To Stop Iran, Help Pass START Today

As a civilian with no influence I would like to thank you in your efforts to ratify the START Treaty.
This is a very serious issue for me.
    Recently I viewed the film NUCLEAR TIPPING POINT.  I want to thank you on your courageous challenge to reduce the nuclear weapons arsenal in the world and to try and inform people of this very real possibility.
    My name is Paul Schlein.  I do engineering as my chosen profession with over twenty five years of designing heavy industrial facilities ranging including nuclear facilities.
    This issue has become somewhat of a cause for me because of the fact that I grew up near a nuclear weapons laboratory (LLNL) where I been working and have worked where the manufacturing of plutonium was performed where I was exposed to nuclear radiation.
    Most people here do not even know what the issue is about, I have asked everyone from adults to college children but it became relevant to me after that while living in Richland,Wa. at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, working at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and then in Washington, D.C.. I was three miles from the Pentagon on Sept 11. 
The awareness of this issue has seemed to wane after so many years, perhaps because that this issue was never in the public realm of discussion or perhaps because people forgot about it and imagine it could never happen to them.
    This issue has become overly politicized by non religious and religious people-some thinking that the messiah will come with the usage of a nuclear weapon, but in any case it is a horrible thing if one of these weapons is to be used and after studying the scriptures I find no reference to nuclear weapons and the Battle of Armageddon.
    I find it quite reprehensible-that not only as I do engineering I have interest in Judiasm I have studied both old and new testament and have never found any reference to the usage of nuclear weapons at the Battle of Armageddon contrary to the notion of some. To least of the extent I would consider it to be a grave sin to use it.
    My eyes were opened again when I was working in Washington D.C.-I was 3 miles from the Pentagon this became ever more convincing. It was very disapointing that while living there no one seemed to have a sense of urgency or concern that his is a very real possiblity.
    I talked with Lee Hamilton about this issue-I met him at the National Cathedral. I was very dismayed that his response to this issue is that the thought now is “We don’t know if, we just don’t know when.” If I could be a little callous-I do have faith that people of your caliber must have recognized this many years ago.
    I have been working at NATIONAL IGNITION FACILITY at Lawrence Livermore Labs.s now
This is a very exciting project-we are creating fusion energy now and when this facility is complete this will allow testing for the current nuclear weapons stockpile without detonating a weapon.
    If I can be of any assistance, whether as a civilian with a layman understanding of the issue or as a faithful person please let me know. Perhaps you know someone who might be interested in my viewpoints.
Sincerely yours,

Paul Schlein
212 Beverly Ave.
San Leandro, Ca. 94577
Email:p_schlein@yahoo.com

Yesterday, 11/21/2010, at the urging of NJDC, I sent the following post to Sen. Kyl, and strongly urge as many people as possible, to contact Sen. Kyl with your own views: 

Dear Senator Kyl,  As a moderate, independent-minded voter, I am deeply distressed that you are the leader of Republican opposition to Senate ratification of the START Treaty.  Every rational public official, including former Republican-led administration heads of the State Dept. and the Pentagon, is advocating the passage of this treaty NOW, during the current Senate session.  I am sure you are very familiar with the many arguments in favor of the treaty, so I will not try to repeat them here.  However, your argument to delay the approval until the new Senate is seated seems to independents like me to be only a smoke-screen for adding to the perception that President Obama is a weak leader, unable to get important things done, and thus nothing more than another feather in the sorry plumage of Sen. McConnell’s avowed goal of making Obama a one-term president as the most important goal of the Republican Party.  Not national security, not the fight against terrorism, not reducing the threat of nuclear warfare, not working jointly with Russia to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, not the economic well-being of the American people…  none of these things.  Under the thinnest veil of a preposterous rationale (that more hearings are needed, that new Senators should have a chance to weigh in, that the whole process needs to START over), you are sending a clear message to Americans all across the country that party politics comes ahead of everything else, the public be damned.  Americans are not stupid.  We see what you are doing, and it is a strategy that will surely backfire on Republicans in 2012.  It’s not too late to come to your senses and change course on this momentous vote.  Please reconsider.  Vote YES on the treaty.

David I. Rubin
Associate Professor, Retired
College of Public and Community Service
University of Massachusetts-Boston