OUTSOURCING OUR NUCLEAR PROGRAM?

Omigod. BushCo is considering handing our nuclear program to private contractors.???? Yeah, and next thing you know, the contractors would be increasing their profit margin by having nukes built in India or China. Can we say, what happened to national security?

Rofer also notes that the Bush administration is thinking about taking the nuclear program away from Los Alamos and putting it into private, for-profit hands. (See here for more>.) Oy. You'd think any grand claims about the "efficiency" of the private sector would be at least a little muted after the debacle in Iraq, or even after, as Rofer puts it, "Lockheed-Martin’s penchant for using English and metric units interchangeably, which resulted in the crash of one of the Mars vehicles." Heh, wee bit of a mess-up there. But no, apparently that track record is more than solid enough to trust contractors with our nuclear weapons.

Oh, and you also have to wonder: would the private companies who would stand to make billions off of a new and ever-more-dazzling array of nuclear weapons ever—ever—advise restraint on the subject? Hmmm, tough question.