct. For example, there was no mention in the paper of expected terms such as fusion, or the resulting helium, or deuterium, although they were known at the time of writing.

The remaining copies of the document were destroyed just before the occupation by U.S. armed forces, but Hagiwara saved a copy in his home. In June 1999, Kunio Ozawa visited Hagi-wara's daughter in Kyoto and was presented with a printed version of the lecture in its entirety. He made a copy available to us. Its title was “On the Super-Explosive Atom, U 235,” identical with that of Hagiwara's lecture.

Comparing the sentence in the newly recovered paper to the one quoted above revealed a crucial difference. Two kanji characters in Japanese are closely similar in appearance but have very different meanings: “initiating” and “super.” The flawed paper available to Rhodes had the character for “initiating”; the printed version contained the character for “super.”

Keeping in mind that different translators of a given passage in Japanese produce somewhat different

English versions, we offer the following translation of Hagiwara's sentence: “If in some way it becomes possible to manufacture a fairly large amount of uranium 235 and mix it with suitably concentrated hydrogen on an appropriate scale, the uranium 235 is expected to have a high probability of causing a super explosion.”

During 1940-41, the members of Britain's MAUD Committee (who were investigating the feasibility of the atom bomb), realized that a successful nuclear bomb must be based on chain-reaction fission by fast neutrons, as pointed out by Rudolf Peierls and Otto Frisch. This information was not widely known publicly, and many thought in those early times that a bomb would require a moderator, hence Hagiwara's reference to hydrogen.

We conclude that Hagiwara predicted a super explosion (a nuclear fission explosion, often described by the word super at the time) rather than an explosion that was being initiated (a hydrogen bomb based on fusion, referred to in the United States as “the Super” more than a dozen years later).

The idea of using a fission bomb to trigger fusion of hydrogen did occur to Enrico Fermi and he discussed it with Edward Teller in September 1941.

When informed of the account related above, along with supporting evidence, Richard Rhodes responded that he was “fully persuaded” that it is correct.

Shuji Fukui

Professor Emeritus of Physics, Nagoya University, Japan

Tetsuji Imanaka

Instructor, Research Reactor Institute, Kyoto University, Osaka, Japan

James C. Warf

Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, University of Southern California