Statement of Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Need to Continue to Ban on Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons

STATEMENT OF SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY ON THE NEED TO CONTINUE THE BAN ON LOW-YIELD NUCLEAR WEAPONS

This issue is as clear as any issue ever gets. You're either for nuclear war, or you're not. Either you want to make it easier to start using nuclear weapons, or you don't.

Our conventional weapons already have vast power and accuracy, and we can make them even more powerful. No one at the Pentagon and no one in the Administration has given us any example—none at all—of a case where a smaller nuclear weapon is needed to do what a conventional weapon can't do.

For half a century, our policy has been to do everything we possibly can to prevent nuclear war. And so far, we've succeeded.

The hard-liners say things are different today. A nuclear war won't be so bad if we just make the nukes a little smaller. We'll call them mini-nukes. They're not real nukes. A little nuclear war's O.K.

That's nonsense. Nuclear war is nuclear war is nuclear war. We don't want it anywhere, anytime, anyplace.
Make no mistake. A mini-nuke is still a nuke.

Is half a Hiroshima O.K.? Is a quarter of a Hiroshima O.K.? It's a little mushroom cloud O.K.? That's absurd.

This issue is too important. If we build it, we'll use it. No Congress should be the Congress that says, "Let's start down this street," when it's a one-way street that can lead only to nuclear war.