In all of the talk and chatter about bombing Iran's nuclear facilities, there is never a mention of the contamination consequences of doing that. Never in history has it happened that someone bombed a nuclear facility. Reactors are encased in domes of concrete to contain any accidental releases of radiation. Containment was breached at Chernobyl, contaminating a wide area, but most of the radioactive fuel is still in the reactor. Imagine the consequences of using bunker-buster bombs to intentionally destroy the protective domes and to intentionally cast all of the reactor's radioactive materials into the atmosphere. Bombing Iran's reactors will kill millions of Iranian civilians, as well as those of other nations depending on which way the wind is blowing. The Union of Concerned Scientists has estimated that bombing the Esfahan nuclear refinement facilities will kill 3 million civilians in 2 weeks and will expose 35 million people in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to lethal doses of radiation. In 1981, two US physicists, Fetter and Tsipis, wrote in Scientific American on “Catastrophic Releases of Radioactivity” caused by bombing nuclear reactors. In one scenario, bombing a reactor in Wisconsin would send a radioactive plume across Chicago, New York City, all the way to Bermuda, making those cities uninhabitable. In another scenario, bombing a reactor complex in southern Germany would make all of northern Europe and UK uninhabitable. Iran's Bushir reactor, loaded with 80 tons of enriched uranium, sits right on the Persian Gulf shore, just east of Kuwait. Bombing Bushir will render the Persian Gulf uninhabitable. One half of the world's known oil reserves are in the Persian Gulf (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran). Bombing Iran's reactors should be seen as an act of economic warfare against the USA, EU, China, Japan and everyone else who needs oil for their industries, agriculture and transportation. Bombing Iran's reactors will mean that all nuclear reactors in the world are legitimate targets for conventional or unconventional attack. When the royal families of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia all take sudden holiday trips to New Zealand or Argentina, then the rest of us know that a new Dark Ages is about to begin.

So perfectly written. Thank you. Back in 1979, I became serious about being anti-war when my first child was born. When my second was born, I helped start a peace organization. Now I have a grand child. War, and the new dread of climate collapse, again make me more and more motivated to be serious about opposing war.

What is very much missing in the current discussions about the "Iran problem" and is that bombing nuclear reactors and refinement plants is a catastrophic thing to do. Our worst nuclear catastrophe to date has been Chernobyl. But most of the nuclear materials at Chernobyl are still in the reactor, covered with earth and concrete. Blowing up Iran's nuclear reactors will contaminate wide areas for centuries. Nuclear bombs have some kilograms of uranium or plutonium, and the fallout from them is considered horrific. Imagine blowing up tons of enriched uranium into the atmosphere. When Israel bombed Iraq's reactor and Syria's supposed reactor, those were construction sites, not loaded reactors filled with tons of concentrated uranium. The Persian Gulf has 50% of the world's oil reserves. That stops flowing after we bomb the Bushir reactor. Once one reactor is bombed, then all reactors are legitimate targets of conventional and unconventional. That is not a nice development. The Middle East is a region of the world that seeks justice by revenge, an eye-for-an-eye type place. If we irradiate Iran, Turkey, and the Persian Gulf by bombing Bushir and Natanz, do you think the people whose lives and land we have destroyed will say "Thank you" or say "Let's forget past transgression and try to move forward"? The USA made a big case about Jose Padilla talking about making a "dirty bomb" when he had neither the knowledge or the resources to do that. Well, bombing Bushir will be the mother of all dirty bombs, and the people talking about this include the US and Israeli governments. They have the knowledge and resources to do it. And maybe they are crazy enough, too, to do it. The existential threat to the United States and to Western Civilization is not Iran, but the people who plan to bomb loaded nuclear reactors in Iran.

I am an UpState New Yorker, educated in liberal New England, now living is socialist Scandinavia. My registered affiliation is Green Party. There is nothing in my background that would bring me to respect or even read a Texas Rebublican right-winger like Ron Paul. But he is brilliant. The clarity and honesty of his writings reflect the clarity and honesty of his thinking. Of the thousands of professional politicians and policy bureaucrats in Washington, why is only one clear and honest? That is the mystery. Ron Paul is a good argument for cloning. The US needs many more like him.