A little New York Times reading this morning:

With all the furor about the Bush administration’s preoccupation with Iraq’s nonexistent ‘weapons of mass destruction’, and with Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, let us not forget that the major proponent of WMD in our time has been the U.S. One of the most egregious historical legacies of the Bush administration will be its reversal of the world’s nuclear stability. Now we learn that it will be announcing this week a major step forward in the building of the first new nuclear warhead in nearly two decades. continuing its single-minded destabilization of the ‘arms race’. Yes, the new weapon would not add to, but replace, existing nuclear armaments, but as an untested and, some say, risky hybrid incorporating elements from competing designs it will require costly refurbishment of the nation’s entire nuclear weapons manufacturing edifice and seems likely — probably by design — to force an end to the U.S. moratorium on nuclear weapons testing to make sure the new design works. As with most of its follies these days, the administration insults our intelligence, justifying this boondoggle by invoking the War on Terror® — that it is necessary to make our arsenal more secure from theft by terrorists. (Are we now to believe that assurances about the last generation’s nuclear security measures were lies?)