The Nuclear Posture Review sets forth policies that explicitly violate the legal obligations the US undertook when it ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and subsequently in 1995 - the prohibition on the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries, and the obligation to negotiate the cessation of the arms race at an early date.

    When the Nuclear Posture Review was presented in 2002, the New York Times said: "Where the Pentagon review goes very wrong is in lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons and in undermining the effectiveness of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ... Nuclear weapons are not just another part of the military arsenal. They are different, and lowering the threshold for their use is reckless folly."

    Yet today the United States stands ready to rapidly launch 2,000 strategic warheads with land- and submarine-based missiles. Each warhead would inflict vast heat, blast and radiation 7 to 30 times that of the Hiroshima bomb.

    Although less spectacular and obvious than a mushroom cloud, the United States has used nuclear weapons - depleted uranium warheads - in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Reporters from the Christian Science Monitor have measured radiation levels in downtown Baghdad that are 1,000 to 1,900 times higher than normal background radiation levels.

    The US Nuclear Defense Agency condemned depleted uranium weapons as a "serious health threat." Whipped up by sandstorms and carried by trade winds, they can cause cancer, leukemia, brain damage, kidney failure and extreme birth defects for 4,500,000,000 years (See Horror of USA's Depleted Uranium in Iraq Threatens World.)

    The United States is committing ongoing crimes against humanity by its use of depleted uranium.

    The effects of the strategic warheads and depleted uranium "cannot be contained in space or time ... would affect health, agriculture, natural resources and demography over a very wide area ... and would be a serious danger to future generations." Thus, under the definition set by the World Court, these weapons are incapable of distinguishing between civilian and military targets, and are therefore prohibited.

    By using nuclear weapons against Japan, the United States became a dangerous role model. The Bush administration persists in the use of depleted uranium, and it has announced its intention to enlarge the use of the extraordinary strategic warheads.

    Bush targets countries like North Korea and Iran that may seek to develop their nuclear capabilities. Yet all the while, Bush and his administration continue to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity in Iraq and threaten to commit even greater crimes in the future with their horrific new weapons.

    Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.

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