COUNTERPLAN/NUCLEAR ABOLITION

MUTUAL EXCLUSIVITY: NMD PROGRAM PREVENTS ABOLITION

DISARMAMENT EFFORTS ARE FAR BETTER THAN MISSILE DEFENSE EFFORTS

William Santelmann The Christian Science Monitor, November 16, 1999, SECTION: OPINION; READER'S WRITE; Pg. 8 HEADLINE: Alternatives to a national missile-defense system // acs-ln-11-19-99

This cold war aberration is still with us, with 5,000 nuclear weapons on a hair-trigger alert ready to launch in a half hour. NMD could be readily defeated by simple, cheap offensive countermeasures. I also question the value of an NMD system that has failed 14 of its 18 tests to date. Abolition of all nuclear weapons is vastly less expensive than the estimated $ 128 billion for NMD and would protect people from nuclear annihilation.

NUCLEAR ELIMINATION EFFORTS NEED A STRONG ABM TREATY

It will be extremely important for the pursuit of the elimination of nuclear weapons to protect fully the integrity of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

TIME IS RUNNING OUT -- WE MUST COMMIT TO NUCLEAR ABOLITION NOW

HOWARD BREMBECK, Fourth Freedom Foundation, 2000; IN SEARCH OF THE FOURTH FREEDOM // VT2002 acs p. 161

But time is running out. We cannot indefinitely postpone the action needed to banish fear of war from our own minds and from the minds of our fellow human beings. We must not turn our backs on the danger that confronts us. We no longer can allow ourselves to be content with a foreign policy that reacts to events and that seems incapable of taking the long view on matters that are of -vital importance to our generation and the generations we hope will follow us.