Frank Gaffney Quotes
Having worked for him in the nuclear weapons policy business, I can tell you that President Reagan was committed to assuring the effectiveness of our nuclear deterrent.
Gaffney, Frank J., Jr. "Reagan's Nuclear Legacy." The Washington Times, 12 Feb. 2008.
This was his last publication. He died of a heart attack as the magazine was being printed. Since this was written one other possible use of nuclear weapons has been suggested—namely, retaliation for a biological attack. From a policy point of view, maintaining an arsenal of biological weapons for retaliatory purposes is dangerous and use for retaliation of biological weapons is not very controllable and arguably less humane than a nuclear weapon. His point however still holds. We have to have a national defense policy against many threats and we have to have defense policies that handle all these without nuclear tactics is insufficient to handle any of the threats without causing more problems and we have other weapons and techniques that are just as, if not more, effective. They and systems under development have the major role in our current defense policy.
Many politicians and military thinkers disagree with Kraus. America, England, France, Russia, and Israel have all demonstrated over the years that even with great provocation they would not resort to nuclear retaliation nor have they ever threatened use of WMDs. Iran, in contrast, has repeatedly stated as one of their major objective, the total destruction of another UN member state—Israel. Further, Iran has never possessed a weapon that it did not use shortly after possession, including poison gas. Therefore America and the United Nations have all determined that a double standard is necessary with Iran.
The alternative deterrent was to maintain an army of over 2 million men overseas in both Europe and Asia, and the cost was much greater than the then perceived cost of nuclear weapons. At the time no one figured the cost of coping with the radioactive material and waste as well as the cleanup of nuclear bomb factories like Hanford. These costs were still not known byt the 21st century.
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is an American anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist and the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy. In the 1970s and 1980s, he worked for the federal government in multiple posts, including seven months as Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Reagan administration.
