Rumsfeld asks for restoration of nuclear 'bunker buster' program, page 1

"WASHINGTON (AFP) Feb 02, 2005
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has asked for the restoration of a supersecret research program designed to create a new type of nuclear weapons capable of destroying hardened underground targets, a Pentagon official said late Tuesday.
The request came in a letter Rumsfeld sent to then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on January 10, in which he insisted that funds for studying the feasibility of the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator be restored.

"The Defense Department does support completion of the penetrator study," Major Paul Swiergosz, a department spokesman, told AFP. "We can't necessarily match Cold War weapons to the new threats. We have to adapt capabilities that we have to meet the threats."

A spokesman for the Department of Energy that runs US nuclear weapons research declined to say what the response would be. Abraham was replaced by Samuel Bodman on January 11.

But military experts said they were expecting a new attempt by the administration of President George W. Bush to revive the "bunker buster" nuclear weapons program that was shelved by Congress late last year under growing international and domestic criticism.

Republican Representative David Hobson, who chairs an appropriations subcommittee in the House of Representatives, quietly removed 27.5 million dollars earmarked for the bomb study from a mammoth spending bill that was being rushed through Congress. "

www.spacewar.com...

Near the bottom of this article the UN (IAEA) say they are against the program becuase it sends the wrong message.

"However, International Atomic Energy Agency director, Mohamed ElBaradei, warned this week that the "bunker buster" program was sending "the wrong message" and could hinder international non-proliferation efforts.

"You can't tell everyone 'don't touch nuclear weapons' while continuing to build them," ElBaradei said in an interview with The Washington Post newspaper and Newsweek magazine."

Yet the article also says this....
According to the Defense Intelligence Agency, at least 10,000 bunkers currently exist in over 70 countries around the world.

More than 1,400 of them are used as strategic storage sites for weapons of mass destruction, concealed launch pads for ballistic missiles as well as leadership or top-echelon command and control posts, the DIA estimates."

If the IAEA actually did their job perhaps there would be no NEED for this weapons system.