“I will continue to warn the American people…that this is still a dangerous world we live in,” Bush

WASHINGTON, May 20 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Although U.S. President Bush spends endless hours trying to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, his Administration isn't above creating a few itself, a leading magazine said Tuesday, May 20.

The Pentagon is hard at work pushing to develop the first new class of U.S. nukes since the end of the cold war, according to the Time magazine.

Two plans are on the table: retooling existing warheads into atomic sledgehammers capable of destroying bunkers under 1,000 feet of rock, and designing new mini-size nukes ideal for targeting stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, it added.

Although Congress banned work on mini-nukes for the past decade out of fear that smaller nuclear weapons might be more likely to be used, the  Bush Administration, citing the jump in what it calls hard and deeply buried targets (HDBTs) has persuaded the House and Senate Armed Services Committees to lift the prohibition.

The magazine said that both houses could vote on the measure as early as this week when they take up next year's military budget. The Pentagon has included 21 million dollars for the two new programs as well as 25 million dollars to jump-start nuclear tests, if the Administration sees fit.

Why does the U.S. need new nukes? asked the Time, saying that Washington's enemies calculate that the U.S. won't use its existing nuclear weapons because of the widespread carnage they would cause and that Pentagon officials claim this existing arsenal are not enough deterrent.

The Administration argues that the current arsenal consists largely of mammoth city blasters that can't burrow underground where U.S. officials believe nations such as Iran and North Korea are assembling weapons of mass destruction, it added.

But the new plans have their own detractors, including nuclear scientist and Pentagon adviser Sidney Drell, who says even a tiny 1-kiloton weapon exploding 50 ft. deep in rock would spew radioactivity across a wide swath of the planet, the Time reported.

Arms-control advocates worry that possessing smaller and more precise nuclear weapons would scuttle efforts to stop worldwide proliferation.

"This Administration seems to be moving toward a military posture in which nuclear weapons are considered just like other weapons," said Senator Dianne Feinstein last week.

The United States launched its military aggression against Iraq on the grounds the Arab country possessed weapons of mass destruction, but after the U.S. forces rolled into, no such banned weapons were found

Much Work Still Needed

Bush’s administration isn't above creating a few nukes itself

In the meanwhile, Bush warned anew that Americans should be on the alert following the attacks on the Saudi capital Riyadh that left at least seven Americans dead, adding that much work is still needed in the war against terrorism.

"I'm pleased with the progress we've made, but I will continue to warn the American people like I have for a long time that this is still a dangerous world we live in,” Bush said at a news conference with visiting Philippines President Gloria Arroyo on Monday.

“And clearly the attacks in Saudi Arabia mean that we've got to be on alert here at home. We've got to be diligent, we've got to understand there's an al Qaeda group still actively plotting to kill," he added.

The U.S. president said that slowly but surely “we're dismantling the al Qaeda operational network, … but we have a lot of work to do.”