Actually the debate at time of developing the so-called "Super" (later hydrogen bomb, fusion weapon, what have you) was that it was a solution in search of a problem. There was no expectation that the Soviets were anywhere close to fielding a fusion explosive, and the feeling was that inventing fusion bombs was a unilateral escalation of an arms race, kind of like the escalations of weapons technology that presaged World War I. In other words we were asking for a nuclear war if we invented them.

What no one knew was that the Soviets had a direct tap into all American nuclear research at the time, an agent known only by code name who could deliver any technical document the Soviets wanted.

The Soviets used these documents, delivered by the hundreds of pages(!), to reproduce American work on reactors and fission devices then parallel American work on fusion. The end result? A balanced arms race, two sides equally armed. Who was this agent? We honestly don't know, even the ex-Soviets claim not to know.

Balancing the arms race probably prevented a war, but it cluttered the earth with nukes. It may well be that this was a planned thing. What if someone wanted humanity to have a lot of very powerful weapons lying around, and feeding information to the Soviets was how they acomplished this. Kindling for a conflagration? Salvation against attack by little green men? For good or bad the ground is now laid.

We may find that the bitter dividing line between Good Guys and Bad Guys of the Cold War was just a contrived rivalry like that between the Crips and Bloods, two feuding street gangs famous in the 1980s that turned out to have interlocking leadership and were in fact really one gang at war with itself.

Why invent rivalry? Well, in the case of the gangbangers it kept them under control. Without the constant pressure of a rival your gangbanger tends to clear his head, put down roots and make something of himself. Keep him churning in a maelstrom of drugs and violence and he's too busy to be anything but a strung-out zombie for whomever holds his leash.

Turns out the Crips and Bloods were being used as a distribution channel for illegal drugs, mostly cocaine. The average gangbanger thought he was selling drugs to bankroll the fighting. Nope. The money was funneling up to the unified command and disappearing. Just enough weapons filtered back down to the rank-and-file to keep the fight going.

Today we find ourselves entering into a neverending war against The Enemy again. President Bush's principal legacy will be starting the occupation of Iraq, which he fully expects will continue for decades and cost the U.S. taxpayer tens of billions of dollars every year it goes on. Where is this money going? Into the hands of people who then deliver just enough weapons to keep the fight going.

U.S. forces in Iraq are pathetically underequipped and undermanned like no U.S. force since 1942. Amazing how no matter how much money we spend, it doesn't fit our troops out with desert boots or armored vehicles. Isn't it? They really just have enough gear to keep them there, not enough to finish the fight. Odd, that.

Maybe us and the Iraqis are just another round of Crips and Bloods being hustled to dispense a product and collect a revenue.

Or maybe we're what all the nukes are for. Is it time to fight "Amergedden"?

Nice photo BTW.