Iran the Nuclear Drumbeat gets louder ....

The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy by Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press
From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006

Keir A. Lieber, the author of War and the Engineers: The Primacy of Politics Over Technology, is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. Daryl G. Press, the author of Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats, is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Summary : For four decades, relations among the major nuclear powers have been shaped by their common vulnerability, a condition known as mutual assured destruction MAD. With the U.S. arsenal growing rapidly while Russia's decays and China's stays small, the era of MAD is ending -- and the era of U.S. nuclear primacy has begun.

" ......the age of MAD is nearing an end. Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike. This dramatic shift in the nuclear balance of power stems from a series of improvements in the United States' nuclear systems, the precipitous decline of Russia's arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China's nuclear forces."

The age of MAD may be at an end, the age of MADNESS has evidently taken over.

You may wonder who the Council on Foreign Relations are, well the Honorary Chairman is David Rockefeller , Directors (full list here) include Madeleine Albright who earned her stars bombing Yugoslavia and thought the death of half a million Iraqi children by starvation caused by sanctions was "a price worth paying". David M. Rubenstein Co-Founder and Managing Director, The Carlyle Group is another Director who like Thomas R. Pickering Senior Vice President for International Relations, The Boeing Company has a strong interest in supplying the military with things to kill people.

Just go and read the complete article.