By Steve Smith, IOL Washington correspondent

WASHINGTON, March 17 (IslamOnline) - As the administration of President George W. Bush debates Washington's role in post-Taliban Afghanistan and revisit its nuclear policy, a report released late last week says top U.S. military commanders powerfully prefer U.S. involvement in international peace operations rather than extensive military campaigns.

The report, which included a survey of around 30 leading U.S. military senior officers, including the commander of U.S. operations in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Tommy Franks, along with many European military high brass, concludes that U.S. engagement in peace missions is "in our national interests". It also says that it will be a pivotal component of the so-called war against terrorism.

Meanwhile, opposition to the recent nuclear U.S. posturing is gathering pace in some quarters here as many Americans, officials and intellectuals begin to question the wisdom of a recent leakage of a report that the U.S. was redesigning its nuclear policy, including the not-to-strike-first principle.

John Burroughs, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy, said that official denial that Washington will not inflate the conditions for using the lethal weapons was not credible. "Contrary to what Bush said...the Nuclear Posture Review [NPR] expands the circumstances in which nuclear weapons could be used beyond those that deter an attack on the United States," he said.

"The US cannot credibly tell Iraq and North Korea to permit inspections to verify the absence of nuclear arms while threatening to use nuclear weapons against those countries."

Burroughs said that the Bush administration could be sending the wrong signal to violent groups across the globe. "Preventing terrorists from obtaining nuclear bombs requires international cooperation, not revulsion among allies and foes alike against the U.S. claim in the NPR to be able to use nuclear weapons in response to 'surprising military developments.'"

Some nuclear weapons experts said they suspected that the administration could in fact be piling up more nuclear heads than publicly stated. Chris Pain, a senior analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, says that over the next 10 years, the administration's plans call for the U.S. to retain a total stockpile of intact nuclear weapons and weapon components roughly seven to nine times larger than the publicly stated goal of 1,700 to 2,200 'operationally deployed weapons.' "This is an accounting system worthy of Enron," he said.

To the 'accountable' tally of 2,200, he says, one must add the 240 missile warheads on the two Trident submarines in overhaul at any given time: 1,350 strategic missile and bomber warheads in the 'responsive force', 800 'non-strategic' bombs assigned to U.S./NATO 'dual-capable' aircraft, 320 'non-strategic' sea-launched cruise missile warheads in the 'responsive force', 160 'spare' warheads, 4,900 intact warheads in the 'inactive reserve' and the 5,000 stored plutonium 'primary' and 'secondary' components that could be reassembled into weapons.

"In other words, the Bush administration is actually planning to retain the potential to deploy not 1,700 to 2,200 nuclear weapons, but as many as 15,000," he argued. The nuclear posturing flies directly against the apparently dovish tone of some of the U.S. military commanders whose voice seems to be growing feeble in face of increasingly right-wing tendencies in the Republican administration.

It is not clear if there is a face-off behind closed doors but the more hard-line elements of the administration seem to be getting their own way.

Most of the commanders, including Franks, were interviewed before the September 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Those interviewed afterwards, according to retired Marine Colonel Richard Roan, who helped conduct the interviews, said the attacks only fortified their confidence that international peace actions and U.S. involvement were of “critical importance to our own national security.”

“Most senior commanders believe that the U.S. doesn't have to lead every operation, but it has to be a player, and, to be most effective, must be a player on the ground,” says the 83- page account, 'A Force for Peace and Security,' released by The Peace Through Law Education Fund.