Letters to the Editor March 13, 2005 Just about six weeks ago it was announced that weapons of mass destruction had been found...however, they were discovered in Albania. It’s a small country just north and west of Greece. National media (except the Post) said very little about it. Seems the old communist dictator, Enver Hoxha, got hold of some 16 tons of chemical weapons like Yperite and Lewisite...deadly wicked stuff, imported from China back in the 1980s. Apparently no one in the US nor the UN knew this had taken place. Likewise, almost no one in Albania knew it either—Hoxha died in 1985, the communist government regime collapsed there in 1991...and the weapons were, well, just forgotten. The Albanians last month upon making this discovery promptly notified the UN weapons inspectors...good on you for doing that. But this whole misadventure made me really nervous. The Bush Administration, following in the footsteps of many other administrations, is busily engaged in creating many new smaller type of nuclear weapons. This in turn requires many more new tons of radioactive waste to be stored away for 50,000 to 100,000 years. National media said very little about it. Problem is, stuff can be forgotten, lost, misplaced, as we have seen after only twenty years in places like Albania. Now a reasonable person might say, well yeh, Albania is a small insignificant place of no real importance and the US is the superpower of the world. OK, fair enough—but remember we have to guard this new radioactive stuff for 50,000 years—keep it out of the water and air and soil and away from the bad guys—tough job, that. Just 2,500 years ago, Albania was less than fifty miles away from the current border of Macedonia. The capital city then was Vergina, and an obscure lad of twenty-some years of age ruled the world as the superpower: He was called Alexander the Great. Things can change in 25 centuries...let alone 500, or 1,000. History is full of civilizations and powers that have collapsed. Maybe we need to re-examine our nuclear requirements and waste disposal theories. Maybe we don’t need them at all. Our government wants places like North Korea to disarm...is it unreasonable for them to wish we would do the same? They haven't invaded any other countries—nor have they used nukes on human beings. We have done both—more than once. Recently. We may do more harm to our species’ ability to live on this planet just making more nukes than we would actually detonating them. Nuclear waste might just be too dangerous to leave as our legacy to the future. Robert J. Miller
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