Dianne Feinstein: “I was 12 years old when the Enola Gay went out of the Pacific. I remember that big mushroom cloud on the San Francisco…”

“I was 12 years old when the Enola Gay went out of the Pacific. I remember that big mushroom cloud on the San Francisco Chronicle and then, for months afterward, I remember the pictures that came back from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It may well be that we are too far removed from that day to really understand the repercussions of what this bill is going to begin to allow to happen in the United States. What is going to be allowed to happen is a reopening of the door to nuclear development which has been closed for decades. This amendment would strike section 3131, and that is the repeal of the Spratt-Furse language which prohibits the development of so-called low-yield nuclear weapons. This prohibition of nuclear development was adopted in the 1994 Defense authorization bill. It has been the law of the land for the last decade. The language of Spratt-Furse--I would like to read it--says that with respect to U.S. policy, "it shall be the policy of the United States not to conduct research and development which could lead to the production by the United States of a new low-yield nuclear weapon, including a precision low-yield warhead.…”