Yeah, back in 1958, when the ever evil Chinese Commies decided they
wanted to blockade the Taiwan Strait, the U.S. Air Force wanted to
drop nukes on the coastal city of Amoy, to teach the Chinks a lesson.
Only President Eisenhower's intercession prevented the U.S. from
bombing China back to the pre-Stone Age (It already was in the Stone
Age) and turning Chinkyland into one big radioactive rice paddy.
It's too bad we didn't nuke 'em then, or a few years earlier, when
MacArthur suggested such an action during the Korean War.
The U.S., and indeed the rest of the world would today be a better
place, and most Chinese could've been slaves of the West, working
whatever industrial projects we might have for them. Give 'em a bowl
of vermin-infested rice each day and they'd be happy.
As it is, today the world is plagued with defective and poisonous
Chinese ex****ts, and athletes are fearful they'll contract some deadly
disease if they participate in the Brown City's polluted Olympics.
Just a missed op****tunity for America, I guess.
-------------------------
"Eisenhower Advisers Discussed Using Nuclear Weapons in China"
By Walter Pincus
Wa****ngton Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 30, 2008; A15
Senior Air Force officers proposed using 10-to-15-kiloton nuclear
bombs against targets in Communist China in 1958, in the event that
Beijing blockaded the Taiwan Strait, but President Dwight D.
Eisenhower ruled out that option, according to a newly declassified
Pentagon do***ent.
At a Cabinet meeting in mid-August 1958, as the threat of a Chinese
blockade of Taiwan was developing, Air Force Gen. Nathan F. Twining,
then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained "that at the
outset American planes would drop 10- to 15-kiloton bombs on selected
fields in the vicinity of Amoy," a coastal city on the Taiwan Strait
now called Xiamen, according to the do***ents.
But "the President simply did not accept the contention that nuclear
weapons were as conventional as high explosives," according to the now-
declassified Air Force history of the Taiwan crisis.
In releasing the official history, William Burr of George Wa****ngton
University's National Security Archive said Eisenhower's decision
forced Air Force leaders to think more seriously about conventional
warfare instead of relying on nuclear arms.
A similar discussion is underway today as the Pentagon, under
direction from Congress, examines U.S. nuclear strategy as part of the
debate over whether to develop a new generation of weapons in the
Reliable Replacement Warhead program.
By mid-August 1958, Air Force commanders had deployed five Strategic
Air Command B-47 bombers that "went on alert to conduct nuclear raids
against the mainland [China] airfields," the history says. At that
time, the commanders assumed "presidential approval [that] any
communist assault upon the offshore islands would trigger immediate
nuclear retaliation."
When informed that Eisenhower had insisted that first strikes be made
with high explosives, Gen. Laurence S. Kuter, the Pacific Air Forces
commander, described "this idea of limited response as
disastrous . . . and warned that the United States should either be
ready to use its most effective weapons -- in his opinion nuclear
bombs -- or stay out of the conflict," according to the history.
On Aug. 23, the Chinese began to fire tens of thousands of artillery
shells from the mainland to Big and Little Quemoy, offshore islands
held by the Taiwanese. Eisenhower approved the deployment of U.S.
naval forces to escort ****ps resupplying Quemoy, the dispatch of an
air strike force to the region and a commitment to help provide
Taiwan's air defense.
By early October, the Chinese government had announced a cease-fire,
and after a few months the crisis dissipated.
Kuter, the history says, later "complained that the military had
failed to convince civilian authorities that American forces had to be
free to use nuclear bombs at the outset of any conflict." Air Force
headquarters in Wa****ngton, however, accepted that political
considerations "might require that initial strikes be made with
conventional ordnance."
The Air Force declined to comment on the do***ent yesterday.
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/29/AR2008042902563.html
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