No to New Nukes and Missile Defense

May 8, 2007

Dear Friend,

In a major rebuff to the President, the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee last week cut the Bush Administration’s funding request for a new generation of nuclear weapons and for national missile defense. Both of these programs are unnecessary, expensive, and threaten the long-term security of the United States.

The full House Armed Services committee is set to consider the funding request – as contained in the Defense Authorization bill – tomorrow, before being voted on by the full House as early as next week.

Please call your Representative and urge him or her to eliminate all funds for the Reliable Replacement Warhead and cut additional funds from missile defense.

While the idea behind it is to create a smaller, cheaper and more modern nuclear arsenal, the Reliable Replacement Warhead program is a provocative and unnecessary move that undermines international security.

It is both hypocritical and counterproductive for the United States to build new nuclear weapons at the same time that it is trying to convince countries such as Iran and North Korea not to develop their own nuclear weapons.

Furthermore, beyond the fact that it increases the need to resume nuclear testing, numerous independent studies have shown that the current nuclear arsenal will remain “safe and reliable” for at least another 50 years.

Please call your Representative and urge him or her to eliminate all funds for the Reliable Replacement Warhead and cut additional funds from missile defense.

Likewise, the unreliable national missile defense program is a major boondoggle to the American taxpayer and does little to improve the security of the United States.

Despite the many tens of billions of dollars spent on missile defense, it remains an experimental system that has provided the United States with very few tangible results.

Numerous governmental reports, including one from the Pentagon's own Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, point out that the missile defense system suffers from a number of critical deficiencies, including an inability to deal successfully with countermeasures that any state capable of developing an intercontinental missile could easily employ.

While the cuts in funding thus far are a good start, they don’t go nearly deep enough.

Please call your Representative and urge him or her to eliminate all funds for the Reliable Replacement Warhead and cut additional funds from missile defense.

Your support can help us continue the struggle to eliminate nuclear weapons and increase our national security.

Sincerely,

John Isaacs and Guy Stevens

P.S. We need all the help we can get to stop President Bush from building new nuclear weapons and expanding an unreliable and expensive missile defense system! Please forward this e-mail to five of your friends.