Word: neutrons
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Your story on the neutron bomb [April 17] is yet another example of unfair attacks on Carter. The first four paragraphs leave the impression that he can't make a decision. Only after attacking Carter do you give the facts: military and political leaders differ sharply over the bomb, and none of the key NATO countries will commit themselves to allowing it in their territory. Carter has made the only possible choice. He is not wasting $4 billion producing a useless weapon, and he is not precluding future production should the situation change...
...neutron bomb supporters' argument that its destructive potential would be a deterrent to war is as absurd today as it was 111 years ago, when Nobel invented dynamite. We already have enough bombs to obliterate the planet; we don't need another...
...still adventurous and aggressive Soviet Union. He has taken a series of actions they find dismaying: ordering a U.S. troop withdrawal (which he reduced somewhat last week) from South Korea, canceling the B-1 bomber, responding tepidly to Soviet intervention on the African horn, waffling on the neutron bomb and then deciding to postpone his decision. Moreover, he has asked Russia for nothing comparable in return for these unilateral actions. In West Germany, where his reputation is lowest, Carter is considered by some officials to be the worst President since World War II. In Britain, he has been supported...
After the neutron bomb uproar, Sir Ian Gilmour, defense spokesman in the Tory shadow government, lashed out: "There have been weeks of leaks and contradictions, and after an orgy of weakness and vacillation, the wrong decision has finally been reached. Mr. Carter has been scared off the neutron weapon by the Russian propaganda barrage. It now seems that the Kremlin has virtually a right of veto on weapons that NATO is allowed to deploy...
...happened, questions were also being raised about Schmidt's handling of the matter. The flap erupted when it seemed that Carter was going to cancel production of the neutron weapon because, among other things, it had received no public support from the West German government. In the face of a scare campaign against the "inhuman" warhead that was skillfully fanned by Moscow, Schmidt apparently would not risk backing the weapon openly, although he did so privately. While the President eventually made no decision-he neither authorized the weapon's development nor definitively dropped it-the episode triggered...