Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

Notes
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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6. On these matters, see TNCW, Fateful Triangle. The topics are rarely
discussed in a rational way in the US—except by the Israeli lobby, which
understands the matter well enough—because of Israel’s holy status
among American intellectuals, comparable to that of the USSR in the
Communist Party, a fact regularly deplored by Israeli doves who
recognize that this blind loyalty is driving their country to disaster; see
the same sources for documentation and discussion; also Paul Findley,
They Dare to Speak Out (Lawrence Hill, 1985).
7. William Arkin, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS), Oct. 1985; Fred
Kaplan, BG, Sept. 15, 1985.
8. The Defense Monitor, no. 6, 1984; on the methods of calculation that
inflate Soviet expenditures, see TNCW, 193, and sources cited,
particularly the work of Franklyn Holtzman.
9. Interview, NYT, Feb. 12, 1985. The President’s speech writers are
technically correct in their deceitful claim concerning the reduction in
warheads since 1967, resulting from the retirement of redundant and
obsolete weapons including gravity bombs (the latter, after two serious
nuclear weapons accidents involving nuclear-armed bombers) in favor of
more accurate, capable and versatile weapons; for details, see Thomas
Cochran, William Arkin, and Milton Hoenig, Nuclear Weapons Databook
(Ballinger, 1984), I, chapter 1.
10. See David Johnson, director of research of the Center for Defense
Information, Inquiry, June 1983, reviewing the Pentagon publication
Soviet Military Power, 1983; also Andrew Cockburn, “Threat Inflation,”
in the same issue. On the misrepresentations and outright falsehoods in
the 1984 volume, see Fred Kaplan, BG, April 15, 1984.
11. For an excellent discussion of this topic, see William Schwartz, et al.,
The Nuclear Seduction: Why the Arms Race Doesn’t Matter, Boston
Nuclear Study Group, August 1985.
12. William Bischoff, Harvard Graduate Society Newsletter, Winter-Spring
1985; the sample was civilian and military “security policy makers”
involved in a Kennedy School program. A poll of a group of Harvard
alumni attending a session on nuclear war showed that 63% regarded