- 25 May 2008 06:22
#1538784
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C02EFD71331F932A35750C0A9649C8B63
The best argument for American arms is that the US is responsible and has never used them . . . there is no reason, with this knowledge, to continue to espouse American arms. No reason.
Nixon Proposed Using A-Bomb In Vietnam War
Published: March 1, 2002
A few weeks before ordering an escalation of the Vietnam War, President Nixon matter-of-factly raised the idea of using a nuclear bomb. His national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, quickly dissuaded him.
Mr. Nixon's abrupt suggestion, buried in 500 hours of tapes released today at the National Archives, came after Mr. Kissinger had presented a variety of options for stepping up the war effort, among them attacking power plants and docks, in an April 25, 1972, conversation in the Executive Office Building in Washington.
''I'd rather use the nuclear bomb,'' Mr. Nixon responded.
''That, I think, would just be too much,'' Mr. Kissinger replied.
''The nuclear bomb. Does that bother you?'' Mr. Nixon asked. ''I just want you to think big.''
The following month, Mr. Nixon ordered the biggest escalation of the war since 1968.
In a 1985 interview, Mr. Nixon acknowledged that he had considered ''the nuclear option.'' He told Time magazine then: ''I rejected the bombing of the dikes, which would have drowned one million people, for the same reason that I rejected the nuclear option. Because the targets presented were not military targets.''
The best argument for American arms is that the US is responsible and has never used them . . . there is no reason, with this knowledge, to continue to espouse American arms. No reason.