The bomb test looking for a home may have found one in White Sands, N.M.

A spokesman for Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said recently that the Divine Strake test - an explosion of 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil over a series of tunnels to see how deep it will go, how much damage it will create - has not been scrubbed.

This test was pushed out of the Nevada Test Site when the Defense Threat Reduction Agency could not guarantee that detonation of this 700 tons of fuel would not stir up old radioactive dust left over from the many nuclear explosions that took place there during the Cold War.

The safety of those who live downwind of the test site provoked the grassroots opposition that grew to political opposition to this test.

And, although that was a primary concern, it was not the only concern because these "robust penetrators," as they are called, are destined to be the next-generation nukes.

So whether they test this thing in Nevada, New Mexico or some abandoned rock quarry in Indiana -as has also been discussed, all roads lead back - eventually, to the Nevada Test Site, one of the few places on the continent where nuclear testing can be performed.

This has been well-disguised by the DOD ever since the administration decided it was going to take on the so-called "Axis of Evil" - Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea at the moment. These rogue nations have supposedly dug deep into the earth to hide nuclear programs so, according to the administration brain trust, we must have weapons to burrow deep into the ground and destroy them. Of course, all this intelligence is the same that pointed at weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so take it for what you will.

But, the feds are biting, which is why there is, once again, money in this year's Department of Defense Appropriations Bill. You won't see Divine Strake or bunker busters by name, but you will find dollars attached to defeating "hardened and deeply buried targets."

They've done this before, which is why Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, who has been one of the most outspoken opponents of the bunker busters in Congress, is concerned.

He believes this whole Divine Strake business is designed specifically to develop and test new nuclear weapons.

We don't need new nukes, whether low-grade - an oxymoron if ever there was one - or your standard, Cold War-issue mega-ton armaments.

The point here is that there is no rational, moral or even political argument for the development and testing of new nukes.

Which simply means, unfortunately, that the DOD and its embarrassment of a leader, Donald Rumsfeld, will somehow find a way to develop them. 

Ed Kociela is City Editor of The Spectrum. E-mail is ekociela@thespectrum.com or go to www.southernutahblog.org for more commentary.

© 2006 The Spectrum

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