COMMON SENSE - AT 7:31 A.M. ET:  As we leave the world of Jimmy Carter (see story just below) and re-enter the adult world, the Wall Street Journal takes note of an event almost entirely ignored by the mainstream press, but critical to our future:

A bipartisan Congressional commission on U.S. nuclear strategy released its report last week, and it deserved more attention than it got. It delivered a candid message that not many want to hear: We're a long way from a nuclear-free world.

Led by former Defense Secretaries William Perry and James Schlesinger, the commission is blunt on this point: "The conditions that might make possible the global elimination of nuclear weapons are not present today and their creation would require a fundamental transformation of the world political order." Until then, the report says, the U.S. must have a strong and credible nuclear deterrent.

To do so, the U.S. must maintain its triad of nuclear-delivery systems -- bombers, missiles and submarines -- a course of action that will require some "difficult investment choices." It also calls for modernization of the U.S. nuclear stockpile and the "transformation" of the aging physical and intellectual capital of the national nuclear laboratories.

And...

The commission warns that "we may be close to a tipping point" as more countries seek to go nuclear, in part because they may not have confidence in the reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons or that the U.S. would be willing to use them.

COMMENT:  What?  You mean there are people who can read and write who can actually question the wisdom of Barack Obama on nuclear weapons?  Yes they can.  Obama speaks of a nuclear-free world, and certainly we must work toward reducing the threat of nuclear war.  But we're a long way from that nuclear-free world, and maintaining our deterrence will actually help us reduce the chance of a nuclear tragedy, as a strong deterrence always does.

May 13, 2009