Editor,
I am appalled at the ignorance of some people. Don Schrader left some intelligence to be desired in his letter in Tuesday's Daily Lobo. He claimed, with no proof whatsoever, that the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal terrorizes whole countries. This cannot be the case when thousands of people a year attempt to enter this country. Most of the world knows that the process for the U.S. to launch a nuclear weapon is extremely long and met with countless obstructions and protests along the way. They know that the U.S. makes strenuous efforts to minimize fatalities.
Schrader said these weapons are meant to kill more people than Hitler killed in World War II. I am Jewish, and I was deeply offended by that comment. Hitler alone murdered millions of my people using gas chambers and other means of torture. Stalin murdered just as many, if not more. If not for this great country, of which I am proud to call myself a citizen, that number would have been far greater. I suggest that Schrader get his facts straight.
Schrader must have his math wrong if he thinks U.S. nukes could kill more people than the combined forces of gang wars, drugs, car accidents, rapes and the Ku Klux Klan.
He claimed that the creation and testing of nuclear weapons could kill millions. Contrary to what Schrader may think, the U.S. does not perform nuclear tests anymore, whether above or below the ground. Warheads are developed in out-of-the-way facilities, in chambers with shielding and redundancies.
Even if the U.S. destroyed all of its nuclear weapons, that would just mean China, North Korea, Russia and other nations would have a tremendous amount of say in our politics and our very existence, because the U.S. would have nothing to counter their weapons with. The U.S. has these weapons to guarantee our freedom from other countries.
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Aaron X. Lenard
UNM student
