The Jon Kyl Arizona Nuclear Test Site

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I was made very angry this morning when I read on my iPhone Wall Street Journal app that Jon Kyl had taken a break from obstructing health care reform to write a bunch of specious words about why America needs to resume testing nuclear weapons. He also stood up against President Obama’s plans to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Some of the priceless faith-based foreign policy fibs in the op-ed that the fact-challenged editorial board of the Wall Street Journal happily published:

• The world can’t define a ‘nuclear test’
• Australia, South Korea, and Japan want us to test our nuclear weapons
• States that are bad won’t be persuaded by our good example

Reading Kyl’s terrible, awful, worst ever op-ed, I was going to get very righteous, and very angry, like Eric Cartman/South Park righteous and angry. But then I checked out ArmsControlWonk where proprietor and friend Jeffrey Lewis did such a great job knocking down and sending up Kyl’s op-ed, that I felt better.

Jeffrey explains, among other things, that Nevada and Utah will never ever let the Nevada Test Site, which is changing its name, be the home of a nuclear test explosion ever again. And so Jeffrey made one of his usual ‘modest proposals’ in response:

So, let me, in the spirit of compromise, suggest that DTRA fund a study on relocating the Nevada Test Site to one of three sites, including at least one site in Arizona.

After all, there is only one American politician with the patriotism and courage to defend to his constituents the need to resume yield testing in their backyard: Senator Jon Kyl.

The Nevada Test Site was selected in 1950 before the era of underground testing and thermonuclear weapons. Although the site turned out to have some very fortuitous geologic features, perhaps it is time to green-field a new test site based on the past sixty of experience with testing. Plus, as Joe Cirincione and I discovered, Sedona is lovely this time of year.

If the Department of Energy were to select a site in Arizona, we would certainly want to name the Arizona Test Site after Senator Kyl — although that might have to wait until he retires from the Senate or loses his reelection bid. Until then, we could call new site something patriotic like the “Freedom Test Site” so that when residents in Phoenix complain about tremors, Senator Kyl can explain to his constituents “That’s what freedom feels like.”

via ArmsControlWonk: Jon Kyl Arizona Test Site.

Worth some time. Please go read the rest of it. Jeffrey is a Doctor, after all.