[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 73 (Thursday, May 15, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H4171]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          MINI-NUCLEAR WEAPONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, I am here today to highlight a security 
issue that has been overlooked since September 11, 2001. That would be 
the number of nuclear weapons in the world today.
  As I speak here on the floor of this House, the United States has 
7,500 nuclear weapons deployed and ready for use. Their destructive 
power is equal to 80,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs. At the same time, 
Russia has more than 6,000 warheads scattered across Asia, some of them 
still on hair-trigger alert. I wonder if any are pointed at this 
building, this building that we are standing in right now.
  Even India, Pakistan, and now North Korea have joined the nuclear 
club. These countries are motivated to obtain nuclear weapons for 
several reasons: security, global influence, and pride. These countries 
are motivated to obtain nuclear weapons because other countries have 
them or are trying to get them, including the United States. It is a 
Catch-22 with unthinkable consequences.
  But make no mistake: every nuclear weapon built by any country on 
this Earth was built with money diverted from a school that should have 
been built, a hospital that should be saving lives, and food that 
should be feeding the poorest of the poor. The resources that human 
beings pour into weapons solely intended to facilitate their very own 
destruction is astonishing.
  These weapons threaten not only individuals and nations, but the very 
existence of humankind. This is a threat that cannot be tolerated. This 
is the father of all weapons of mass destruction.
  That is why I am so disappointed that the Bush administration 
supports funding research on so-called low-yield nuclear weapons. This 
is a terrible mistake. Even the so-called low-yield weapons planned by 
Pentagon bureaucrats will be almost as strong as the bomb dropped on 
Hiroshima. These low-yield weapons will spew radioactive dust miles 
into the atmosphere where it falls. It will spew dust of radioactive 
dust on mothers, babies, brothers and sisters, men and women, all of 
them innocent, all of them undeserving of a personal nuclear holocaust.
  Nuclear weapons are humanity's biggest threat. Their greatest 
strength is that they corrupt human beings with misguided visions of 
power and security. We are fooling ourselves if we think more nuclear 
weapons means greater security and smaller nuclear weapons means 
guaranteed safety. These are the delusions that only lead closer to 
nuclear destruction.
  Instead of researching the new nukes, we ought to be getting rid of 
the ones we have. That is why I will soon introduce the Nuclear 
Nonproliferation treaty, NPT, Commitments Act, which calls on the 
United States to live up to its commitments under the NPT to take 
immediate steps toward a nuclear weapons convention to eliminate all 
nuclear weapons.
  I ask my colleagues to sign on to my bill, because our world will not 
be safe from nuclear destruction until we turn the tables on these 
horrific weapons and destroy them. In the Nuclear Nonproliferation 
Treaty which went into effect in 1972, the United States committed to 
work toward completely eliminating the world's stock of nuclear 
weapons.
  The fact is that as long as these weapons exist, they will spread, 
bringing the threat of nuclear destruction to all. The only way to keep 
this from happening is to abolish nuclear weapons entirely and develop 
a strong, multilateral organization to prevent nuclear weapons from 
threatening the world ever again.
  The Cold War is over; but, sadly, the threat from nuclear weapons has 
increased. Instead of wasting our resources building more weapons that 
can never be used and serve only to threaten the very existence of 
humankind, let us take the path away from nuclear war and toward a 
lasting peace for our children.

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