North Korea
Donald Trump is not the first president to be presented with nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles aimed at United States territory. Every president since Dwight Eisenhower has faced this prospect. No president considered a pre-emptive attack on Russia or China when they developed a nuclear weapon and a missile capable of delivering it to the U.S. homeland.
As a defense analyst at the RAND Corp. in the 1980s, I briefed many Cabinet-level officials of the Reagan administration on the defects of a space-based defense against Russian ICBMs. One of the facts that I frequently pointed out was the impossibility of ever having a perfect defense.
Once a nation has the capability of developing a nuclear weapon, it does not have to be delivered in a sophisticated way. Even a nation without ICBMs capable of reaching the continental United States can simply ship a weapon by commercial freight to any destination in the U.S. and store it for a future remote detonation at any time. This is not a new idea and has even been used in a popular book plot by Tom Clancy. North Korea has had this capability for many years.
The U.S. has a massive escalation dominance as a deterrent. Pre-emptive first use of a nuclear weapon on any nation would change our image in the international community for all time. This would not make America great again.
GEORGE DONOHUE
Churchton
Global warming
It seems I struck a nerve with the tinfoil-hat-wearing crowd about the hoax of global warming. I can see how kids today are being duped into believing this nonsense, from being force-fed this garbage daily in the indoctrination camps known as the public school system. But the rest of you should know better.
It’s funny how you don’t want to talk about those who were fired after exposing the fraud and data manipulation to achieve a desired result.
I also know you don’t want to discuss the thousands of e-mails that proved the data used to support the theory of human-caused global warming have not been accurately represented.
And I know you don’t want to talk about the time Al Gore predicted that the North Pole would be liquidated by 2014. Or how the International Energy Agency warned that the world only has five years to exist before it’s too late. That was in 2011.
A Capital columnist, Paul Foer, wrote in 2010 of a scenario of sea levels rising 20 to 40 feet. So let me ask you: How many feet has the sea level risen since then? I’ll tell you: zero inches.
I know for a fact nobody wants to talk about that.
TY COLLINS
Riva
Remembering Hersheypark
Reading the recent column by John W. Van de Kamp regarding his family trip to Hersheypark (The Capital, Aug. 29) brought back many memories.
I was born in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and spent more days and hours at Hersheypark than I could ever remember. My work there in the summers helped pay for a college education. I even remember seeing Hershey’s founder, Milton S. Hershey, brought to a band concert in a wheelchair a few days before he died in 1945.
Hershey was always the place for families, whether babies in strollers, teenagers waiting for a ride on the roller coaster or generations of family members sitting around a picnic table enjoying the bounties of a good old-fashioned outing. The carousel, now 91 years old according to the columnist, must have been but a teenager when I spent days at the park.
A trip to Hersheypark remains a family favorite for me, my children and grandchildren, and hopefully my great-grandchildren, too. I highly recommend getting the family together and mixing with the diverse group of visitors, all enjoying a day at the park.
FRANCES K. JAQUES
Edgewater
Unity
Thank you, Don Bender, for your letter to the editor, “Unity” (The Capital, Aug. 31). Your voice of reason was a breath of fresh air in this smog of political vitriol we experience so much these days.
DOUG DILLNER
Riva