Dianne Feinstein: “in the mid-1960s, during the height of the Vietnam War, the Department of Defense commissioned a study to determine the…”

“in the mid-1960s, during the height of the Vietnam War, the Department of Defense commissioned a study to determine the feasibility and advisability of the use of tactical nuclear weapons in that conflict. A copy of that 1967 study, ``Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Southeast Asia'', has just been declassified, and lays out in terrifying detail what might have happened if the United States had used tactical nuclear weapons during the Vietnam war. The bottom line of the study is that the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam--to block the Ho Chi Minh trail, kill large numbers of enemy soldiers, or destroy North Vietnamese air bases and seaports--would have offered no decisive military advantages to the United States but would have had grave repercussions for US soldiers in the field and US interests around the world. The study was prepared by four physicists associated with the Jason Division of the Institute of Defense Analyses, a group of scientists who met frequently to provide classified advice to defense officials. The study's conclusions were presented to then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. ``The political effects of US first use of TNW (tactical nuclear weapons) in Vietnam would be uniformly bad and could be catastrophic,'' the scientists wrote.…”